![Kingsway Sudbury](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/Kingsway_Sudbury.JPG)
Sudbury Municipal Road 55 is a
municipal road in the city of
Greater Sudbury
Sudbury, officially the City of Greater Sudbury is the largest city in Northern Ontario by population, with a population of 166,004 at the 2021 Canadian Census. By land area, it is the largest in Ontario and the List of the largest cities and to ...
,
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
. Extending from
Whitefish to
Coniston under a variety of street names, most of the road's length is a former alignment of
Highway 17 and the
Trans-Canada Highway
The Trans-Canada Highway ( French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean o ...
except for a short realignment on different streets through the city's downtown core.
The road's western terminus is a grade-level intersection with Highway 17 just west of Whitefish, approximately one kilometre east of where the four-lane
freeway
A controlled-access highway is a type of highway that has been designed for high-speed vehicular traffic, with all traffic flow—ingress and egress—regulated. Common English terms are freeway, motorway and expressway. Other similar terms ...
segment of Highway 17 begins. The intersection is expected to be converted to a full freeway
interchange as the freeway is extended westward. Through the
Walden
''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...
area, the road's only official street name is Municipal Road 55, although the informal name Old Highway 17 may also be used. In
Waters, just west of Municipal Road 24 into
Lively, the road widens into a
dual carriageway
A dual carriageway ( BE) or divided highway ( AE) is a class of highway with carriageways for traffic travelling in opposite directions separated by a central reservation (BrE) or median (AmE). Roads with two or more carriageways which are ...
, and interchanges with Highway 17 just east of
Mikkola. This portion of the route was decommissioned as part of the provincial highway system in 1980 with the construction of the freeway segment.
From the Mikkola interchange easterly, however, the route continued to hold the Highway 17 designation until the completion of the
Southeast Bypass in 1995. This portion of the route continues east as an at-grade
expressway
Expressway may refer to:
* Controlled-access highway, the highest-grade type of highway with access ramps, lane markings, etc., for high-speed traffic.
* Limited-access road, a lower grade of highway or arterial road.
*Expressway, the fictional s ...
into
Copper Cliff
This is a list of neighbourhoods in the urban core of Greater Sudbury, Ontario. This list includes only those neighbourhoods that fall within the pre-2001 city limits of Sudbury — for communities within the former suburban municipalities, see t ...
, where the median narrows to a paved strip until reaching the
Big Nickel Road interchange. At that interchange, the road narrows back down to a single carriageway, albeit one with multiple lanes of traffic in each direction, and no longer has any access control. The roadway also picks up its first true street name, Lorne Street, at the same interchange. Lorne Street continues to travel in a northeasterly direction into
Downtown
''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...
, where the MR55 designation transfers onto Douglas Street; this represents the route's main divergence from the former route of Highway 17, which continued along Lorne past the Douglas Street intersection.
MR55 follows Douglas Street a short distance easterly until a sharp bend in the road. The road then becomes Brady Street and continues into the city's downtown core. The street name later transitions to Lloyd Street, reconnecting with the former Highway 17 route, and later to The Kingsway. In 2008, the section of The Kingsway east of Falconbridge Road underwent a $6 million expansion from two lanes to four lanes.
The city has also planned a short westerly extension of the Kingsway, which will bypass the primarily residential Lloyd Street by connecting the Kingsway directly to the existing intersection of Lloyd and Brady Streets; however, no time frame for this project has been announced as of 2019.
The road's eastern terminus is a signalized grade-level intersection with Highway 17 near Coniston. East of that intersection, the current route of Highway 17 is a continuation of the MR55 roadway — traffic using the highway's through route must turn at the intersection.
Rerouting
In 2015, MR 55 was rerouted through downtown Sudbury. The former route followed Lorne Street to Elm Street (MR35), and then traveled east along Elm Street to an intersection with MR80. MR55 continued straight through the intersection becoming Lloyd Street. The former route rejoins the current route a short distance later at the intersection with Brady Street.
Future
As the freeway alignment of Highway 17 is extended eastward and westward from its existing termini, Municipal Road 55 may also be expanded to incorporate additional segments of the current highway alignment.
The
Ministry of Transportation
A ministry of transport or transportation is a ministry responsible for transportation within a country. It usually is administered by the ''minister for transport''. The term is also sometimes applied to the departments or other government ag ...
is currently undertaking planning studies on a further realignment of the Highway 17 route through
Nickel Centre
Nickel Centre (1996 census population 13,017) was a town in Ontario, Canada, which existed from 1973 to 2000.
It was created as part of the Regional Municipality of Sudbury. On January 1, 2001, the town and the Regional Municipality were dissolve ...
toward
Markstay. As well, a six-kilometre westerly extension of the existing freeway alignment in the Whitefish area, including a conversion of the existing Municipal Road 55 intersection to a full interchange, is currently in the planning stage. However, actual construction dates have not yet been announced for either project as of 2016.
References
{{reflist
Roads in Greater Sudbury
Former segments of the Trans-Canada Highway