Malton is finally getting its bridge to somewhere

For the community of Malton, a notoriously disconnected piece of the City of Mississauga, a new project finally underway has the potential to open up the area for residents, businesses and frustrated commuters.

The upcoming construction of a bridge along Goreway Drive will go a long way toward helping the area become less isolated from the rest of Mississauga. The project has been needed for decades with residents stuck daily in long traffic queues while the large rail corridor is filled with cargo trains that sometimes run as often as four times an hour. Those who traverse the only road in and out of their Malton neighbourhoods have for decades begged for a solution to their traffic nightmare, which often sees drivers stalled for as much as 45 minutes on either side of the tracks.

The Goreway Drive Grade separation over a set of train tracks is a joint project between the City of Brampton, City of Mississauga and Canadian National Rail. 

Heading away from residential neighbourhoods on the southern end toward open greenspace, Goreway Drive functions as a four-lane thoroughfare within Brampton, and as a major collector within this disconnected part of Mississauga. The major corridor “provides north-south connectivity for commuter, commercial and emergency service vehicles between the two cities,” according to project officials. In an example of poor urban planning, the route crosses the CN tracks north of Brandon Gate Drive in Mississauga. The three rail lines running perpendicular to the road facilitate the movement of more than 50 freight trains daily, often causing traffic chaos on Goreway Drive. 

The $40-million project is the culmination of over three decades of lobbying for the long-awaited bridge. It will alleviate the lengthy traffic delays and, perhaps as importantly, will also figuratively bridge the divide between Malton and the cities of Mississauga and Brampton. 

The project, set between Steeles Avenue and Brandon Gate Drive, will remove the existing level crossings at the CN Rail Halton subdivision and reconstruct Goreway Drive as an overpass crossing above the CN Rail tracks. The cost of the project is split among the three partners — CN, and the cities of Mississauga and Brampton.

Longtime Malton resident Gabriel Petrucci, who has lived in the area for over 40 years — petitioning for the bridge the entire time — said he was elated to see the City is finally doing something about the intersection, which he described as “a total disaster.” Living on the south side of the tracks, he said he would often detour over to Airport Road and Steeles Avenue just to run basic errands. 

“Finally they’re getting to the point to do it.” 

Petrucci said he usually finds himself waiting for nearly an hour at the crossing just to get to the stores on the other side. Just recently, he waited 45 minutes as three trains slowly made their way by. When he saw the signs go up to notify residents that construction would be getting underway, he said, “finally.” 

“I think the best thing they could have done to do that intersection is the bridge over it. It’s a big relief to see the bridge is getting done.”

But it’s more than enabling a much quicker commute. Malton historically has been the product of poor urban planning, isolated from the rest of Mississauga and cut off from many services, with amenities like social support agencies, hospitals and a police division absent from the area. Even basic commercial needs can seem like they’re in another country, on the other end of Goreway Drive, which slices through the community and has become a bottleneck for commuters and local residents cut off by the rail corridor. 

It’s also a psychological barrier.

Ward 5 Councillor Carolyn Parrish previously told The Pointer that with Malton’s isolation from the rest of the city by a wide belt of industrial land and the airport, its naturally become “out of sight, out of mind” for people inside, and outside the area.  

Goreway Drive, which stretches across Malton, has become a bottleneck for traffic in the community, cut off by a set of railway tracks running perpendicular to the road.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer) 

With its location north of Pearson International Airport’s giant footprint and numerous industrial businesses, Malton has been geographically, culturally, economically and socially more connected to the southeastern part of Brampton. The airport creates not just a physical barrier between the community and the rest of Mississauga, but a psychological hurdle as residents deal with a sense of separation from the rest of the city. Economically, industrial and transportation/logistics operations dominate the area’s landscape, with next to no white-collar office buildings. 

“[The bridge] is really going to improve our labour force,” Parrish said. “Those multiple people that go up to Brampton to work won't be sitting at an unpredictable train crossing, because they were never on schedule, for 15 minutes waiting for the train to go by to get to work.

“[It’s] a huge benefit to the Brampton folks that are coming down to work in Mississauga because we have the biggest industrial complex around the airport…and all the corporations and all the factories so the workforce is going to be much happier.”

According to the 2016 Census, almost 85 percent of Malton residents were visible minorities; the largest groups were South Asian-Canadians, Chinese-Canadians, Black- Canadians, Filipino-Canadians, Latino-Canadians and Arab-Canadians. Residents were, on average, more than two years younger than the city overall, and occupied some of the most demanding blue-collar jobs in manufacturing, transportation and logistics-support and warehouse work. 

Of those employed in the labour force in the Mississauga—Malton riding, the 2021 census data notes roughly 29 percent work in the trades and manufacturing industry. According to the Malton Business Improvement Area Community Profile, 63 percent of the community’s population are in the labour force, 27.8 percent commute to work by car, and 10.7 percent rely on public transit.

The contract to build the Goreway Bridge was awarded earlier this year to Alliance Verdi Civil Inc., a City of Brampton spokesperson confirmed, with external consultants hired to manage the project. Detailed design for the project was first initiated in 2010 but it was delayed due to a series of events, challenges and scope changes, highlighted in a 2022 report from the City of Brampton. This included hold ups due to close proximity of gas pipes, various property and easement acquisitions that were required and negotiations between the three parties involved in the project.

“The thing that's interesting about this is that the bridge has been promised to multiple residents for 30 years now,” Parrish said. “There are 50 freight trains that go through that intersection, that are crossing every day and if you get stuck there, you're there for 20 minutes as these massive long trains go one way and then suddenly there's a train going the other way.”

Jim Brewer, who moved to the area in the ‘80s when discussions of the bridge first launched, said he’s thrilled to hear the overpass is finally coming to the community. 

“I moved here in the late 80s and they were talking about a bridge then, and then it died out about five years after that. Then seven years ago, it started back up again and I think I might finally get to see the bridge,” he said in a rush of excitement.

Living adjacent to the intersection of Goreway Drive and Brandon Gate Drive, Brewer has experienced the mind-numbing traffic congestion firsthand. He once had to watch for two hours as a train that had stalled farther down the tracks created a domino effect, backing up several other trains along the route, causing complete traffic gridlock along the entire length of one of Malton’s busiest commuter corridors. 

TOP: The construction of the bridge will alleviate traffic that has traditionally been heavily congested as commuters were held up by intermittent freight trains. BOTTOM: A rendering of what the bridge will look like once constructed.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer; City of Brampton) 

Construction on the long-awaited bridge over the CN train tracks is expected to begin sometime this month, Parrish said. 

The project has stalled over the years for myriad reasons, including the initial mystery as to who owned the land needed to actually build the bridge on it. When Councillor Parrish began piecing together the puzzle of who owned the land, she discovered the Province had taken the land from a private owner for multiple failures to pay employment taxes. They were to sell it at market value to retrieve the money owed but it had somehow fallen between the cracks, she explained. It was later purchased and flipped over to the City of Brampton, allowing the project to get back on track.

Parrish said after surveying the community the City decided to do an overpass to help move the process along and ensure the train schedule would remain uninterrupted. This option, she said, allows the City to get the bridge built in half the time at nearly half the cost. 

“Half didn't believe me that it was actually going to get built. The other half said no, don't close the road, let's do this as fast as we can. So that's what we decided to do.

“Otherwise, it would have been moving the train tracks, doing an underpass, or leaving the road open and putting detours in and it was just like, no, we waited long enough, we're going to do whatever is quickest.”

Goreway Drive will be closed for 12 to 15 months for the construction to be completed. According to the City of Brampton’s 2022 project update report, construction is anticipated to be completed in the summer of 2024. In an email to The Pointer, a City of Brampton spokesperson said the contractor is currently in the process of setting up the site office. Construction work will start shortly after. 

“This is the saga of the Goreway bridge, 30 years, and then now it's taken me eight years to unravel it,” Parrish said. “I just got in there and pushed as hard as I could and we're finally getting it.”

While the Malton-area councillor remains optimistic, with the project’s known history of delays, she isn’t letting her hopes get too high.

“I feel a little bit like my constituents. I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Email: [email protected] 

Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock 

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