It’s going to be another year of construction around Highway 401 in Cambridge.
This will be the fourth year of a five-year. $122-million project to widen the highway to 10 lanes along the five-kilometre stretch between Highway 8 and Hespeler Road.
Plans also call for the highway to be widened to 10 lanes between Hespeler and Townline roads as part of a separate project.
Preparatory work for that project closed Speedsville Road around the highway for a portion of 2017, and will do the same to Franklin Boulevard.
While an exact timeline for Franklin to be closed has not been made public, city councillors voted Tuesday night to approve a noise exemption for the project between March 1 and Nov. 30. This does not mean that Franklin will be closed for those nine months – only that the Ministry of Transportation can carry out construction work overnight during that time if it so chooses.
It is also expected that the 401 will be closed at Franklin for three nights this year – once for demolition of the current bridge, and twice for installation of girders for a new bridge.
The widening project is expected to be complete by the end of 2021.
