determine cost-cutting measures in order to balance the budget after a deficit incurred by former premier Bob Rae. It was determined that many Ontario highways no longer served long-distance traffic movement and should therefore be maintained by local or regional levels of government. The MTO consequently transferred many highways to lower levels of government in 1997 and 1998, removing a significant percentage of the provincial highway network. Despite once serving as one of the principal highways through southwestern Ontario, Highway 3 had been largely supplanted by Highway 401, the QEW and later Highway 403 as a through-route. As a result, portions of the route through the Regional Municipality of Niagara were transferred to the region on April 1, 1997, including a segment through Port Colborne (most of which had existed as a Connecting Link) and a segment in Fort Erie. To the west, a segment of the route paralleling Highway 401 between Leamington and Talbotville Royal was decommissioned on January 1, 1998 and transferred to Essex County, Chatham–Kent and Elgin County. It has since been designated as Essex County Road 34, Chatham–Kent Road 3 and Elgin County Road 3. In 2001, the MTO considered renumbering the western segment of Highway 3 as Highway 103 to avoid confusion. However, this never came to pass. Windsor–Essex Parkway At the western end of Highway 3, two major traffic concerns have been the focus of controversy since the mid-1990s and early 2000s: the Essex Bypass and the approach to the Ambassador Bridge. Numerous attempts by local and provincial politicians since then have led the MTO to begin remedying the situation by upgrading the bypass to a divided four lane road and constructing the Windsor–Essex Parkway to a new international crossing. The Essex Bypass, completed around the village of Essex in 1972, was designed to accommodate future widening to a divided four lane road when traffic volumes warranted. By the mid-1990s, a regular pattern of fatalities were occurring, prompting local politicians and Essex Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) Bruce Crozier to lobby the MTO widen the route. It was announced in June 2006 that the entire bypass would be widened to four lanes with a grassy median separating the opposing flows of traffic. The three phase project began in September 2007 with a stretch between Maidstone and County Road 8 west of Essex. The four-laned highway opened in June 2009 at a cost of C$20.7