Highway in a Park Rt Hon Herb Gray Parkway

Abstract

The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway is the access road component of the new end-to-end transportation system identified by the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC) study through Windsor and Essex County in southwest Ontario. The new parkway, constructed between 2011 and 2015, is 11 kilometres long. It consists of a below-grade international highway connection ( Highway 401), an at-grade local service road network ( Highway 3), and includes approximately 20 kilometres of multi-use trails and 300 acres of green space. Completed in 2014, the parkway also includes three interchanges, 14 bridge structures, 11 cut-and-cover tunnels, 12 signalized intersections and a multi-lane roundabout. It extends Highway 401, the main east-west artery from Toronto, to a future international customs inspection plaza and new river crossing to Detroit, Michigan. The Windsor-Detroit corridor is Canada's busiest land border crossing and carries approximately one third of the trade between Canada and the U.S. The parkway's green space was designed to include extensive ecological connections to create a "road-in-a-park," minimizing the impact of this major international highway connection through an urban centre.