If you drive Highway 3 through St. Thomas, here is what you need to know right now. The stretch from First Avenue east to the Highbury Avenue/Centennial Avenue roundabout is still fully closed in both directions, with the barricades up as they have been for weeks, and Ontario’s own traffic data now says that closure runs until November 15th. West of First Avenue, toward Wellington Road, Highway 3 is open and carrying traffic in both directions.
A closure that quietly got longer
The province’s notice from April said the closure work would be finished sometime in 2026. Ontario’s traffic data at the time had the closure lifting on August 31st. LocVox reported that timeline in July. It did not happen. Ontario’s live 511 traffic data now lists the closure, labelled “Stage 1A,” running until November 15th.
No public notice explains the longer timeline. The province posts its updates for this project at highway3elgin.ca, where the most recent notice is still the one from April 29th.
The next stage of the project would close Highway 3 between Wellington Road and First Avenue, on the other side of the interchange. No public notice gives a start date for that stage.
Not the same project as the highway widening
It is easy to mix this closure up with the bigger Highway 3 widening project, so here is the difference. This closure is utility work: moving pipes and wires out of the way before construction starts. The actual widening is a separate, much bigger contract that has not started yet. It would add a second set of lanes along about seven kilometres of the expressway, from where Ron McNeil Line meets Highway 3 near Talbotville, on the west side of the city, to the Highbury Avenue/Centennial Avenue roundabout on the east side. Ontario’s own public list of highway projects says that widening is “planned,” starting in 2027, with no completion date given. Back in July, when the province marked the start of the utility work, officials said they were hoping the wider highway would be ready in time for the PowerCo battery plant’s planned 2027 opening, as LocVox reported at the time. The province’s own numbers do not commit to a date either way.
Nightly work near the airport, too
If you have noticed construction noise near the St. Thomas Municipal Airport, that is a separate project: a repaving job on Highway 3 between St. Thomas and Aylmer that LocVox first reported in August. That job has changed since then. It used to run during the day with a 10-minute delay. Ontario’s traffic data now shows it running overnight, with a longer 20-minute delay, through October 12th. A second, related stretch of daytime lane work is happening further east, between Yarmouth Centre Road and Quaker Road, until October 9th.
The detour
If you need to get around the closed stretch, the signed detour uses Wellington Road, Ron McNeil Line, and Highbury Avenue South/Centennial Avenue. One thing worth knowing before you rely on it: Ron McNeil Line itself is closed between Highway 3 and Wonderland Road for a different, unrelated project, the Talbotville Bypass, and is expected to stay closed until fall 2027. That closed section sits west of Wellington Road, so it does not block the detour route itself, but it is worth knowing if your trip would normally use that stretch of Ron McNeil Line.
Sources: Ontario 511 traffic data, Highway 3 Twinning and Talbotville Bypass project website, Ontario’s Highway Programs
By Anthony Zruna · About the LocVox Newsroom
