Walker Road
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Walker Road |
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| Essex County Road 11 | |
| Length: | 40 km (25 mi) The southernmost 28 km (16 mi) are designated as County Road 11, the rest are unsigned, in the City of Windsor. |
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| Direction: | North/South |
| North end: | Riverside Drive |
| South end: | Essex County Road 20 |
| Counties: | Essex County, Ontario |
| Major cities: | Windsor, Oldcastle, Tecumseh, Amherstburg, McGregor, Essex, Harrow |
Walker Road is one of the busiest roads in Windsor, Ontario. It has an average annual daily traffic (AADT) level of 32,000 cars per day at the CP Rail crossing.
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[edit] History
The road is named after Hiram Walker, distillery baron. The CP Rail crossing where Walker Road meets Grand Marais Road and the Chrysler Canada Windsor plant is the location where the Tornado of 1946 cut through and reached its peak intensity (an F4 in strength).
Today, the road is very busy, servicing mainly industries and businesses along the road, with an interchange with E.C. Row Expressway. It begins at the Hiram Walker distillery and continues southerly past the Chrysler Canada minivan plant and the Windsor Airport.
Outside the City of Windsor, Walker Road was designated as a "Windsor Suburban Road", with its shield remaining the same, but with Windsor Suburban replacing "Essex County". In 1998, the Windsor Suburban Roads Commission was disbanded and the road reverted back to Essex County.
[edit] In The Field
At the Highway 401 overpass (which is the city limits for Windsor), the road gains the designation of Essex County Road 11. It does not have direct access to Highway 401. However, it does intersect with Provincial Road (County Road 46) which has an interchange with Highway 401 approximately 500 metres southeast of Walker Road.
The road is dead straight for 17 km, before swinging southeast (concurrent with County Road 18) towards Harrow, Ontario, its final terminus.
[edit] Upgrades
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This section contains information about a planned or expected future road. It may contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change as the road's construction or completion approaches and more information becomes available. |
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The City of Windsor has announced a long-awaited underpass (grade separation) at the CP Rail tracks, due to roughly 7 trains per day halting traffic up to 20 minutes at a time travelling through the area, causing very long traffic jams, and even increases traffic on nearby north-south arteries as people try to avoid the backups. The project officially started on August 7, 2007, is slated to cost roughly $50 million dollars and run 16-18 months in length. During the construction, the road will be sunken below the rail tracks, which will have one rail line open to allow trains to pass through to Detroit, Michigan and Toronto, Ontario. The configuration of the intersection will also be changed to be safer. Once this project is complete, a similar one will be done for Howard Avenue, at a later date, scheduled to begin in early 2009. This entire project is being done by the Ontario provincial Ministry of Transportation, to help with improve the city of Windsor's border crossings (as the tracks lead to the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel into Detroit, Michigan).
[edit] See also
[edit] Former Provincial Highways
[edit] External links
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