OP comment: New major road through Tiny a shock to council

UPDATED WITH LINKS TO MAPS

By Kate Harries AWARE News Network July 16 2012

PERKINSFIELD – Tiny Councillor Nigel Warren isn’t too impressed by a Simcoe County plan to create a major arterial route between Midland and Horseshoe Valley Road running along the baseline in Tiny and the Old Second in Springwater. 

“I’m strongly opposed to any proposal of this kind,” Warren said today at a special council meeting called to allow councillors to get more information about the county’s Official Plan. 

“I can’t see any reason for it, I can’t see the rationale other than there aren’t too many homes along there.”

Like members of the public, Tiny Council has until next Wednesday (August 22) to comment on the County OP. Councillors said this gave them nine days from the time they first saw the document.

Consultant Bryan MacKell (until January, Simcoe County’s director of planning), who was retained to advise Tiny on their response to the OP, said the new north-south route from Midland is thought to be a speedy alternative to Highway 93 and County Road 6. 

It also appears that it’s conceived of as a faster link to Highway 400 than Highway 12. Locals speculate that chanelling traffic onto Horseshoe Valley Road is seen as an alternative to taking commuters from an expanded Midhurst down Bayfield Street in Barrie. 

MacKell said the route could be used by commercial and industrial traffic headed for Midland. 

“This is 1960s thinking,” said Warren, pointing out that new jobs in Tiny won’t be coming from the kind of traditional industry that requires highway transport. Instead they’ll be high-tech and home-based, he predicted.

“It really bothers me that it (the new route) should even be in there,” he said. “This is all about Midland and Penetanguishene not having good access to the 400.”

Warren added: “People come here because of what we are… This is another process where you are trying to urbanize our community,” he told MacKell. 

When first conceived in the county’s transportation master plan in 2007, the route was to go through Tay and Oro-Medonte, MacKell said. That route was discarded because of hilly terrain and resident opposition, and that’s why the Tiny route was proposed, he said. 

Warren, along with Deputy Mayor George Lawrence and Councillor Andre Claire, favoured “strong language” (expressing reservations) regarding the proposed road in the letter to Simcoe County being drafted by MacKell on behalf of Tiny.

But Councillor Gibb Wishart disagreed, pointing out that a recently approved stoplight in Wyevale is the kind of measure that creates pressure for an unobstructed throughway. 

He was outvoted. 

Mayor Ray Millar was absent.