A News Commentary by Niagara At Large reporter/publisher Doug Draper
Posted June 13th, 2025 on Niagara At Large
At a press conference this past June 11th, Port Colborne Mayor Bill Steele (left) and Fort Erie Mayor Wayne Redekop protest decision to cut hours at Urgent Care Cetres in their municipalities
Niagara, Ontario – While citizens and their municipal representatives in Port Colborne and Fort Erie press for funding and health care personnel to keep their Urgent Care Centres open 24 hours a day, this past June 11th we were served the spectacle of the Mayors of St. Catharines, Niagara-on-the Lake and Welland, along with Niagara Regional Chair Jim Bradley, celebrating an announcement from Ontario’s Ford Government that it is moving forward with design work for twinning the Garden City Skyway.
Niagara Falls Mayor Jim Diodati apparently missed attending the announcement, staged at a site where the Garden City Skyway could be seen towering in the background. But hours earlier, in a news release from the Ford government, he was quoted saying; “Twinning the Garden City Skyway is a significant step for the Niagara region, providing a crucial link to Niagara Falls, Canada’s top tourist destination, while supporting job creation throughout our growing tourism sector.’’
The Garden City Skyway, as it looks taking traffic over the Welland Canal today.
That same day, I emailed a contact person, listed at the bottom of that news release, and asked if the provincial government has any kind of estimate it can share with the public now about of how much constructing a twin bridge next to the existing six-lane Skyway will cost.
As of the posting of this commentary, I have yet to receive an answer so let me take a stab at it.
Nine years ago, we learned, much to our chagrin, that replacing the Burgoyne Bridge over the Twelve Mile Creek in St. Catharines, cost taxpayers more than $90 million – about $37 million more than originally estimated.
A recent campaign ad from Doug Ford’s recently re-elected Conservative government
Around the same time, there were some media reports that the estimated price-tag for twinning the much larger Garden City Skyway could come to at least $450 million. Given how much costs for building materials alone have soared since then, I would not be surprised if following through with this Skyway twinning project now will top $600 or $700 million.
If I am wrong, I will take a leap off the top of the existing Garden City Skyway without a parachute, although I would rather you don’t hold me to actually doing that.
But even if it ends up costing a little less than that, just think of how far that kind of money could go toward, not only keeping the Urgent Care Centres in Port Colborne and Fort Erie open, but toward building those municipalities a real South Niagara Hospital to make up for what Niagara Health, the corporation that oversees the system of amalgamated hospital services in the region, keeps passing off to the public as a “South Niagara” hospital now being built on what was once green space in Niagara Falls.
Building a new hospital in Niagara’s south end, and building more affordable housing and better public transit services would create jobs and promote more economic growth and livable conditions across our region too.
Instead, we have too many politicians at the provincial and municipal level whose way of thinking has not evolve very much past 1963 when the existing Garden City Skyway was built and when cars and truck were king and moving goods back and forth across the Canada-U.S. border would continue on forever.
They make plans on the assumption that car and truck traffic will continue to grow and they have to go on building more and more roads, highways and bridges well into the future.
There is little or no will or imagination at work here that we can and must find more economically and environmentally sustainable ways of moving people and goods around in the future.
But here is the good news though.
This coming year, we will have municipal elections where hopefully we will see a new field of candidates we can vote for that are willing to move in directions that address the challenges of the 21st Century.
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Doug Draper, Niagara At Large
For related information on this issue, click on the following links –
UPDATE: Contract awarded for Garden City Skyway Bridge twinning project
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