Essex County officials urge province to widen Highway 3

Essex County Warden Tom Bain, Deputy Warden Ken Antaya, local mayors, and top administration officials urged Ontario’s transportation minister at the Association of Municipalities of Ontario Conference in Ottawa Monday to expedite the widening of Highway 3.

“We impressed upon the minister how important this increasingly busy stretch of road is for commuters and our expanding industrial, commercial and agricultural commerce,” said Bain. “Premier Doug Ford promised during the election campaign to fix the highway immediately and we want to do everything we can to share information and help his government expedite that process.”

The volume and frequency of serious motor vehicle collisions continue at an alarming rate along the corridor from Windsor to Leamington, which is made up of both two-lane and four-lane stretches. There have been at least nine fatal collisions since 1993 between County Road 8 and Highway 77.

“It’s not just the rising volume of crashes, it’s also the severity, with 60 per cent of Essex-Windsor EMS calls on Highway 3 classified as critical in nature,” said Essex County CAO Robert Maisonville. “Essex County transportation experts conducted studies that concluded the number of crashes could be reduced by as much as 42 per cent by expanding the highway from two to four lanes.”

Essex County boasts the second largest cluster of greenhouses in the world at 2,300 acres, and 75 per cent of agri-business production is exported through the Highway 3 corridor. The five-year forecast calls for another 600 to 700 acres with a construction value of $650 million. Agri-business is a $3 billion industry employing more than 8,000.

“Highway 3 is already running well over capacity and the traffic volume is only going to grow as Essex County continues to expand,” said Bain. “The corridor provides minimal opportunities for collision avoidance by even the most defensive driver and it needs to be widened as soon as possible.”

Bain, Antaya and Maisonville met Monday morning with Ontario Minister of Transportation John Yakabuski along with Essex Mayor Ron McDermott, Kingsville Mayor Nelson Santos, Leamington Mayor John Paterson, and Tom Bateman, Essex County’s Director of Infrastructure Services.

For more information or to facilitate interviews, please contact:

Renée Trombley – Manager Corporate Communications & Accessibility

519-776-644 ext. 1330 or rtrombley@countyofessex.ca

Or

Donald McArthur – Communications Officer

519-776-6441 ext. 1337 or dmcarthur@countyofessex.ca