Dan Demers for Cochrane Council
Update

The Cochrane truck bypass: what’s in the public record

Published July 27, 2026 · Updated July 28, 2026

On July 26 the Mayor’s Office issued a press release on the truck bypass, so the file is back in front of people. It is worth reading in full: press release, July 26, 2026, or the PDF version.

The short version of the release: while the provincial bypass remains the ultimate goal, the Town has been working with the Ministry of Transportation since August 2025 to secure interim funding to upgrade and maintain the municipal route in the meantime. The Ministry is described as working collaboratively with the Town on a path toward that interim relief. The release puts numbers to the problem for the first time publicly. The capital upgrade is expected to surpass six million dollars and annual maintenance is projected at roughly $250,000 a year. For scale, the release notes that a one per cent tax increase in Cochrane raises about $90,000. It also cites municipal data showing heavy truck traffic on this route has tripled over the past ten years.

That is real movement on a file that has sat for a long time, and having the Ministry at the table working on it is a good sign. Nothing is finalized yet, and the Town says it will keep the community updated as the discussions progress.

Since the file goes back more than forty years, I went through the Town’s council records on CivicWeb and the Ministry’s project site to put the history in one place, with links so you can read the documents yourself.

This is not meant as a criticism of anyone. It is just a reference, because the story is longer than most of us realize and the documents are scattered across a lot of different meeting packages.

A note on sources, and on one gap in particular. Almost everything below is linked directly. I could not locate the original 1980 feasibility study anywhere. There is also a long quiet stretch in what follows between 1980 and 2006, and I would not read that as nothing having happened. The Town’s online archive only reaches back to about 2004 for council minutes and 2005 for agendas, so whatever discussions, letters, delegations and council debates took place through the eighties and nineties are simply not in the record I am able to search. There was almost certainly movement on this file in those years that I cannot show you.

How we got here

1980

A feasibility study was done for a bypass. It is mentioned in Councillor Desmond O’Connor’s 2020 report to Council (the same presentation linked in the January 2020 entry below, cited here for a different point), but I have not been able to find the study itself online.

1980 to 2006

As noted above, this period is largely outside what the Town’s online archive covers, so I cannot speak to what happened in between.

2006

A business plan for a proposed truck bypass was prepared. The Ministry publishes it on the project site.

July 2014

A tanker carrying 24 metric tonnes of sulphur dioxide rolled into the ditch on Concession 2 and 3 in Glackmeyer. It took three days to offload. Council was debriefed twice and members said at the time that funding the bypass route was a priority. A 2019 staff report, linked in the 2019 entry below, later described the Town as having successfully petitioned the Province following this incident.

2016

A Transportation Needs Assessment was completed, identifying preliminary corridor options for extending Highway 652. This is the study the environmental assessment was built on. It is also published on the project site.

2019

Staff reported that with a new provincial government in place the status of the project was unknown, and that asking the Ministry directly might produce an answer that it had been cancelled. Council voted to retain a lobbyist at $2,500 a month.

January 2020

Councillor Desmond O’Connor delegated to the Minister of Transportation at the ROMA conference and reported back to Council in February. The figures presented at the time were 84,000 two way cross town truck movements a year, with peaks above 500 a day during the winter log haul. The presentation also set out the risk to Commando Lake, which is connected to the Town’s drinking water aquifer.

August 2021

Minister of Transportation Caroline Mulroney visited Cochrane and reiterated the commitment to build the bypass. The CAO reported the visit to Council the following month and noted that a letter confirming it had been sent. That letter, dated August 12, 2021, from the Ministry’s Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Engineer to Mayor Denis Clement, states that the project had received construction funding approval and was listed in the expansion section of the 2021 Ontario Highways Program, which covers projects with committed construction funding. The letter adds that timing can change with funding availability, environmental approvals and property acquisition. The project is still listed in the current Northern Ontario Highways Program, as a 4.5 kilometre new two-lane highway from Genier Road to Highway 11, in the $25 to $100 million range, with design underway and target completion listed as not available.

October and December 2021

The Province formally began the Planning, Preliminary Design and Class Environmental Assessment for extending Highway 652 to Highway 11, with Stantec as the consultant. The project team came to Council in December, presented six candidate corridors, and outlined the study process.

April 2023

Council authorized a support letter to the Ministry naming Alignment C4 as the Town’s preferred route, with D3 as a possible option for the last stretch between Wilson Road and Highway 652. The report also proposed amending the heavy truck bylaw so commercial vehicles could not use municipal roads to reach Highway 652 once a bypass existed.

July 2025

Report 2025-96 asked Council to seek Connecting Link designation for Third Avenue, Railway Street and Third Street. The Connecting Link program is how the Province cost shares roads that function as extensions of the highway system. The report notes that the 2.7 kilometre stretch between Highway 11 and Highway 652 serves that role, largely for trucks supporting Detour Gold and other operations to the north, but has never been designated, so the Town carries the full cost of maintaining and rebuilding it.

The report also notes that Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Espanola and Wawa have secured Connecting Link designation and funding for similar through corridors. There is a short reference section on how that program works near the end of this post.

Council was presented with three options: continue as is, formally apply for the designation, or pursue an interim funding partnership with the Province and industry while continuing to seek designation. Council chose the third, and directed staff to open discussions with the Province, federal funding agencies and industrial stakeholders, while continuing to advocate for the designation.

July 2026

The Mayor’s Office issued the press release described at the top of this post, confirming that work with the Ministry on interim funding has been underway since August 2025 and setting out the cost of the upgrade and ongoing maintenance.

Since the program comes up in both the 2025 report and the current discussion, here is what the Province says about it, so you can read the terms yourself and draw your own conclusions.

The program funds up to 90 per cent of eligible project costs, to a maximum of $3 million per road project and $5 million per bridge project. It covers capital work such as design, construction, renewal, rehabilitation and replacement. The program guide states that it funds eligible capital improvement costs and not maintenance, and that responsibility for maintaining a connecting link stays with the municipality. Seventy seven Ontario municipalities currently have designated connecting links, and Appendix 2 of the guide lists every one of them, including Hearst, Kapuskasing, Smooth Rock Falls, Espanola and Wawa. Cochrane is not on that list.

Where to follow it

The environmental assessment has its own website, run by the study team, with the background reports, the Class EA process, consultation materials and news updates. It also lists the Ministry and consultant project managers directly, and you can ask to be added to the project mailing list.

The Town’s council agendas and minutes are all public and searchable at cochrane.civicweb.net.

This is a long page, but it is also a long issue, and forty odd years of studies, letters and reports does not fit into a paragraph. I would rather hand you the documents than my summary of them. Read whichever parts interest you and skip the rest.

If you spot something I have missed or got wrong, let me know and I will correct it. Corrections are noted below.

Updates and corrections

  • Added the August 2021 entry on the construction funding approval letter and the Northern Ontario Highways Program listing, which the first version of this page missed.
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