The Trans Canada Highway is funneled into a bottleneck at Nipigon, where all of Canada's cross country traffic must cross a single bridge. For a country so wealthy as ours, you'd think there'd be an alternate route. Canada's cross country trucking would grind to a halt if something ever happened to this bridge. Granted, most travelers heading from one side of the country to the other usually cross into the United States at Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario and re-enter Canada somewhere in the Prairies (mostly at North Portal, Saskatchewan) to shave a few hundred kilometres of their trip and to avoid the turns and hills that are characteristic of the Canadian Shield topography of northern Ontario. However, if one doesn't choose to cross the border, then they are left with one option, and that is to cross the Nipigon Bridge.
Recently construction has begun on building a second parallel bridge over the Nipigon River, dividing the highway into four lanes, two east, two west. It is no hidden fact that northern Ontario is the last stretch of the Trans Canada Highway (TCH) not to be upgraded to a divided highway, and recent improvements in Northwestern Ontario have begun to address this. But even with a divided highway from Nipigon to Thunder Bay, all traffic will still have to travel along this route.
A highway that traverses north around Lake Nipigon would alleviate this bottleneck and give motorists an option, and in part growing the economy of the northern Ontario. My proposed route would have an eastern terminus with Highway 11 at Klotz Lake east of Longlac and a western terminus with Highway 17 at Dinorwic east of Dryden. The highway would be an easterly extension of Highway 72 (currently from Dinorwic to Sioux Lookout), it would supersede in their entirety highways 516 and 643, short portions of highways 527 and 584, and be paired with highway 599 for a short stretch. Like nearly all of the TCH the NNR would for the most part follow a route already blazed by a railway, that of the Canadian National Railway's transcontinental main line, and may even benefit the CN by offering better access for rail crews in the area.
The North of Nipigon Route (NNR) would have junctions with the existing highways of 527, 584, and 599, and would spur the lengthening of highways 801 and 811 to eventually link up with the new highway, not to mention the countless logging roads that would be tied into the new road network. With all of these smaller highways branching off and connecting with the already existing Trans Canada Highway system, the NNR would not be isolated and detours would be available should they be necessary.
The NNR would open up a whole new area to opportunities for development and growth, and give communities once served by only one road, multiples route of egress and and entrance. Communities like Armstrong and Nakina would be at crossroads instead of dead-ends. Smaller settlements along the route would no longer have to wait for supplies from intermittent rail deliveries, but rather be opened up to the national trucking route. Existing gas stations, motels, lodges, restaurants, convenience stores, and tourist destinations would not only see business increase, but there would be opportunities for entrepreneurs to build new enterprises.
The northern shores of Lake Nipigon would become accessible to the traveling public, and provincial parks like Nakina Moraine, Wabikimi, Whitesand, and Windigo Bay (to name just a few) would become ever popular. Fishing and hunting lodges could experience an increase in clientele from those who'd prefer to get themselves to the lodge.
The NNR would be 570 km in length, from Dinorwic to Klotz Lake, making it a whole 100 km shorter than travelling between those two destinations via the present TCH. This would cut down on driving times for cross country traffic, and while not significantly, it may be the difference needed for some truckers and motorists. Obviously Thunder Bay benefits from having all east-west traffic flow through it's city limits, however the city isn't dependent on commercial traffic, and the NNR would not result in all commercial traffic avoiding the southerly Lake Superior route. After all, Thunder Bay is an important and vital port for Western Canadian goods being shipped through the Great Lakes, those goods arriving by both rail and truck.
Would the small towns connected by the NNR see more traffic? Obviously. Would their streets no longer be as quiet? Obviously yes. However, there would be an influx of money flowing into their businesses, keeping them afloat at a time when populations in northern Ontario are dwindling. The construction and future maintenance of the road would see a jump in the number of jobs created in Northwestern Ontario. The NNR would bring commercial traffic closer to the mines and logging regions they already service. Fuel prices would become affordable as the cost of transportation would plummet, and the cost of living would go down as commodities would become more realistic in communities that would no longer be isolated.
The NNR would not only benefit the small communities that it passes through, but the travellers and traffic that are passing through them.
