Highway 144 (Ontario)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Highway 144
Maintained by the Ministry of Transportation
Length:	271 km[1] (168.4 mi)
Formed:	1965[2]
South end:	Hwy 17 in Sudbury
Major junctions:	Hwy 560 /Sultan Industrial Road Hwy 661 near Gogama
North end:	Hwy 101 in Timmins
Ontario provincial highways < Hwy 141 Hwy 148 > 400-series - County

Highway 144 north of Gogama, Ontario.

Highway 144 is a long provincial highway in the Canadian province of Ontario, linking the cities of Greater Sudbury and Timmins in the Northern Ontario region.

The highway is 271 kilometres (168.3 miles) long. Its southern terminus is an interchange with Highway 17's freeway segment west of Lively, and its northern terminus is a grade-level intersection with Highway 101 west of downtown Timmins.

Much of the route is very isolated; there are only two communities, Cartier and Gogama, north of Greater Sudbury, and gas stations are scarce (especially at night) along Highway 144. Highway 560 and the Sultan Industrial Road, which intersect Highway 144 at an isolated point 149 km north of the Sudbury terminus and 117 km south of the Timmins terminus, constitute the only major transportation route which intersects Highway 144 outside of those two cities.

[edit] History

Prior to 1964, the highway extended only from Sudbury to Cartier and was designated as Highway 544. Construction began in that year on an extension to Timmins, with work commencing at both ends. The highway number was changed to 144, representing an upgrade from secondary to primary highway status, in 1965.

The highway was fully opened to traffic on September 25, 1970.^[3]

[edit] Sudbury Northwest Bypass

The highway adopted its current routing from Lively to Chelmsford in 1986, along Sudbury's newly constructed Northwest Bypass. Previously, the highway entered directly into downtown Sudbury along what is now Municipal Road 35. With the Southwest and Southeast Bypass portion of Highway 17, the route from Chelmsford to Lively forms a partial ring road around the city's urban core.

In recent years, heavy traffic has been reported along the routing through Chelmsford, with an average daily traffic volume of 19,200 vehicles in 2002.^[4] This is almost double the provincial standard of 10,000 AADT for the conversion of a route to freeway status, although to date the Ministry of Transportation has not yet announced any formal plans to reroute or expand the highway. Municipal Road 35, however, has been widened by the city to accommodate traffic between downtown and the Highway 144 route.

[edit] Notable features

Between the communities of Dowling and Onaping in Greater Sudbury, Highway 144 is home to the scenic A. Y. Jackson Lookout, overlooking the waterfall depicted in A. Y. Jackson's 1953 painting "Spring on the Onaping River".

Near the Highway 560/Sultan Industrial Road intersection, the highway crosses the Laurentian Divide, the boundary between the Great Lakes and Arctic Ocean watersheds. North of this point, all streams and rivers flow north into Hudson Bay. A sign and a small picnic area mark the transition.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Google Maps: Highway 144
• History of Highway 144
• Historical Photographs of Highway 144

This Ontario road-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.