Last day for public to comment on assessment for mid-pen

It's now the Niagara-to-GTA Corridor, and tomorrow is the last day for public comment on proposed terms of reference for an environmental assessment.

Plans for a mid-peninsula highway, running from the U.S. border through Niagara south of the escarpment and then across Ancaster, Flamborough and Burlington to Highway 407, drew so much opposition that an environmental assessment was stopped in 2003.

Now the Ministry of Transportation is trying again, with a new name for the project and plans to study air, rail and marine alternatives as well as a new road.

Copies of the terms of reference are in all local libraries and municipal offices. Details, and a link to the full 48 page document, can be found at: http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envregistry/026512ex.htm

Dan McDermott of the Sierra Club said his group is ready to renew efforts to oppose a new highway, especially one cutting across the Niagara Escarpment, as originally proposed.

"Under whatever name, the Sierra Club of Canada thinks the mid-pen highway is a bad idea.

"To think you can fight sprawl by building a highway is absurd."

The provincial transportation ministry says the Queen Elizabeth Way and Highway 403 in the Hamilton area are already congested, and argues that new ways to move people and goods between Toronto and the border in Niagara will be needed.

It promises a citizens' advisory group for the study, with up to seven members each from Niagara, Hamilton and Halton, as well as six rounds of drop-in style public information centres.