The construction of the Maley Drive Extension, at a time when some estimates suggest that Greater Sudbury currently has an infrastructure deficit somewhere in the neighbourhood of 700 million dollars, is financially irresponsible. The money committed to this project would be better spent investing in our current infrastructure.
All levels of government are boasting job creation as a result of the construction of the Maley Drive Extension. The fact is that the supposed economic benefits created in the way of short term jobs could be equally achieved spending this money fixing our current infrastructure and not increase the city’s maintenance burden. This project, once completed, will ultimately be a Municipal Road for which the city gets little (if any) ongoing support to maintain. Add to this the fact that the city will ultimately be responsible for any overages as a result of the project and you have the making of a municipal financial nightmare.
There are several very costly elements of this project that nobody is talking about; perhaps not considered: There is a railroad track that lies at the east end of Maley Drive and Hyrdo transmission station approximately 250m from those tracks with high voltage transmission lines offering very limited clearance; there have been only vague mentions of working with Hydro to address this but I propose that the costs are astronomical and without eliminating the chance of being caught at the rail crossing few will use this route, especially the truck traffic which appears to be the principal goal. Compound that with condition of the current Maley Drive and the fact the phase two, which involves the re-surfacing of the existing Maley Drive and further construction back towards Highway 17, is only on the city's Transportation Master Plan as "Long Term - more that 11 years"...it's really never going to be used! Other issues include the recent discovery of protected species within the wetlands near Maley Drive that the city has requested an exemption for (not acceptable in the first place) but what are the additional costs in terms of barricades, culverts, etc to facilitate these recent developments?
Our mayor is on the record as saying that this project represents 11 million dollars in time saving to our residents; I think that’s a load of nonsense and if you’re going to use that as a basis for construction you had better have an independent traffic study completed to back this claim. I would hypothesize the majority of the vehicle traffic creating the congestions (whether or not the congestion is even significant with the expansion of Lasalle and Notre Dame is another topic completely) is originating from the Barrydowne/Lasalle area and any travel savings is negated by the time it takes to access the new route. Further to this, more and more people are shopping online and having their items shipped directly to them creating less traffic to these major destinations in coming years; not more. Maley Drive also does nothing to address the supposed traffic issues between Sudbury and the Valley (that I would also argue no longer exist); Maley Drive is being sold as a step towards the Barrydowne Extension and that's simply not true, the Barrydowne extension isn't even mentioned in the city's Transportation Master Plan in 2005 or the current 2015 draft...it's a pipe dream! It also does nothing revitalize the downtown core as some have suggested. It will in fact assist to completely bypass the downtown, further reducing shopping during people’s daily commute between home and work.
Truck traffic? We are in a period where Vale just announced it’s worst ever quarterly loss of 5.8 billion dollars and is considering selling assets. Glencore has had it’s credit rating downgraded by lender and their stock currently sit slightly above what’s considered ‘junk bond’ status; we don’t even know that either of our biggest mining producers will still be around once the project is completed. And the idea that building Maley Drive Extension (or the Barrydowne Project) is opens up new areas for development is ridiculous! These bypass/extension type roads are by design not supposed to have development built up along them in order to facilitate traffic flow. Take a look at every other bypass or extension with the city; the only roads that connect to then are those that were there previous their construction. In addition, there needs to be an updated traffic study completed with regards to the truck traffic actually on the roads, I don’t believe that the same type of truck traffic exists that used to, we just aren’t producing the same volume of ore that we did in the 90s and large portion of the public, including my, feel that these figures are made up or outdated for the purposes of pushing this project through.
Maley Drive simply doesn’t address or resolve any of the elements it’s supposed to. It is a project for different time that was developed prior to the upgrading of Lasalle itself, prior to the upgrades at the intersection of Lasalle and Notre Dame and when there was significantly more truck traffic on Lasalle because of the location of the mines themselves. It is just fiscally irresponsible and the job creation elements would be achieved in spending the money addressing out current infrastructure deficit; the project needs put back on the shelf and let there permanently.