Tracy Schillings is banking on Ontario’s newest highway extension to shave precious time off her trips into Toronto and Niagara to purchase stock for her store, and to bring new customers right to her doorsteps.

From the parking lot of Freskiw’s variety store and flowers centre on Highway 115, about a kilometre north of where the new stretch of Highway 407 meets the 115, Schilling can see the new 407 artery and the sign signalling drivers that the extended toll road is open to traffic headed west to Toronto.

“You’re going to see a lot more people using it to get here for vacation rentals and getting out of the city on the long weekend,” Schillings said, standing next to shelves of jams, preserves, ciders, garden decorations and flowers of her shop, which is open spring, summer and fall. She foresees the route being popular with people headed to cottage country near Peterborough and Kawartha Lakes.

“In the summer time all our business is from tourism.”

Schillings depends on the 407 for her weekly trips to the Toronto food terminal to buy produce and frequent visits to Niagara Falls in the spring and summer for her flowers operation. With the closest transit hub being in Oshawa, driving is the only option, she said.

She has yet to christen the 14-kilometre extension, which runs from Clarington into Kirby, but says before the route opened on Monday she frequently used the toll road but had to get off where it ended north of Oshawa. She then had to travel along a patchwork of local roads to reach Highway 35/115, the main artery into Peterborough.

A round-trip to Niagara on the 407 cost about $90, a cost that should go up a bit now that she will be using the additional stretch. But without it she has to book a hotel to stay overnight or leave her home hours earlier.

“I’m a twice-per-week user from March to September,” she said. “Before I had to use back-roads to get here, now it (407) comes out almost in front of my house.”

Schillings says the extension will make the region more attractive for people to live and set up shop in, possibly leading to a bump in property value.

“People who work in the area can now be in Pickering in 15 minutes,” she said. “I think it will force people to move out this way because Toronto housing isn’t affordable.”

Drivers travelling along Highway 401 through Bowmanville Tuesday would also notice messaging alerting them to the opening of Highway 418, a new 10-kilometre stretch of toll road serving as a north-south connection from Highway 407 (along the northern fringes of Bowmanville) to Highway 401, similar to Highway 412 in Whitby, which opened to traffic in 2016.

“Connecting Highway 407 to Highway 35/115 will create a vital link between Peterborough and the Greater Toronto Area,” said Dave Smith, MPP for Peterborough-Kawartha, in a statement. “The extension of this highway will help attract jobs and economic growth to this region.”

Mark Rutherford, the general manager at Brimacombe Ski Resort, located about three kilometres east of the where the 407 extension meets Highway 115, says the road comes online just in time for their opening weekend.

“It opens a new corridor, literally, right to our front door and allows a lot bigger audience to get here a lot quicker without fighting through traffic,” he said.

Rutherford said about 75 per cent of its visitors are from the GTA, with clients coming from further west as well.

Not everyone is as accepting of the highway and its string of new overpasses and multi-lane roadway.

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The view from Stephanie Lea’s front stoop is now a major interchange, where the 418 connects to the 407. When she moved in with her boyfriend four years ago at the property, which houses a family farm, the same view was an expanse of farmland and crops as far as your eyes could see.

“I preferred when it was farmland,” she said while a herd of cattle grazed nearby. “I can do without looking at a highway.”

Jason Miller is a breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Reach him on email: jasonmiller@thestar.ca or follow him on Twitter: @millermotionpic

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