Windsor's mayor expects construction to begin on three road projects along the Banwell Road corridor as soon as the weather breaks.
Mayor Drew Dilkens says the timelines are pretty aggressive to get the work done, including work on an interchange at Banwell Road and the E.C. Row Expressway.
On Friday, Windsor-Tecumseh Conservative MPP Andrew Dowie announced that the province is investing $18.8 million to widen Banwell Road, extend Wyandotte Street East, and undertake improvements at the Banwell Road-McNorton Street intersection.
The city's contribution to the projects is $24 million.
The investment is being seen as critical to help unlock the construction of 3,000 new homes along the Banwell Road corridor and Jarvis Avenue neighbourhood, along with handling population growth and increased traffic in that section of the city.
Dilkens says the improvements are needed both to address housing and the full production being reached at the NextStar Energy electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant, projected to be in late 2025, employing 2,500 workers...
"So the full Banwell corridor currently accommodates an average of 23,000 vehicles per day. The city projects an increase to 25,700 vehicles per day north of the interchange and 24,400 vehicles per day south of the interchange once the NextStar battery plant is at full operation," he says.
Dilkens says this work will add additional traffic pressure, but we need to do it to support a growing city.
"It's easy to put yourself in the shoes and say, 'How does this impact me? Gosh, it takes me 10 minutes longer; it's very frustrating.' Think just a few years down the road and why we're doing this and what the work is built to support. It's really quite extraordinary that we have this amount of growth in our community, and with growth comes a little bit of growing pain. But at the other end of that pain, we're going to have a remarkable place," he says.
This latest investment is part of an effort to improve traffic through that end of the city and follows a March 2024 announcement by the province to invest $50 million to help build a new interchange at Banwell Road and E.C. Row Expressway.
The city's contribution to that project is expected to range from $35 to $40 million.