Northern Ontario highway safety strategy needed to reduce collisions, advocate says

Northern Ontario's highway system needs improvements in order to make travel safer, a highway safety advocate said.

"What we really need is a northern Ontario highway strategy, and that strategy needs to look at really four major components," said Mark Wilson, a councillor with Timiskaming Shores, and member of the organization Going the Extra Mile for Safety (GEMS).

"We call it the safe systems approach," he said. "This approach is used by jurisdictions around the world, and it basically is saying that we need safe roads, with safe drivers on those roads, going at safe speeds, and in safe vehicles."

Wilson said the strategy would include improvements to highways, twinning them where there's sufficient traffic volume, and focusing on what's called a two-plus-one system in other areas.

A two-plus-one highway includes a central passing lane that alternates direction every few kilometres, with a median that prevents head-on collisions.

"These have been hugely successful around the world," Wilson said. "They are exceptionally effective at reducing fatality rates in the range of 50 to 80 per cent in countries where they've used them."

The Northern Ontario Municipal Association has advocated for two-plus-one highways in the northwest.

Wilson said GEMS has also been advocating for the system for more than a decade, and has been successful in getting the province to launch a pilot on a 15-kilometre stretch of highway near North Bay.

The other three pillars of the strategy include:

"I think the province is going to have to make it more of a priority, particularly when we see some of the discussions around northern Ontario economic growth," Wilson said. "The Ring of Fire, for example."

"It's fine to open the Ring of Fire, but how are we going to get there? And, ultimately that's the discussion that all of us are having."

"Here in the northeast, we're seeing a tremendous growth in agriculture and we continue to see more and more commercial traffic, and I'm not sure that the province really recognizes the extent of that."

Nipigon Mayor Suzanne Kukko said more OPP presence is needed on Highway 11/17, as well as bringing winter maintenance back under the Ministry of Transportation.

"I really think that it's a nonpartisan issue," she said. "It should be something that both sides of the government, both the sitting government and the opposition, should be working together on. It affects everybody."