The Regional Municipality of York is preparing for a busy road construction season, with record investment expected in the years ahead.
The region will be spending $303 million on roads this year, including ongoing work on Yonge Street and works in the south end on Keele Street and Major Mackenzie Drive. Staff presented to the regional council May 9 to highlight ongoing road infrastructure in the works, with a total of $1.9 billion to be invested in roads and transit over this council term.
Director of capital planning and delivery in transportation Salim Alibhai said the region plans to resurface 415 kilometres this year, just under 10 per cent of the region’s road network.
"We are going to be out there in a lot of locations," he said. "But we try to manage and balance the needs of the community, the commuters and construction."
In total, the region is spending $368.4 million on roads and transit networks this year and has a projected budget of $553 million for this in 2025 and $567 million in 2026.
Besides resurfacing, the region also has several ongoing street growth projects, such as the Highway 404 road crossing connecting Markham and Richmond Hill, an expansion of Keele Street on Steeles Avenue, reconstructing King Road from Bathurst Street to Yonge Street, and the ongoing Yonge Street reconstruction in Newmarket.
“An extraordinary amount of work happening in your portfolio,” Vaughan Mayor Steven Del Duca said.
Other recent road infrastructure work has included intersection improvements, transit terminal rehabilitation and transit shelters.
Councillor Joe Di Paolo noted that the region is spending as much in this four-year term on roads as it has in the previous eight, and questioned whether that was due to rising construction costs.
Alibhai said dollars are not going as far as they used to, but they are still keeping up the pace overall.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve done less work,” Alibhai said.
Besides ongoing projects, there are plenty of new road projects in the pipeline of the region’s 10-year capital plan, though they are largely targeted in the south end of the region. Roads in the pre-construction program include Kennedy Road in Markham, 16th Avenue in Markham and Richmond Hill, Stouffville Road in Richmond Hill and Weston Road in Vaughan.
“The region continues to make significant investments in expanding and maintaining the regional road and transit system, with several large projects underway to better move people and goods safely and efficiently across the Region’s growing communities,” a staff report said.
