How the Ford government plans to spend $625M over the next year on northern Ontario transportation

The Ontario government has released a draft transportation plan for northern Ontario, including 60 actions aimed at improving and expanding regional transportation.

Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney outlined the details at a media briefing on Thursday morning.

Mulroney announced that the province has plans to invest $625 million in transportation improvements, including highwayand bridge projects over the next year.

The plan, she said, also tackles the expansion of bus services moving forward withroadwidening projects in key corridors in the region like highways 11 and 17.

"The need for a strong highway corridor and local roads is the first item of the 60 in our plan," she said, "We have a lot of projects underway with different timelines, we want to make sure that we get it right and that our plans respond directly to the needs that we hear from stakeholders."

The document alsomakes a case, she said, for the creation of a northern passenger rail service which would operate betweenToronto, North Bay,Timmins and Cochrane.

Mulroney said the province is accelerating work on a track audit by working with the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC) to begin an initial audit of ONTC-owned tracks on a section of the North Bay corridor. The track audit is an essential step, she said, to identify needs for safety and infrastructure improvements to support a potential passenger rail service expansion in the future.

"We're going to be putting together a task force of local transportation experts, Indigenous leaders, municipal leaders who can speak directly to the needs their seeing on the ground that need to be reflected in future versions of this plan," Mulroney said, "It's a living document, so it will evolve as we do more consultation, as we gather more feedback."

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