The public-private road: logging trucks and road trippers share the Sultan Industrial Road

It is the ultimate northern Ontario shortcut.

The Sultan Industrial Road is a 115 kilometre ribbon of gravel and dust that runs between the Watershed on Highway 144 and the little community of Sultan, a short drive down a paved road to Highway 129 and Chapleau.

It is a logging road, but it is so frequently taken by people wanting to save as much as an hour off an east-west trip, that it feels like a highway.

"Yeah, it seems like it should be a regular road that we get to use. I mean, everybody uses it anyway," says Patricia Malec, one of the 42 people who live in Sultan.

But Malec and others say the Sultan Road isn't kept up like a highway, with dust clouds and sharp curves making it a treacherous drive.

"There is a lot of accidents on it and it's going to cause a lot more," says Malec, who runs Sultan's only store.

Northern Ontario mayors for decades have lobbied for the Sultan Road to become a provincial highway, but Malecdoesn't think it will ever happen.

"I really don't think so. I think it would cost too much money and our government isn't willing to spend money on the road, actually they don't seem to spend a whole lot in the north," she says.

The province does indeed spend $300,000 a year on maintaining the Sultan Industrial Road. That money is provided to Eacom Timber Corporation, which puts another $500,000 annually into a road that's become vital to keeping its sawmills supplied with logs.

"We recognize how important that road is to northern Ontario. We share the forest and our infrastructure with other users," says Eacom director of public affairs Christine Leduc.

Leduc says Eacom would have no issue if the province took over the road, as long as it would continue to have year round access to the forests it passes through.

No one from the Ministry of Transportation was made available for an interview, but said in a statement, that there are no plans to make the road public.

"Given the low traffic volumes that use the Sultan Road it is not a suitable candidate for transfer into the highway system at this time," the statement reads."

The ministry did not disclose exact traffic numbers, but said during a survey conducted in August 2016 at the intersection of Sultan Industrial Road,45 per cent of vehicles were cars.

The Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchement Company

Former MPP Floyd Laughren came close to getting the road paved when he represented the area at Queen's Park.

When he was first elected in 1971, it was known as the KVP road, which stood for its then operator, the Kalamazoo Vegetable Parchment Company.

There was a gate with a guard at the entrance off Highway 144 who only permitted certain drivers to pass.

"You could say you had a machine gun and he'd say 'Alright go through, but you don't have chainsaws do you?'" remembers Laughren.

After years of negotiations, the province began sharing the costs for the road in exchange for public access in 1978.

Laughrencontinued to push for the Sultan Road to become a provincial highway and in the waning days of the NDP government in 1995 he convinced the Minsiter of Transportation to commit to its paving.

But the plans were scrapped by the Conservatives came to power and Laughren says every government since has argued that there isn't enough traffic to warrant paying millions for asphalt.

"But at the same time it's a service and the volume would increase considerably in my opinion if it was paved," says Laughren.