Thank you for importing this over! I had conveniently forgotten what the main topic of the other thread was in order to pick your brain...
I was surprised that the Garden River Bypass never ended up at Second Line, it seemed destined after how much Carmen's Way helped get from the International Bridge to Hwy 17 north. Was it put on the back burner for financial reasons or did the businesses along Trunk Rd not want to be bypassed?
To route it further to the west than it is now would require crossing an additional First Nations territory. Which is always possible, it just requires more negotiation and political sensitivity than a regular expropriation. They opted not to do that back when the Garden River Bypass was built, and will resume negotiations once MTO gets a better sense of when the project will actually move forward.
Also, what are the chances that Second Line would instead get extended east to Trunk? Specifically extending Second Line due east then having it curve southeasterly to meet Trunk Rd near Fournier Rd so Hwy 17 can instead form a "T" with its current curve to Trunk and curve off northwesterly to meet 17 north before or after Fifth Line?
Lastly, why was the northern end of the Garden River Bypass even proposed? To me, the sweeping arc back to Trunk is a waste and it would have made more sense to have shifted its materials and labor on a more direct alignment that would have reduced MTO's future maintenance responsibility by shifting more kilometers of Hwy 17 back to local jurisdictions while also shaving off Hwy 17's total distance.
The ultimate alignment would have to balance between providing access to Sault Ste. Marie and the international bridge, as well as providing a through routing. So that access would not be well-served by a route that sweeps too far out away from the city.
While I do not know the precise alignment that has been envisioned, from a practical perspective the ideal staging would be thus:
- Construct the next phase of the bypass between the Second Line/Black Road intersection and the existing Garden River Bypass. This will provide more direct access to the bulk of the city of SSM, as well as a clear route to the international bridge. The N-S portion of the existing alignment would then become the main access to the highway from much of the southern part of the city, particularly the triangle between Trunk Rd and the river.
- Construct the N-S portion of the bypass, beginning just to the east of the Second Line/Black Road intersection, running northerly to the north end of town. The small section between the new N-S bypass and that intersection would then become the main connector to rest of SSM as well as the route to the bridge. The N-S alignment is the less critical of the two stages, so it would make sense to stage like this.
So ultimately, the small connectors that would not tie into the Hwy 17 mainline when all is said and done will still provide strategic access. I would imagine that the N-S connector that would be taken out of the existing Garden River Bypass alignment would be a candidate for transfer to the municipality, though even if MTO were stuck with it for a while they would only have a few km of road. The E-W connector would be worth keeping given its access to the international bridge, so it would be necessary otherwise.
I would not expect to see the N-S bypass constructed anytime soon. While there are a number of small towns with services along its route, there really isn't a centre of note until you reach Thunder Bay, over 700 km away. Most traffic does make a stop in the Soo before continuing northwesterly along the Lake Superior shore (and the inverse, first stop after a long run of nearly nothing). But in terms of the route, they do want to plan for an protect the corridor, but that so that they can build it more easily decades down the road.