North Oakville finally has an east-west road that goes all the way

What happened

Halton Region has opened the final phase of the William Halton Parkway extension: the bridge over Sixteen Mile Creek and the roadway connecting Neyagawa Boulevard to Harasym Trail. With that section in place, the corridor runs continuously between Ninth Line and Regional Road 25, which is Bronte Road.

The completed corridor is about 12 kilometres of east-west roadway. It carries four new roundabouts, signalized intersections, on-road bike lanes, multi-use pathways and sidewalks, new street lighting and landscaping, alongside the bridge itself.

The Region says the second phase took longer than originally anticipated, and that the project was completed on budget. Some finishing work continues in the area, including landscaping, fencing and signage, so short-term lane restrictions may still affect the roadway, the multi-use paths or the bike lanes.

Key facts

Why it matters

Sixteen Mile Creek is the reason this took so long. The valley cuts north Oakville in two, and until this bridge opened, an east-west trip across the top of town meant dropping south to Dundas Street or going around. Every subdivision built north of Dundas in the last decade has been loading traffic onto a road network with a hole in the middle of it.

The Region lists the benefits it expects: a continuous east-west route, better connections between existing and growing neighbourhoods, traffic distributed across more of the network, and better access for emergency services including Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital.

That last one is not a throwaway. The hospital sits on Dundas Street West, and a road network with only one continuous east-west route through the north of the town is a network where a single incident can lengthen an ambulance trip.

The corridor also runs through the part of Oakville with the most development in front of it. The lands on and around William Halton Parkway West carry active applications, including an Infrastructure Ontario science facility complex and a proposal at the northeast corner of Neyagawa Boulevard and William Halton Parkway West.

What happens next

Halton Region names two further road projects in the same programme: the Tremaine Road and Highway 401 interchange, and the Wyecroft Road extension and bridge in the south of Oakville, which is under construction now.