Roads to the Shoreline
One of the main reasons that there are more visitors and more population in southern Georgian Bay is that there are better roads from Toronto.Specifically highway 400 to Barrie brings lots and lots of traffic.Huronia (the shoreline) needs better connectors to southwestern Ontario both for business,cheaper costs for supplies and for delivering visitors.The area of Kitchener -Waterloo (including Cambridge and Guelph) has about 750,000 people and lots of manufacturing of goods that Huronia needs.Also there have always been strong ties between London and Huronia.London has almost 400,000 people and goods that would increase the range of goods available to be sold to tourists and visitors.The Kitchener-Waterloo,London area is not as big as Toronto but it is about 1.2 million in size. A direct connection from Kitchener-Waterloo and from London would make a big difference.However there is no express route to Huronia as there is to southern Georgian Bay.
The Likely Route
There is no direct route today to the Shoreline.The likely route from Kitchener is to go through Fergus and then take a county road to Orangeville.At Orangeville you would take highway 10 to Flesherton and then a county road to Durham.From there highway 9 goes right into Hanover and finally Walkerton.Walkerton would be my new transit town as existing roads in Walkerton will take the driver to Kincardine on Highway 9 and to Port Elgin by county road 3.Both of these roads need a little work with the present traffic but would need more work as the traffic from Kitchener-Waterloo and London descends on the shoreline towns.The total distance is about 225 kilometres and more than 3 hours because of travel through so many towns .The slowest part of the journey is from Fergus to Orangeville and from Flesherton to Durham and then Hanover.Even highway 10 ( a good,direct highway) could use 3 lanes in the busy sections.
It is true that the easy way is to go down highway 10 and take highway 21 in Owen Sound over to the shoreline.But highway 10 does get a lot of traffic and improving these other roads would cut traffic and travel time,especially to Saugeen Shores and Kincardine.
Back to the Saugeen Shores
Improving the roads and the traffic would result in only half the gain.This should reduce the costs of food (especially produce) and other materials.But what can be done to improve employment in Saugeen Shores?There has been a marina added lately in Port Elgin and it is a beauty.This ,however, is only for leisurecraft.But it could be expanded as the traffic has picked up here.There are also two bus companies that have headquarters in Port Elgin,namely,Can-Ar and Grey Bruce Airbus.Neither has a visible loading terminal;Ralph's Shopette used to be the pick-up spot for both buslines.And the city would do well to rent a part of the parking lot for the bus lines.This might pick-up traffic for both bus lines and increase traffic for Ralph's.Other than this there does not seem to be any other likely ways to improve employment and income.Increasing the size and income of Saugeen Shores seems linked to transportation.
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