St. Catharines highway bridge now tops infrastructure funding list

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Published March 7, 2023 at 11:26 am

Starting next year, construction on the twinning of the Garden City Skyway will begin.

A year ago when the Province announced its future highway projects, the twinning of the Garden City Skyway which connects St. Catharines and Niagara-on-the-Lake was little more than a footnote.

However, last year’s announcement was a massive overview of all the infrastructure Ontario had planned for the future so it included the controversial and highly unpopular Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass projects, as well as countless other projects from  Guelph to the west, Barrie and Orillia to the north, then east to Peterborough.

When the Province released their March 2023 Infrastructure Ontario Market Update last week, this time the Garden City Skyway was on top of the list.

The reason could be as simple as the fact that the twinning of the Garden City Skyway will begin next year, pushing it higher on the list of projects.

Creating a second highway beside the Garden City Skyway has been in the plans since an engineering firm told the government back in 2014 that the roadway would have to be replaced by 2025.

Since that portion of the highway leads directly to three border crossings in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie, it’s imperative that the government deals with the roadway before it literally starts to crumble.

During 2024, the twin highway to the Garden City Skyway will be built on the north side between the present bridge and Lake Ontario. Once, the new highway is created, all QEW traffic will be diverted onto it while crews repair the existing Skyway.

Once that patchwork is done, the new north Skyway will handle all Toronto-bound traffic while the existing but repaired Skyway will handle the Niagara-bound traffic.

 

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