Well, I guess anything is possible if they throw enough money at it. Though I think if the pot of money was bottomless, it would be better to construct an entirely new route rather than twinning the existing one: a route that was safer, with fewer curves and gentler grades.
One thing I did notice on the drive between Dryden and Thunder Bay, is that there is a lot of repaving happening, with road widening where practical. This means more passing lanes. It’s not a total solution, but it’s a start.
Clarification: construction has started on four-laining the section from TBay to Loon Lake, as well as the on the new Nipigon Bridge. A lot of it covers fresh ground, so as to reduce grades and ease corners, but bear in mind that the original route was planned for the same reasons. Land has been purchased for four-laning the Red-Rock section. There are still be lots of section between TBay and Nipigon that are not scheduled for four-laning yet.
Unfortunately, not much is planned for the section from Nipigon to Marathon, where thar be monsters (steep hills, tight corners, and combinations thereof – you haven’t lived until you have dodged a transport sliding backwards down a curving hill), but there has been quite a bit of re-alignment over the years to make gentler turns and shallower slopes. (For example, in the winter I ski on abandoned sections of 17 at Cavers.) Realistically, some passling lanes could be built for the steeper hills, so that traffic does not have to slow to 5 kph behind loaded transports and under powered campers. The steep sections north of the Soo have done this, and it has helped a lot.
I’d sure like to see passing lanes for both going up and going down hills, for some of the truckers like to go as fast as possible down the hills, and god help you if you are in their way. The police do what they can by having a lot of speed traps (and yes, they pick off tailgaiting transports – it happened to a transport that was tailgaiting me), but there are too many miles, too many out-of-region transports, and not enough officers to make a significant dent in the problem. The law requiring transports to have speed limiters set at 105 kph has made a huge difference. Provincially,limiters dropped the rate of persons killed in large truck collisions by 24% in 2009, when limiters were in effect for the full year.
A J.P. in Welland, Ontario, where they don’t have highways with windy steep hills (and yes, I used to live at the base of the Niagara Escarpment), and where they consider a dusting of snow to be a winter storm, recently decided that the speed limiter law is un-constitutional. I expect that his decision will be tossed on appeal. Here’s where the law of unintended consequences comes into play. A few years ago, the province enacted a law requiring that every occupant of a motorvehicle use a seat belt, so that we can no longer pile Bubbas in the bed of a pickup, or use lawn chairs inside a farmer’s van. It also means that I can’t tie that G.D. J.P. to back of my congo cage and let him enjoy the pleasure of having a transport less than ten feet from him while we are traveling above the speed limit down a curving hill.
Rather than twinning all the highways, we just need to develop the technology to put computers and transponders in all vehicles, so they can figure out the best ways to get around.
One of the big reasons why 17 is being twinned is to create another way around. As it stands, much of the route in the north-west does not have other roads that run in the same direction, so when there is a crash on 17, the road is closed and there is no alternate. With a twinned highway, a closure on one side due to a crash will not cause much of a problem because vehicles can be re-routed to the other side.
Like Muffin I am very well acquainted with the things that pass for highways in Northern Ontario. I grew up traveling the four hour drive between Longlac ON and Thunder Bay ON at least every other weekend for 4 years. One of my brother’s earliest memories is being in the car with my mom when they ditched between Beardmore and Nipigon, and waiting for the toe truck to pull them out.
Years later I used to drive Winnipeg to Thunder Bay, alone, every other month. I used to speed, I used to do crazy things like cover the distance in 5 hours at night.
I shudder to think of it now. There are rock cuts and turns, and turns on hills. I particularly hate Dryden-Kenora.
In September I will be driving my car back from Thunder Bay to Vancouver, and the part of the drive which is most familiar scares me the most.
