Widen Highway 403 now or it will scare away jobs, city to tell province

Hamilton's frustrated city council wantsthe province to hit the gas on widening part of the Highway 403, saying it will scare away potential new jobs if Ontario doesn't make it a high priority.

There's a traffic bottleneck on Highway 403 around Ancaster betweenHighway 6 and Main Street, particularly as the highway goes down the escarpment, says city council's general issues committee. That causesproblems for existing businesses, the city says, and will eventually preventnew ones from coming here.

The province needs to widen the highway from two lanes to three, said Guy Paparella, the city's manager of growth planning.Currently,the highway is three lanesupboundafter theAberdeen Avenue on-ramp, but only two lanes down the escarpment.

"It's not just anecdotal anymore," he said. "It's actually creating issues for a lot of companies, so I think it's important to reiterate it and stress to ministers that we need some action taken."

On Wednesday, councillors voted to write to the province and urge it to make widening the highway a high priority. Hamilton has already written to the province at least twice, said Coun. Lloyd Ferguson of Ancaster.

The highway is always jammed, he said.

"I go through that every morning and it often backs up to Wilson and back as far as Highway 52," he said. "You've got fourlanes merging into two, and it's a significant pinch point."

The highway is slowingaccess to the city's shovel-ready employment land, Paparella said. It's also hindering airport and cargo businesses already there.

It will be a bigger issue as the city tries to grow its airport employment growth district (AEGD), a contentious urban boundary expansion into 555 hectares of green space around the John C. Munro International Airport.

The discussion came during a presentation about shovel-ready employment land in the city of Hamilton.

Currently, there are 279 hectares of shovel-ready land in Hamilton, Paparella said. Most of it is in Red Hill South (69 hectares), Stoney Creek (53 hectares), Ancaster (41 hectares) and the AEGD (40 hectares).