A truck races along Canada’s transcontinental Highway 11 near Nipigon, Ontario, in 2015. PHOTO: Jeremy Rempel
PHOTO: Ontario Provincial Police
Over the weekend the Nipigon Bridge in Ontario heaved amid extreme cold and high winds, closing what is essentially the only road across part of Canada.
For a time it seemed likely that the closure would route trans-Canada traffic through Northern Minnesota on Highway 2. Today, however, Canadian officials were able to open one lane of traffic across the bridge. Only some traffic might filter its way into the United States.
The bridge outage is a big deal in Canada. While it’s an old joke that Canada only has one road, in this part of the country that’s pretty much true. Most of Canada’s population lives along a corridor bunched along the nation’s southern border. What lies North is Arctic wilderness.
U.S. Highway 2, which runs from Michigan all the way to the Pacific Ocean, is known as the Hi-Line, it being the northernmost east-west route in the U.S. Many of Northern Minnesota’s biggest cities — from Duluth to Grand Rapids to Bemidji and Moorhead — lie along this highway, which runs parallel with major rail lines that predated the highway.
For kicks, this is what the likeliest reroute would have been had the Nipigon Bridge not been able to partially reopen. This route may be used should the bridge need to be shutdown again for repairs.
This map shows the most efficient detour for trans-Canada traffic after the indefinite closing of the Nipigon River Bridge. IMAGE: NetNewsLedger
A nice thought, but it now appears that most traffic will be able to pass over one lane of the damaged bridge, sending only oversized trucks through the alternate routes. We might see a few extra Canadian vehicles on Highway 2, though.
Nevertheless, the whole story raises some interesting questions. For one thing we see how closely tied U.S. and Canadian commerce really is, especially in this part of the continent. I talked about this with Canadian Governor-General David Johnston last year.
Secondly, we see how infrastructure is such an important part of our transportation system, and how badly it can go wrong when we aren’t planning well. For instance, what happens if there is a problem with the new $250 million bridge being built on the Iron Range right now?
Aaron, Moorhead is not on US Highway 2, go North 80 miles to East Grand Forks. Hope none of our Canadian friends asked you for detour directions.
You are correct! My mental map erred. East Grand Forks was, of course, what I meant.
Yesterday morning I was in Cook, right along Hwy 53. There were a number of small trucks going north with blinking lights which caught my eye. Soon I realized that they were in a convey preceding and others following a “truck” with the front holding a massively long I-beam, and the back end of the truck sustaining the south end of the I-beam, nothing holding up the middle. It was kinda like a Weiner dog on roller skates. I heard a man explaining that the beams were heading to Canada to repair the buckled bridge. After my appointment, I saw still more of these convoys. So apparently the Canadians aren’t waiting until spring to get things started. And apparently, Hwy 2 isn’t the only detour to Canada. Which, of course, I knew. Have you seen the length of the trains which roll through Cook? Over 100 cars. (I know you know this because of where you grew up.) BTW I used “kinda” on purpose. As a former English teacher, I used to tell my students that bad grammar was acceptable if used knowingly for effect, rather than out of ignorance. I wanted the effect of looking ignorant. All other mistakes in this comment are typos.