Get ready for roadwork season again.
A representative from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) was at Wednesday’s General Committee meeting to request a noise exemption for a portion of the work it has planned to resurface Highway 11.
The resurfacing project, which runs from Muskoka Road 3 to 1.9 kilometres north of Highway 60, is scheduled to begin sometime in June 2018 and end in November 2019 and includes the on and off ramps at Muskoka Road 3 and Muskoka Road 2, and two of the ramps at Highway 60 (the others were completed during Hwy 60 paving work last year). Bridge rehabilitation at Muskoka Roads 2 and 3 is also planned.
Most of the work will be completed during daylight hours, but Elizabeth Henning, a Project Engineer with the MTO, said that the Ministry is applying for an exemption to the Town’s noise bylaw to allow work on the interchange ramps to occur at night to minimize traffic congestion and impact on local businesses and residents.
The exemption would be in effect for the duration of the project, but Henning said that the work on each interchange would only take approximately five days and notice would be posted two weeks in advance of the work. None of the work would be completed on weekends or statutory holidays, and although the requested exemption, if approved, would be in effect from 7:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m., they would take traffic volumes into consideration. An earlier traffic volume count found that an average of 1760 vehicles per hour pass through the area during the day, but that drops to 347 by 10:00 p.m.
At the Muskoka Road 3 interchange, Henning noted that the surrounding area is primarily commercial with few of the businesses open at night. The Highway 60 interchange is also surrounded mostly by businesses, with some open late into the evening. And at Muskoka Road 2, there are businesses open at night as well as approximately five homes on Marsh Road that are in close proximity to the interchange and could be affected by the noise at night.
Councillor Jonathan Wiebe pointed out that there is also a subdivision behind Leon’s that would likely be affected by the noise exemption. “I think we might find the noise impact is far greater for a large number of homes.”
But Henning countered that residents might prefer the noise for a few nights over having their access restricted during the day.
Mayor Scott Aitchison took the opportunity to request further discussions with the MTO before councillors agree to grant the noise exemption.
“I’m not sure if you’re aware how difficult it is for a municipality to deal with your organization but we’ve been very frustrated over the years, frequently asking if we can do things and the response would be, ‘no, I’m sorry, that’s our policy.’ You can imagine my initial reaction is to say, ‘I’m sorry that’s our policy,’ but I think it’s important for us to work together and perhaps this is the dawning of a new era of us working together,” he said.
“What I would suggest to council is that we don’t immediately grant this right now, but perhaps we could meet and talk about a couple of challenges we continue to have with the MTO and see if we could negotiate sorting out some of the challenges and sort out this one at the same time.”
Henning replied that she understands and the the MTO’s new directive is “to work more closely with municipalities and create more partnerships. Hopefully we will see some of those issues disappearing in the future.”
Later in the meeting, Aitchison reiterated his position, citing the new floating section of Hunters Bay Trail, for which “there was 20 years of MTO stalling from us trying to complete that trail” and requests by the municipality to have athletes in the Band on the Run and Ironman Muskoka 70.3 cross Hwy 60 and Hwy 11 respectively, which were both denied due to road construction on Hwy 60.
“They were completely immovable on just to name three different things we were trying to do, all that were important to our community…but they would love to have us change our policy for them,” he said.
Deputy Mayor Karin Terziano questioned whether the noise exemption request was the appropriate negotiating tool to use. “It’s our residents and travelling public who will be put at risk if they are doing this at the busiest time.”
And Wiebe restated his position that more residents would be impacted by the noise exemption than what was presented. “I think they are vastly understating the noise level and also completely misunderstanding how impactful it would be and for how many people.”
In the end, committee deferred a decision and asked staff to set up a meeting with the MTO and bring back a report outlining recommendations regarding the noise exemption request.
Resurfacing work is also planned in 2018 for Highway 60 between Hidden Valley Road and Hwy 35 in Dwight.
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Note this, copied directly from the MTO info above.
The resurfacing project, which runs from Muskoka Road 3 to 1.9 kilometres north of Highway 60, is scheduled to begin sometime in June 2018 and end in November 2019
I thought it took them a long time to do that chunk of hwy. 60 last year but if this is not a misprint, then this will indeed be the longest duration paving job in the history of Ontario I think!!
How long do they figure for Hwy. 60 to make it out to Dwight? Any time line on this??
I agree completely. The lines are all but invisible. I drive the stretch from highway 11 to Hidden Valley daily, and the lack of visible lines is a serious safety issue, especially when there are three lanes merging back and forth between two lanes, Fix it NOW, not when the May two-four weekend is upon us. This has got to be the worst line painting job I’ve ever seen.
When you meet with MTO ask if the contractor who painted the lines on hwy 60 after the refurbishing used latex house paint, because the paint did not last more than 2 months and created a number of near misses because no one knew what lane they were in from 11 to the end of construction.