A section of County Road 42 at Banwell Road in Tecumseh will reopen to traffic in time for the Thursday afternoon commute after being shut down since June for the installation of a roundabout.
The $22 million project, which is opening on budget and ahead of schedule, involved the installation of a roundabout at the intersection of County Road 42 and County Road 43/Banwell Road and the realignment of Banwell from County Road 42 to the City of Windsor border.
The work also included the installation of multi-use trails, new storm sewers and watermains, and road work on Concession Road 11 in Tecumseh.
There still may be intermittent closures to allow for the installation of fixtures, like streetlights, that did not arrive in time to meet the accelerated timeline.
Essex County Warden Hilda MacDonald says this work will improve the quality of life for people who live in the region.
"It's quicker. You're not stopping at a light for two minutes. It's just easier to navigate, and it's good for the environment; cars aren't idling at stop signs and at stop lights," she says. "To me, it just keeps the flow of traffic going without stopping. It just makes it smooth."
MacDonald says this just makes the drive better for everyone.
"When you drive this road and see how many vehicles are on it during rush hour, it's crazy," she says. "If we can make the flow go easier and better, why not do that? There's so much growth coming here. We think the traffic is bad now; can you imagine if we did nothing and the new hospital was finished, the new battery plant, and the residential growth?"
A new roundabout on County Rd. 42 at Banwell Rd. in Tecumseh will open to east-west traffic Thursday evening. The intersection has been closed since June for work on the $22 million project which includes a realignment of Banwell. ?@AM800CKLW? pic.twitter.com/i6FdkpblPC
— Rusty Thomson (@RustyThomson800) October 17, 2024
Director of Infrastructure Planning for the County of Essex, Allan Botham, says this is an exciting step to address growth in the area.
"The Town of Tecumseh has tremendous growth planned for the Tecumseh Planning Area, the Manning Road Secondary Planning Area just to the east here. The city is planning improvements along County Road 42 for their developments, the regional hospital," he says.
The roundabout work was Phase 2 of a near $100 million project to improve the County Road 42 corridor between the City of Windsor and County Road 19/Manning Road in Lakeshore, which includes widening County Road 42 to five lanes.
The contracts for Phase 3 and Phase 4 of the work are expected to go out to tender in the New Year.
Those phases will focus on enchancing the corridor, with a focus on the installation of a roundabout at Manning Road and County Road 42.
Work on that portion of the project is expected to begin in the spring of 2025 and could last two years.
