Road at Brantford-Brant border permanently closing due to slope instability

Phelps Road and Veterans Memorial Parkway will be alternate routes between Mount Pleasant and Cockshutt roads, once Tutela Heights Road closes on Sept. 16.

Celeste Percy-Beauregard 

Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A portion of Tutela Heights Road is permanently set to close this month due to slope instability.

It affects a half kilometre of the road beginning at the boundary between the City of Brantford and the County of Brant and running east.

The partial closure is not expected to have “significant impacts” on traffic in the area, according to a public information session Brant County held in September 2023.

It has been on the horizon since 2017, when an assessment of the slope erosion pointed to closure as a future measure due to the “very real possibility of failure at any given time,” the presentation said.

The slope has been monitored since then. 

The Bell Homestead National Historic Site is a notable landmark on the three-kilometre road. The museum will only be accessible from Mount Pleasant moving forward.

A dead-end cul-de-sac design is in progress, with the permanent closure expected to go in later this year. In the meantime, temporary closures will be in place.

Property owners who need access past the cul-de-sac will get keys to a double-swing gate, the presentation said.

Emergency vehicles will also have access.

For other traffic, Phelps Road and Veterans Memorial Parkway are the closest alternate routes to Tutela Heights Road. 

Tutela Heights became part of Brantford in January 2017 through a boundary expansion agreement with the county.

At that time, the county had already begun looking into the “unstable conditions in the slope area between the roadway and Grand River,” according to the presentation.

While alternatives were considered, closing the section of road was considered the best option both financially and socially, it said.

The county pointed to Salt Spring Church Road in Onondaga as a similar situation. A section of that road has been temporarily closed for four years.

The county is undertaking a broader slope assessment study of 10 other areas with “observable deteriorating slopes” along roadways, according to a post on the county’s bids and tenders page.

Celeste Percy-Beauregard’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. The funding allows her to report on stories about Brant County.