Highway 11 road closures by-law approved for Gravenhurst

The access roads will be closed to Hwy 11 for safety reasons

Gravenhurst Council approved the new by-law for two road entrance closures from Highway 11, in the August 12, 2025, meeting.

Last April staff presented the recommendation to Council and were directed to notify the community as a part of the 30-day public consultation to implement the process.

Staff indicated that they haven’t receive any objections about the closures. “In fact, the responses received have been very positive of the closure, some hoping it would accelerate capital investments once closed.”

The closures involve closing municipal access to the Highway 11 Corridor at two locations. One is at Manson/Cowbell Lane, 100 metres north of Severn River Bridge, and the other is at Mitchell Road, 2.7kms north of Severn River Bridge, report staff.

They add that the public will still have access to secondary points from the highway. The Manson/Cowbell Lane will have access 500 meters from Severn River Bridge and Mitchell Road will have 2.1 kms.

In April, staff also reported that the Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is working on rehabilitating the Highway 11 corridor, including an extension from Severn Bridge to South Kahshe Lake Road, covering 7.8 km of the highway.

The report adds that the MTO gave the municipality options to either maintain or remove the access points. The permanent closure to the access points were recommended because of technical and safety reasons.

Director of Infrastructure, Andrew Stacey, said the decision was based on the MTO’s engineering analysis reporting “poor geometrics.”

Now that the by-law is passed, the MTO will meet with staff to discuss timing of the work, which will include installing rail barricades across the former entrances.

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