Timmins mayor George Pirie wants a bypass built to the south of the city, to get heavy industrial traffic off Algonquin Boulevard.
“The city owns the land and there is no shortage of material to do the job,” he observes.
During his annual state of the city address to about 200 members of the business community, Pirie said that with funding participation from the city’s major industries, he wants to build a private road for them along the southern edge of Timmins.
“It is largely built already, if you think from the Hollinger pit to the other side of the Pamour,” he noted, “and I’m positive that Newmont would be a positive partner in this. We’ll find out.”
“In my opinion, we are wasting good money by replacing our infrastructure through the city without addressing the fact that we’ll never achieve maximum life with the ore and logging trucks travelling the Algonquin portion of this vital link.”
An alternative the mayor mentioned would be the city building the industrial bypass, and charging users a toll.