Secondary Highway 538, commonly referred to as Highway 538, is a
provincially maintained highway in the
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
province of
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 C ...
. The highway is in length and follows an older alignment of
Highway 17 east of
Blind River and near the village of
Algoma Mills, between the
Canadian Pacific Railway tracks and the shoreline of the
North Channel North Channel may refer to:
*North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland)
The North Channel (known in Irish and Scottish Gaelic as , in Scots as the ) is the strait between north-eastern Northern Ireland and south-western Scotland. It begins no ...
of
Lake Huron, while the present Highway 17 runs north of the railway tracks. The route was designated in 1956 and has remained unchanged since.
Route description
Highway 538 is a short and narrow highway which follows a former alignment of Highway 17, at which it begins and ends. It starts in the west at Algoma Mills, travelling east initially before turning south and passing beneath a CPR rail line. The route descends along the western bank of Lauzon Creek before turning southeast and crossing it.
It passes several shops and continues towards the shoreline, at which point it curves northeast. The highway travels around Bootlegger's Bay before diverging from the shoreline, turning north and ascending towards Highway 17. From this point until its eastern terminus, the highway travels alongside a parcel of the
North Channel Inshore Provincial Park, a waterway park scattered along the North Channel shoreline.
Immediately south of Highway 17 and the CPR tracks, the route curves east and follows parallel to Highway 17 for several kilometres. Following this, it abruptly curves north, crosses the railway tracks and ends.
Like other provincial routes in Ontario, Highway 538 is maintained by the
Ministry of Transportation of Ontario
The Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is the provincial ministry of the Government of Ontario that is responsible for transport infrastructure and related law in Ontario. The ministry traces its roots back over a century to the 1890s, when the ...
. In 2016, traffic surveys conducted by the ministry showed that on
average
In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7 ...
, 150vehicles used the highway daily along the section between Highway17 and Miranda Boulevard in Algoma Mills while 60vehicles did so each day along the section east of there, the highest and lowest counts along the highway, respectively.
History
Highway 538 was designated in 1956.
It was once an alignment of Highway 17, but was bypassed due to several sharp corners. The route has not changed since it was designated.
Major intersections
The following table lists the major junctions along Highway 538. The entirety of the highway is located within
Algoma District
Algoma District is a district and census division in Northeastern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario.
The name was created by an American ethnologist, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793-1864), who was appointed Indian agent to the Ojibwe in ...
.
{, class=wikitable
!scope=col, Location
!scope=col,
km
!scope=col, Destinations
!scope=col, Notes
, -
, rowspan="2",
Algoma Mills
, 0.0
,
, Trans-Canada Highway
, -
, 0.8
, Miranda Boulevard
,
, -
,
Township of North Shore
, 5.4
,
, Trans-Canada Highway
References
External links
Highway 538 at OntHighways.com
{{Ontario Secondary Highways
538
Roads in Algoma District