Waiting for bulldozers, but don't hold your breath

By JOHN KASTNER Beacon Herald

It would appear that some of the major obstacles to improved access from Stratford to New Hamburg have been cleared.

One, it would appear that the Ministry of Transportation has settled on a route that would swing south of Shakespeare and spare the hamlet. That only makes sense and it's rather surprising it took this long to come to that conclusion.

Another scenario, which would have seen Pork Rd. (Line 33) and possibly Vivian St. improved to highway standards to alleviate the pressure on the main highway, was rejected out of hand and a report obtained by The Beacon Herald last week gave some reasonable explanations.

The premise would have been to make Pork Rd. and Vivian St. one-way roads with one having two lanes east, the other two lanes west.

The logistical challenges were cited as one of the main obstacles and that is a valid point. A farmer who wants to go 100 metres west but is on the east-only road would have to go around a country block to get to the neighbours or even to his adjoining farm property.

Plowing five lanes through Shakespeare made no sense, but making people go five miles to get next door is not much better. The structure of the roads was also cited, and they are, in their present form at least, certainly secondary roads in both construction and design.

Widening those roads and bringing them up to snuff would not only have required extensive improvements to the road but it would have required buying property from current landowners along Vivian St. and Pork Rd.

All that was deemed fiscally prohibitive.

That would appear to have been the first time money was seen as a factor in these plans.
Also of note, the province has purchased Lingelbach United Church which sits just a few metres to the north of the highway between Shakespeare and New Hamburg.

That means that when the highway is widened it can move slightly to the north and miss both the cemetery and the Fryfogel Inn, which are on the south side.

So with some of the major obstacles out of the way one is left to wonder just when this grand construction project will begin. Well, given that the expansion of this highway has been talked about for more than 30 years, one wonders. And the document obtained by The Beacon Herald cites projected traffic volumes in 2031 as a basis for choosing the preferred route.

So, as much as both the new and old routes have caused a lot of angst, it would appear the arrival of bulldozers and earthmovers along Highway 7/8 isn't exactly imminent.