The northeast’s first snowfall road closure of the season has many groaning about the start of yet another season of dangerous driving conditions on northern highways.
Hearst Mayor Roger Sigouin was one of those disappointed to see Highway 11 closed between his town and Longlac on Tuesday morning.
“It’s no fun, no fun in here,” Sigouin said.
“People wanted to go to the hospital in Thunder Bay, but they couldn’t go.”
The morning also saw a truck collision near Iroquois Falls and a snow-related collision between Hearst and Longlac.
With all closures now cleared up, conversations continue around calls for the province to improve road safety in the north.
The Northern Policy Institute recently released new suggestions for technologies the province could use in the northeast. One of them is incorporating digital speed limit signs.
“Using sensors on the road, which largely exist across the north, they can detect the weather conditions and … adjust what the speed limit is,” said the report’s author, William Dunstan.
The report cites the technology’s effectiveness in British Columbia, saying it can lead to $4 in savings for every dollar spent on the signs.
Sigouin isn’t convinced that it will change much in northeastern Ontario.
“I don’t see people going slower because of the speed limit,” he said. “It’s about the road conditions.”
Dunstan said lowering speed limits based on road conditions could lead to an overall slow-down of vehicles, even if drivers don’t strictly follow the posted limit.
The institute’s report also suggests using automated anti-icing technology that also use existing weather sensors, to determine when roads are at risk of becoming icy and spraying liquid pre-emptively.
The technology is already in use down south, the report noted, including in the southernmost part of the northeast. It’s also in use around the country.
Dunstan said the anti-icing and road sign technologies would be the easiest for the province to bring north.
“They can very likely be effective in northern Ontario and (the Ministry of Transportation) already has expertise in implementing them,” he said.
Timiskaming-Cochrane MPP John Vanthof said he particularly likes the institute’s suggestion of incorporating “average speed cameras,” which can track a driver’s speed across several kilometres of road.
The notion is that motorists would be encouraged to drive the speed limit, knowing that they can’t simply slow down when they see a police vehicle and expect to be free to continue speeding.
However, Vanthof said that would only really be useful in the summer months, when drivers are more likely to speed.
He said the priority right now is getting better road maintenance, in particular getting highways 11 and 17 the same status as 400-series highways.
“If we could boost Highway 11 and 17 to Class 1, that would put more equipment on the road and, in our opinion, make the roads safer and, hopefully, not closed as often,” said Vanthof.
He told CTV that the province’s northern transportation task force, created in January, has presented a report to the MTO, with recommendations to make travelling easier in the region.
Vanthof wants it to be released to the public, so that it can be reviewed and allow people to hold the province to account.
The MTO provided a statement to CTV on the status of its efforts to improve northern road safety.
“Since taking office, we have taken several actions to improve winter maintenance performance and safety, including increased proactive use of anti-icing liquid, introducing the ‘2+1 Pilot’ in two locations on Highway 11, and increased use of plows,” the statement read.
“We are also continuing to assess the data and results from the ‘Highways 11 and 17 Winter Maintenance Pilot’ to explore further measures we can take to make our roads even safer.”
