‘Carnage Alley’ widening plan could be completed sooner

While a $1-billion project to widen a dangerous stretch of Highway 401 between Tilbury and London will still take years, a plan by the Ontario government to help kickstart the province’s Covid-19clobbered economy could lop 12 months off its timeline.

The provincial government announced plans this week to fast track key highway construction and transit projects by exempting them from the hearing of necessity process.

One of the steps needed in expropriations, this hearing determines if the expropriation of land needed for a project is “fair, sound and reasonably necessary.”

With these hearings required five to 10 times a year for most provincial highway projects, the process can add months of red tape, an Ontario government media release stated.

“Removing the hearing of necessity process could speed up the overall process by up to one year,” Michael Fenn, a senior issues adviser with the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, said in an email.

In a video posted on his Twitter feed, Premier Doug Ford specifically cited the expansion of Highway 401 between London and Tilbury as part of the $2.6 billion being spent on highway construction projects.

For the first phase of the project — widening 11 kilometres of the 401 from four to six lanes between Essex Road 42 in Tilbury and Merlin Road while installing a concrete median barrier — the province is in the midst of hiring a contractor for the design and construction.

“It did not require any property acquisition, and therefore is not subject to the hearing of necessity process under the Expropriation Act,” Fenn said.

Construction could begin as early as this fall, he added.

Preliminary design and environmental assessments for the remaining phases of the highway expansion are ongoing, he said, but property acquisition for these phases has not yet begun.

Fenn said the project was not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. But the pandemic has greatly slowed Ontario’s economy, prompting this approach by the Ford government to help stimulate recovery.

“We’re going to need everyone’s help to rebuild the province and get people back to work,” Ford said in a news release.

“That’s excellent news,” Build the Barrier founder Alysson Storey said about the potential of the project being completed a year ahead of schedule.

The Chatham woman formed her citizens group to lobby for concrete barriers on this stretch of highway — known as Carnage Alley for the high number of fatal crashes — after her friend Sarah Payne and Payne’s five-year-old daughter Freya were killed in a cross-median crash near Dutton in the summer of 2017.

“Any time we can speed up a timeline like this, it will save lives. It’s that simple,” Storey said.