Widening Highway 3 in Essex barely decreased collisions

CBC News has learned widening Highway 3 from two lanes to four barely decreased the annual number of collisions in the stretch of road that was twinned.

Numbers provided by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation show the number of collisions in each of the three years before and in each of the three years after expansion, between County Road 8 in Essex and County Road 34 in Maidstone, are nearly identical.

Six kilometres of four-lane highway opened to the public in 2009. Ontario calls the stretch "Phase 1" of the widening of Highway 3.

The collision numbers in that stretch alone, which includes the intersection of County Road 8 and Highway 3, are as follows:

• 2006 15 (two lanes)
• 2007 14 (two lanes)
• 2008 25 (two lanes)
• 2009 16 (four lanes opened)
• 2010 15 (four lanes)
• 2011 14 (four lanes)
• 2012 20 (four lanes)

Dating back even further, the collisions rates in that six-kilometre stretch, when it accommodated two-lane traffic, are as follows:

• 2005 14
• 2004 16, including one fatality
• 2003 22
• 2002 10
• 2001 17
• 2000 15

The MTO has not made public the latest traffic volume statistics on its website. The most current data ends in 2010. You can view that data here.

Essex NDP MPP Taras Natyshak has been calling on the province to widen Highway 3 from Windsor to Leamington. His office told CBC it, too, was after similar crash data, but the province had not yet provided it to the MPP.

Two people died in fatal collisions on Highway 3 in less than a month this spring. A Leamington woman died in late April when she was part of a multi-vehicle crash near the Arner Townline.A motorcyclist died on Highway 3 near Leamington last week.

Meanwhile, James Armstrong, a spokesperson for Transport Action, claimed this week that widening highway don't result in fewer collisions or fatalities.

"Widening highways does not solve the problem, it's going to exacerbate the problem," he said.

No stats for 2012 and beyond

"Phase 2" of the province's widening of Highway 3 ended in 2012. It includes a six-kilometre piece of road from Maidstone to just west of Walker Road.

The province does not yet have collision statistics for that stretch.

"[The] MTO has only partial data available for 2013 to 2015. We are not able to provide either a total number of collisions or a total number of fatalities for those years," Liane Fisher, the communications coordinator for the MTO's West Region, wrote in an email to CBC. "The 2012 figures are the most recent we have available. Our systems for recording collision information from police are currently being modernized and we hope to have more up-to-date numbers available in the near future."

The province is currently reviewing a two-lane area of Highway 3 in the Town of Essex that spans a half a kilometer west of Ellis Sideroad to two kilometres east of the Arner Townline, also known as Essex Road 23.