Infrastructure funding to repair a well-travelled, crumbling road running through Sarnia's industrial area, has been given the thumbs up.
The federal government has approved the Plank Road reconstruction project through the Rural and Northern funding stream of the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP).
City of Sarnia Director of Engineering David Jackson said in 2019, the city applied for $5 million in funding through the ICIP, a 10-year initiative that provides up to $30 billion in federal, provincial and local investments.
"So that's a joint program between the federal and provincial governments, and so we're receiving close to a total of $4.2 million to rebuild Plank Road."
Jackson said the city will cover the remaining $800,000, about 16.7 per cent of the funding.
Sarnia's Plank Rd. June 2, 2017 (Photo by Josh Boyce)
He said finding funding opportunities for the project, pegged at $8.11 million, has been on the city's high-priority list for a long time.
"We've been looking for grant opportunities -- because of the scale of it, it's been hard for us to try to budget using just our own funding, and really we would've struggled to move this forward without this, so we've very excited that we can now move ahead and get going on this project."
Jackson said this announcement allows the city to take the next step in the project that will fully replace the road from Highway 40 to Indian Road.
"We're going to start working on the design immediately, so we'll be doing that over the course of this year, and then we would hope to start construction in 2021, and then depending on the scale of the work, we might need to phase that over a couple of years."
The Canadian Automobile Association has listed Plank Road in its annual Worst Roads Campaign for five straight years, including in 2019 when it was voted the worst road in southwestern Ontario.
Jackson said it’s time to change that.
"As part of that, we might look at adding some paved shoulders for cyclists, we'll look at if there are spots we need to add a turn lane. The other major factor is the watermain under the road is in very poor condition, so we'll look to replace that at the same time, and then many of the ditches and culverts in the area need some upgrades that we'll look to coordinate at the same time as well.
Watermain work is not eligible for funding and will be financed through the city water reserve. A cost estimate for that is still to be determined.
