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From the Leah Laroque, CTV News
A look at Highway 416 from the Barnsdale Road overpass. (Peter Szperling/CTV News Ottawa)
Read the full article and watch a video segment on it here.
Barrhaven residents are relieved that the provincial government is promising to fund a new highway interchange at the 416 and Barnsdale Road.
"In the past few years, the last dozen years, traffic has been extraordinarily painful," says Muhamed Karkari, chair of the Half Moon Bay Community Association. "We've had pinpoints all across the entire community. And the fact of the matter is that getting in and out of our community is getting worse and worse every month, not just every year, every month."
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Area councilor David Hill says this interchange is long-awaited and can't come soon enough.
"I was ecstatic. This is a huge infrastructure investment in the community," Hill says. "It's been it's been needed for a long time. And certainly one of the top issues that that many of the leaders here in the community have been fighting for several years."
Hill says about 3,500 residents or about 1,500 households move to the community a year.
"It needs to be balanced with the infrastructure investments as well as the residential. And I know certainly a lot of the folks that I speak to out here in the community when we talk about new developments, their biggest frustration is that the infrastructure is not keeping pace with the rate of residential development," he said. "And so this is going to be a really important investment in the community for access for the residents, but also for our economic growth."
Right now, Barrhaven residents can only access the 416 from Bankfield Road or Fallowfield Road; the new Barnsdale interchange would be in the middle, easing congestion.