Prince Edward County is embarking down the path of a technical review this year to potentially rebuild the well travelled and crumbling County Road 49.
For two years, Mayor Robert Quaiff has been extremely vocal at Queen’s Park about the need to secure funding to repair the stretch of concrete roadway that in 2016 was dubbed the Canadian Automobile Association’s Worst Road for South Central Ontario.
Mayor Quaiff who is at the Ontario Good Roads Association Convention in Toronto said he has been speaking with the Cement Association of Ontario. He has been assigned a professional engineer that will take a look at the road and advise them on the review. The review includes the design, application, process and specs of the project.
He added last week he spoke with a senior official at the Lehigh Cement Company, formally Essroc Cement, that is interested in partnering with the municipality to fix the road. Lehigh also sits on County Road 49.
He said if this goes ahead it could be the beginning of a ‘beautiful relationship’ with Lehigh Cement, the Cement Association of Ontario and Ministry of Transportation engineers that have agreed they are interested in helping the County with the review.
The project was dropped from the 2016 budget and is estimated to cost around $22 million.
Meanwhile, mayor Quaiff explained he remains hopeful he will get the opportunity to meet with Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca at the conference Tuesday to talk about downloading a portion of Highway 33.
The County wants to attain the section of Loyalist Parkway from Cold Storage Road to just before Home Hardware as a developer wants to build a 350 unit subdivision on the Jenkins Farm behind Stormy’s Automotive in Picton. Assuming that portion would give the County the ability to supply water and sewer services to the area.
Last week he met with MTO engineers and said he is confident they developed a workable compromise on where the entrance and exit could go.
Quaiff said he was hoping to hear back from the engineers prior to the conference but is still awaiting correspondence.