New Garden City Skyway plan unveiled

Plans to build a new bridge across the Welland Canal in St. Catharines are moving forward. The public is getting to see more details on it. The preferred plan is to build a new bridge beside the existing Garden City Skyway.

This is the Ministry of Transporation’s vision of a second bridge over the Welland Canal. The MTO prefers a twin bridge on the north side of the Garden City Skyway with the same s-curve design. A new bridge would impact about 40 properties on the ground.

Bill Cung is the MTO project mamager: “Some less than others. Some properties we would need a smaller portion of it. And business can still go on.”

Thursday afternoon, the public got to see the preliminary design.

The Garden City Skyway is more than 50 years old. Seventy thousand vehicles cross it every day.

“It’s at least 5 to 6 times a week I’m on it.”

The deck has to be replaced by 2025.

“Didn’t know it was a problem, just want to be safe.”

The plan at this point, is to build and then shift all the traffic onto the new bridge.

Bill said: “Where we can shift all traffic westbound and eastbound onto the new structure so we can fix and repair the existing structure that would minimize traffic altogether.”

Closing lanes on the existing bridge to do the work would create long traffic jams. Another option that was being considered was building a tunnel under the Welland Canal.

If the St. Catharines fire chief Mark Mellenbacher had his way, he’d rather twin the existing bridge rather than building a tunnel, because responding to emergencies like car crashes and fires would be a nightmare.

Firefighters have a lot of experience with the Thorold tunnel. Adding to the difficulties, the radios don’t work in there. Whatever the final plan is, it all depends on funding and the
environmental approvals.

Now if they go ahead with these plans to twin the Garden City Skyway, they need to get underway by 2020 — because it will take an estimated 5 years to build the bridge.