Perth

Local issues. Ontario-wide lessons.

A Rural Road Can Carry More Economic Value Than Its Traffic Count Suggests

A municipal road engineer can tell you how many vehicles travel a road each day. In Perth County, that number may not tell you how important the road actually is. Perth’s 2026 capital priorities include resurfacing portions of Perth Line 43 and Perth Roads 135, 130 and 147, along with continuing bridge and culvert rehabilitation and replacement. The County also maintains long-term road and structure programs because transportation is one of its essential responsibilities. That infrastructure serves one of Ontario’s most productive agricultural regions.

A rural road can carry grain trucks, milk tankers, livestock trailers, combines, tractors, farm employees and suppliers. Its average daily traffic may be modest compared with an urban arterial, but the value of the economic activity moving across it can be substantial. Municipal road-priority systems should reflect that. Condition and safety must remain central. But agricultural counties could add another factor: economic freight importance.

How much agricultural production relies on the corridor?
Does it provide the only practical heavy-truck route for surrounding farms?
Does a weak bridge force long detours?
Does spring deterioration interfere with planting or harvest movement?

A road that saves a dozen farm businesses twenty minutes per trip could create a meaningful productivity benefit even if few commuters ever notice the project. This matters beyond Perth. Ontario treats ports, railways and highways as economic infrastructure. The rural roads feeding those systems should be understood the same way. Food does not materialize at a distribution centre. It begins on farms connected to markets by municipal roads. Perhaps the next rural road budget should measure not only how many vehicles use a road, but what those vehicles are carrying.

RURAL ROADS AREN’T JUST ROADS. THEY’RE PART OF THE FARM ECONOMY.

Perth County’s 2026 plans include resurfacing multiple county roads, bridge and culvert work and continued assessment of the road network. It has even experimented with living snow fences along county and local roads.

For a farming county, infrastructure isn’t an abstract capital budget.

It determines how quickly livestock, grain, equipment, employees and emergency vehicles can move.

So here’s the question:

Should rural road spending be treated as an expense—or as economic infrastructure essential to Ontario’s food system?