The highway 7 project
Posted Apr 13, 2011 04:30:32 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Regional Councillors put the pedal to the metal to question an MTO engineer on why the Highway 7 project to Guelph is taking so long.
MTO Senior Project Engineer, Robert Bakalarczyk spoke to councillors during a committee meeting yesterday, but he and a colleague only had information on new plans for a handful of bridges and intersections between the Expressway and the edge of the Region’s land.
Some councillors, however, questioned Bakalarczyk on why the project has been taking years, if not decades.
Bakalarczyk says only now are they getting to the point of really being able to start the necessary property acquisition along the highway, and that’s going to take at least two and a half years to complete.
After that comes funding approval, final design decisions, and then at least five years of construction, he says — that puts the project completion in the year 2020 at the earliest.
But even that depends on the project getting onto the province’s five-year plan for funding first.
The end result will be a four-lane divided freeway from Kitchener to Guelph that will cost $400-million, including the property acquisition.
Bakalarczyk says given the fact they have to build forty-one structures and intersections within the 18-kilometre stretch, that cost is comparable to other highway projects.
And he adds, so is the timeline.
He says since the Environmental Assessment was approved in 2007, the MTO has done extensive foundation work, finished the design work, and bought some properties.
Councillor Sean Strickland asked Bakalarczyk if the MTO is aware the project has become a “laughing stock” in the eyes of the public.
Councillor Todd Cowan joked when the Highway 7 project first came up, the Leafs had just won the Stanley Cup.
