Highway 69 and 11 expansion rolling north: Northerners say safety, efficiency, new development will open up the region.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT: CONSTRUCTION

The ongoing four-laning of Highway 69 between Sudbury and Parry Sound will save lives, move freight faster and if any road in Canada needs it, says Manitoulin Transport president Gord Smith, 69 is it.

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"That's one of the worst highways in Canada particularly during the tourism season.

"As much as the general public will harass the trucking industry, you wouldn't believe the amount of characters on that highway" says Smith in a phone interview from the company's Cambridge, Ont. terminal.

"You'd be trucking downhill on a pretty good grade with 80,000 pounds of steel and some guy at the bottom pulls out with his 35-foot camper behind his half-truck. Trucks and tourist traffic don't mix."

Frequent road closures from accidents and bad weather sometimes mean drivers must park their rigs if they surpass the service hours they can log daily

For just-in-time freight, carriers must send a relief driver to take the shipment to the next terminal.

"Often it's easier said than done," says Smith. "When you're operating an LTL (less-than-load) service, being a day late doesn't do customers much good.

"Inco could be waiting for a part with a $10,000 consequence to it and you're held up in a road closure on 69."

Slowly over the years, the Highway 400, freeway link has moved steadily north as part of the Liberals $2 billion strategy to re-build Northern highways.

The decision to widen, and in some places entirely re-align, Highway 69 was promised by the Bob Rae government in the early 1990s before construction was kiboshed by Mike Harris in 1995.

But a series of fatal crashes, particularly near a sharp S-curve close to the northbound turnoff to Killarney Provincial Park, sparked a bumper-sticker campaign by a citizen's group and Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci urging for the project to resume.

Premier Ernie Eves did so in 2002.

Prior to the start of construction in 2004, the daily traffic count between Parry Sound and Sudbury was a vast range between 5,000 and 14,000 vehicles. Those numbers swelled to 19,000 during the summer with about 13 per cent of that being commercial traffic.

Like bookends, construction began at both the north (Sudbury) and south (Parry Sound) ends of the 152-kilometre stretch. The entire project, which will be known as Highway 400, is expected to be complete by 2017.

This fall, a new seven-km section between Parry Sound and Nobel opens followed by a six-km new route late new year between Sudbury and Highway 537.

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