{"id":9770,"date":"2015-02-11T16:02:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-11T21:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9770"},"modified":"2015-02-18T18:42:05","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T23:42:05","slug":"speeding-up-st-johns-interchange-with-hwy-404-is-top-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/speeding-up-st-johns-interchange-with-hwy-404-is-top-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Speeding up St. John\u2019s interchange with Hwy 404 is top priority"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Aurora\u2019s east side will soon have thousands of new residents as development of the 2C lands continues, but as this community comes closer and closer to fruition, so too should St. John\u2019s Sideroad\u2019s interchange with Highway 404. <\/p>\n

Currently scheduled to be constructed in 2031, Councillor Michael Thompson has a motion before Council this week which will request the Region of York to bring this timeline up by more than a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re already seeing challenges with the interchange at Wellington and 404 during rush hour and we have a tremendous amount of residents that will come into the 2C lands, and that is just going to exacerbate the issue,\u201d says Councillor Thompson. \u201cI think 2031 is too late and I would really like to see us work with the Region and move that timeline up significantly. You are going to see [all this traffic] get funnelled down to that interchange at Wellington and it is not going to be pleasant for those who are trying to get to work and get home at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering the development of the Region\u2019s Master Transportation Plan, the timing is right to start this conversation, he adds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not too bad today for most. It is not palatable, perhaps, but we\u2019re going to see 8,000 residents. How many cars does that represent in the next two years when we see plans fill up quickly?\u201d<\/p>\n

The acceleration of the interchange is one of several Councillor Thompson has been mulling over since last year\u2019s election campaign. In addition to a further motion coming forward this week which seeks to reaffirm Council\u2019s support of the Provincial Government\u2019s anti-SLAPP legislation, an initiative which got the thumbs-up in the last term, sport tourism, which is on the horizon, remains a high priority initiative in his book.<\/p>\n

Talks are ongoing with stakeholders on ways to boost sport tourism, he says, including the idea of a Sport Development Officer at Town Hall, a position which was floated by a number of 2014 candidates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking at some of the other municipalities who develop sport policy and sports plans and seeing if there are opportunities there to incorporate some of that in Aurora to help really focus on our strategic objectives,\u201d says Councillor Thompson, noting a key portion of this will be a Master Parks and Recreation plan which will identify future needs and opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some needs down the road for more facilities in certain areas of the Town as well so we can maintain those service levels of X number of fields for X number of residents, but in addition to it there is a little bit of a chicken and egg scenario. We do need a hotel in Town to allow us to pursue some of these tournaments and other sporting opportunities to drive economic business to Town and make Aurora attractive in that sense. At the same time, you have to develop these things to entice a developer to put up a hotel. How that is best approached, I don\u2019t know at this point, but that is part of the conversation of how to get there. There seems to be tremendous interest from the various sports groups as well as others to find a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moving forward interchange by over a decade would alleviate foreseen traffic trouble, according to Councillor Michael Thompson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2xA","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-02 06:34:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}