Highway 107 Upgrades (Burnside Expressway) | U/C

[Saul Goode]

Originally Posted by Keith P.

That very old original section of the 107 should have been twinned right from the start, but... Province of NS in the '70s didn't like spending on new-fangled things like that. It has been quite dangerous and lethal at times over the years since. Long overdue.

Yes. It can't be twinned soon enough. It can be extremely dangerous during the afternoon rush, when drivers come flying out of Burnside and from the 118 westbound onto the 107 access ramps driving anywhere from 90 to 120 kph or more, only to suddenly hit that untwinned bottleneck. I've had some really nervous moments there, crawling along at the merge of those ramps, only to see vehicles in my rearview mirror coming up at maniac speeds and hoping they can slow in time.

Much like the Macdonald bridge, it should have been built with multiple lanes from the get-go. Anyone with a map, a set of eyes and a functioning cerebral cortex easily could have envisioned how things would evolve once they opened.

[q12]

[Dmajackson]

Information Sheet on current Highway 107 project

NSDPW is in the planning and design phase for the twinning of Highway 107 Burnside to Lake Loon in Halifax County. The proposed project continues from the Highway 107 Sackville Bedford-Burnside Connector project through the Highway 118 Exit 13 interchange; ramps 13N, 13E and 13W will be realigned to accommodate the twinning. Between Highway 118 and the Montague Road Interchange, the corridor will be upgraded to a 100-Series six lane roadway with a jersey barrier median, comprised of four 3.7-meter highway lanes, and two 3.5-meter auxiliary lanes. The auxiliary lanes will connect the on/off ramps between Highway 118 and Montague Road and will then transition to a four-lane jersey barrier median that will taper back to the existing Forest Hills Extension, totaling 5.5 km in length.

They aren't planning to rebuild the Montague Road overpass. They will realign the exit ramps and upgrade the intersections. The project is well underway. They started with the bridge rebuild on 118 which reopened to traffic a couple of months ago.

[ns_kid]

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

https://news.novascotia.ca/en/2025/12/17/province-releases-plan-invest-highways-bridges-ferries

I didn’t know that 107 would be twinned so soon. Will Montague Road overpass be replaced? It looks old, and it’s impossible to fit divided 6 lanes between the piers.

The key here is your definition of "soon." As the province's release says, the twinning work "will continue," meaning completion is years away. (A 2024 release forecast completion in 2028 or 2029.) The project began in early 2024 with tree clearing. Last year, a new overpass was constructed over highway 118, but it's connected to nothing. Perhaps work will commence this year on a Montague Road overpass, but I'm not sure what the timetable is.

In the end, the twinning will peter out somewhere around the north end of Lake Loon, about 2.5 km from the Main Street intersection. That's frustrating, but at least this first phase will mitigate the terrible unlit exit 13N ramp and curve west of exit 14.

[Keith P.]

The resolution on those “to be” images is bad enough to make understanding the proposal very difficult. But it looks to me that they are building an entirely new route through the woods to connect the highway through Montague Mines all the way to near Preston where the 107 goes down the Eastern Shore. No more stoplight at Main St to get there. About time.

I never ceased to be amazed by how long it takes to get roads built here. Maybe that’s a carryover from when I was young and we would visit Ontario and the northeast US where roads were built at a breakneck pace with lots of men and heavy equipment. Here it seems they have maybe 10 guys, a couple of pickups and a bulldozer or two. No wonder it takes decades.

One thing I hope they address is that tight near-hairpin turn right after you cross the 118. Since day one in the ‘70s that lane has been too narrow with a gravel shoulder seemingly inches from the edge of the travel lane that always had a deep rut/pothole that resulted from wheels cutting the corner. They tinkered with it a few times over the years to no effect. I could never figure out why they didn’t just widen the apex there and provide a bit of runoff area, but noooooo.

[Patrick Matthews]

Between the province and HRM only one small parcel is needed (at last check) for this route.
I was 4 when my father told me about the 107 coming to Sackville. Maybe when my kid is in their 40s this will be done?



My crude mouse drawn lines and assumptions
red = 107
orange = 7 or lesser routes

[markbeaver]

Originally Posted by Patrick Matthews

Between the province and HRM only one small parcel is needed (at last check) for this route.
I was 4 when my father told me about the 107 coming to Sackville. Maybe when my kid is in their 40s this will be done?



My crude mouse drawn lines and assumptions
red = 107
orange = 7 or lesser routes

If the existing 107 (south of the proposed interchange down to Highway 7) were to be downgraded to a road of similar size and speed limits as the Forest Hills Parkway, that would open up a pretty huge amount of forest to potential residential expansion. Hmmm…. Perhaps it would be renamed the Forest Hills Parkway.

[q12]

Slightly better resolution: