Budget calls for Skyway twinning
Province’s spending plan says rehabilitation project will help ‘relieve gridlock’ in the region
The long-awaited twinning of the Garden City Skyway has made it into the province’s 2022 budget document unveiled this week.
Discussions about twinning the QEW bridge over the Welland Canal between St. Catharines and Niagara-on-the-lake have been happening for more than a decade.
The Ontario Progressive Conservative budget released Thursday said the project will be part of $25.1 billion spent over the next 10 years building roads, bridges and highways.
The government said the QEW Garden City Skyway rehabilitation project will “relieve gridlock” in the region.
The project will see a new twin bridge built for Toronto-bound QEW traffic while the existing Garden City Skyway, built in 1963, will be rehabilitated and modified to carry QEW Niagara-bound traffic.
“This section of the highway is a strategic trade and economic corridor that links the international border crossings at Niagara Falls and Fort Erie with the Greater Golden Horseshoe, strengthening the province’s supply chain while continuing to rebuild the economy,” the budget document said.
The province began studying alternatives to the Skyway in 2010 because of structural and traffic safety needs and later presented the twinning plan.
In March 2020, the Ministry of Transportation told the St. Catharines Standard the project was still happening, but the detailed design phase work had not started and a dollar amount had not been finalized.
In July 2020, Premier Doug Ford mentioned the Garden City Skyway twinning during a COVID-19 press briefing, saying the province would chart a path for economic recovery by getting shovels in the ground on major infrastructure projects.
That prompted St. Catharines NDP MPP Jennie Stevens to send a letter to the transportation minister asking for details and timelines on the work.
There was no word in the budget document on when the project will start.
St. Catharines Mayor Walter Sendzik said he didn’t expect to see bridge construction any time soon.
“There’s still a lot of what ifs,” he said. “Until there’s a definitive timeline with targets and objectives that we get to look at as a community, it’s just a project that’s going to happen some time in the future.”
The Garden City Skyway is almost 40 metres high at the canal. The twinning will allow repair work to occur on the existing bridge without halting QEW traffic, add more lanes for high-occupancy vehicles and reinstate truck climbing lanes.