Maley Drive extension in Sudbury can now be driven end to end, but doesn't open for another year

After decades on the drawing board, a few years of intense debate and now two years of intense construction, Sudbury's Maley Drive Extension now looks like a road.

And while the average Sudburian won't travel the 11 km between Barrydowne Road and College Boreal until the fall of 2019, construction crews and curious city officials have been driving on Maley Drive for a few weeks now.

"It's been amazing for me," says Greater Sudbury's director of infrastructure and capital planning David Shelsted. 

"Ten years of looking at plans and you're actually able to drive the corridor and see the rock cuts. It's becoming real."

There was much debate in Greater Sudbury about whether Maley was worth the money, some $80 million for this first phase of the project.

Shelsted says the city's research shows other Sudbury streets will be much less congested once Maley opens. 

"It shows that we're going to divert about 10,000 vehicles from Lasalle and about three to four thousand off the Kingsway," he says. 

"We have no doubts about that traffic modeling to date. I know the people we talk to, most of the people are excited for Maley Drive and the benefits they're going to see in their traveling patterns."

To see what this corner of Sudbury looked like before Maley Drive was extended, check out this video from the summer of 2016: