Future
See also: Ontario Highway 417With all route planning studies now completed on Highways 11 and 69/400, in the latter half of the 2000s the Ministry of Transportation's planning branch began undertaking more active preparations for the eventual conversion of Highway 17 to freeway. Although no comprehensive conversion plan is currently in place, planning and construction projects are now underway at a number of locations along the highway.
Sault Ste. Marie MPP David Orazietti has spearheaded a petition to have the entire highway four-laned from Arnprior to Sault Ste. Marie, similar to the campaign previously undertaken by his caucus colleague Rick Bartolucci regarding the extension of Highway 400. Cheryl Gallant, the federal Member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, has also advocated the four-laning of the highway through the Ottawa Valley toward North Bay, and ultimately the entire length of the highway throughout Northern Ontario.
A 2009 study commissioned by the forestry trade magazine The Working Forest, titled "A Vision for Ontario’s Trans Canada Highway, North Bay to the Manitoba Border", determined that it would cost the Ontario government $600 million per year over 25 years to convert the entire length of both Highway 17 and Highway 11 to freeway, suggesting that a comprehensive plan would be affordable and achievable if the provincial and federal governments could reach a cost-sharing agreement.
Read more about this topic: Ontario Highway 17
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“I say—the future is a serious matter—
And so—for God’s sake—hock and soda-water!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day ... a movement is only people moving.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“The Mind in Infancy is, methinks, like the Body in Embrio, and receives Impressions so forcible, that they are as hard to be removed by Reason, as any Mark with which a Child is born is to be taken away by any future Application.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)