Gravel road conversion program to tackle sections of Beaconsfield Road and Substation Road

Luke Edwards, Post Contributor

The first two sections of road identified for work under a new gravel road conversion policy in Norwich have been approved.

Councillors supported a report at the March 24 meeting that recommends “Beaconsfield Road from Highway 59 to 299 metres east of Middletown Line” and “Substation Road from Highway 59 to Middletown Road” be converted to hard surface in 2026. Staff estimate these two projects could use up the bulk of the nearly $1.5 million the township has in its currently gravel road conversion reserve fund.

About 12.5 per cent of the project costs can come from development charge funds.

“I’m happy we can begin to start to move forward,” said Coun. Shawn Gear.

“We’re somewhere in the region of five and a half kilometres of road, which would be probably the most significant project we’ve done in quite some number of years,” said CAO Matt Smith.

Councillors approved a new policy for road conversion earlier this year. The policy provides a scoring matrix for the township’s gravel roads where they’re graded out of 35 based on a number of factors.

While the two proposed roads weren’t at the top of the scoring - The Beaconsfield section was 14th with a score of 20, and the Substation section was 10th with a score of 22 - staff still recommended the two roads. Beaconsfield was previously approved for conversion, and the report suggested the matrix underscored the traffic levels of the section of Substation Road.

While councillors appeared content with the recommendation, Coun. Adrian Couwenberg did have some concerns that there was no mention of Firehall Road, another road that had previously been identified.

“If there’s leftover funds, I think we should seriously look at the health and safety of the general public and on our emergency response vehicles on that Firehall Road,” he said, adding he also had technical concerns since there was no overt motion to remove Firehall Road from the immediate plans after it had previously been approved for conversion.