Photo shows traffic at Hurontario Street and The Queensway, right next to Mississauga Hospital, during work on the Hazel McCallion Line light-rail transit route in 2024. The area’s city councillor is concerned hospital construction and LRT work might combine to create traffic chaos. (Photo: Metrolinx)

Residents and their city councillor are “very worried” that two massive construction projects taking place next to one another in a busy part of Mississauga near the QEW will lead to traffic nightmares.

The concern is that ongoing work on the Hazel McCallion Line light-rail transit route on Hurontario Street, at four years and counting, may now combine in a troublesome way with major construction that began over the summer at Mississauga Hospital, Ward 7 Coun. Dipika Damerla said this week.

The LRT work regularly shuts down Hurontario Street lanes to traffic while work on what will eventually be the biggest hospital in Canada will bring hundreds of trucks — delivery, work and construction vehicles — each day to The Queensway/Hurontario Street site (southwest corner) during the “peak construction period.”

“I’m really, really concerned about Hurontario Street. Because of the hospital construction, we’re going to be adding (to existing traffic) up to 600 or 800 trucks onto Hurontario,” Damerla said Wednesday at the City of Mississauga’s general committee meeting, where she asked senior city staff to ensure Metrolinx, the provincial agency overseeing the LRT project, and hospital officials communicate with one another in efforts to avoid huge traffic messes.

Ward 7 Coun. Dipika Damerla says she’s worried, as are residents, about potential traffic problems that might lie ahead.

The councillor said she’s particularly concerned about lane closures taking place on Hurontario Street south of Dundas Street and all the way to the QEW.

“What I do not want is lane closures by the LRT, and the hospital pushing trucks down that road at the same time. We really need to all work together (to avoid a worst-case situation),” said Damerla, adding area residents “have really been suffering, especially south of Dundas, because of the Hurontario construction. Four years of nonstop construction is unheard of.”

She noted her constituents are “very worried, as they should be” about the potential for even bigger traffic snarls in the months ahead, “as am I.”

Sam Rogers, the city’s commissioner of transportation and works, said it’s “certainly a difficult situation with major construction sites side by side.”

He added both Metrolinx and hospital officials “are speaking to one another and are coordinating” and he told Damerla his staff are also keeping an eye on things to address any issues that might arise.

The $4.6-billion Hazel McCallion Line, when completed, will travel 22 kilometres along Hurontario Street from Port Credit in south Mississauga north into downtown Brampton.

As work on the massive transit project continues, various temporary traffic restrictions, including lane closures, are in place at numerous locations along Hurontario Street between Port Credit and Brampton.

When completed in 2026, 2027 or later, by some unofficial estimates, the new LRT route will feature more than 20 stops along the line, including several in Mississauga’s downtown core by Square One.

City of Mississauga senior staff, councillors and Mayor Carolyn Parrish recently expressed frustration with ongoing delays associated with construction of the LRT line, which was initially to open in fall 2024.

In late September, Parrish described the project as “an incredible mess.”

Meanwhile, work is in the relatively early stages on The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital and Shah Family Hospital for Women and Children, the latter facility to be housed inside the 2.8 million-sq.-ft., 22-storey main hospital.

Construction began on the massive new health-care centre in June and it’s being built on the same site as the current Mississauga Hospital, which first opened at that location in 1958.

The Peter Gilgan Mississauga Hospital carries an estimated price tag of $13.9 billion and it’s expected to take its first patients in 2034.

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