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Halton-Peel Freeway (MTO/Region of Peel, Proposal)

waterloowarrior

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http://www.halton-peelbats.ca/main.htm

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Options for road network discussed
http://www.independentfreepress.ca/news/article/81653
Tuesday December 1 2009

About 70 people came out to a public information centre (PIC) in Brampton last week to learn more about a possible future road network that could be built in the area.

At the PIC, Tyrone Gan, of HDRiTRANS Consulting Inc. discussed the preliminary recommended transportation network that will be needed to handle the tripling of the population expected in the study area until 2031.

“Nothing is cast in concrete,†said Gan. “We are here to listen to what your thoughts are.â€

Included in the network is a connection between 10 Sideroad and Guelph St. somewhere between Tenth Line and Winston Churchill Blvd. and a bypass connecting 10 Sideroad to Winston Churchill Blvd. north of Five Sideroad.
Also included is a link to the north of Norval between Winston Churchill Blvd. and Bovaird Dr.

The Norval bypass to provide new east/west connection around Norval and across the Credit River recommended in the study includes two alternative routes— one heading north off Bovaird Dr. bypassing Norval then rejoining on to Guelph St. The other alternative runs south of Norval between approximately Mississauga Rd. and 10 Sideroad.

Gan said they recognize both options “would have significant environmental impacts†that will be looked at during the Environmental Assessment process.
The study also recommends a Halton Peel Freeway that would run between Mayfield Rd. in the Heritage Rd. area then swing into Halton north of Five Sideroad over to the Ninth Line area connecting to Hwy. 401 and 407. At one point the freeway would cross Ninth Line said Gan.

The Bramwest Parkway is designed to serve development in the Bramwest Secondary Plan to provide connections to Hwy. 407 and the proposed Halton-Peel Freeway. The road would run between Five Sideroad and 407.

The study also recommends public transit improvement including potential rapid transit bus service on Steeles Ave. from Brampton to the new planned GO Station in Milton on Trafalgar Rd. south of Hwy. 401, potential rapid bus transit on Guelph St., the Norval bypass and Bovaird Dr., potential bus service on Ninth Line, potential Halton-Peel Freeway transitway and carpool parking lots in the Mayfield Rd. and Winston Churchill Blvd. area.

Gan stressed this was a master plan study and does not provide routing locations. Designation of where specifically roads would go would be determined through an Environmental Assessment process.

A man in the audience asked what incentives there would be for people to take transit.

Gan said transit usage is low and it will not change overnight.

“It will take increased transit improvements as well as increased congestion on roads,†said Gan. He added there will be “no overnight miracles,†but “we have to start somewhere.â€

A woman asked what the proposed network would do to address truck traffic on Ninth Line through the residential area of Georgetown.

“With this network there would be more options,†said Gan. “We’re providing more alternative routes that are suitable for trucks.â€

Another woman asked how much of the planned population growth could be attributed to Georgetown. The answer was 29 per cent for Halton with the remainder occurring in Brampton.

Gan was asked when some of the roads could be built.

“Some improvements you could see happening in the next several years,†said Gan. He estimated the EA process for arterial roads could take one to two years, and for the freeway it would be at least two years.

Gan said the province has plans to widen Hwy. 401 in Mississauga and Milton and when traffic warrants it Hwy. 407 is also to be widened.

“It’s not to say there won’t be congestion because there will be congestion everywhere. That’s the reality today nd will be the reality in the future,†said Gan.
 
DO NOT WANT

Well, except for the public transit improvements mentioned...
 
It's kind of weird to use the word 'freeway' for an Ontario highway project, isn't it? I've only ever heard Americans use that word.

Also, if they're going to build this, maybe it shouldn't be free.
 
^Yeah, my memory might be fuzzy but I remember the Eves government mentioning that any future freeway projects would be PPP-developed toll roads. That was something I would have actually supported the Conservatives on.
 
Well, at least for the time being this is just regional-municipality-based blue-skying. Even if the province were to adopt an agnostic approach towards this a la Red Hill Creek in Hamilton, I highly doubt Halton and Peel would be able and willing to finance this on their own, especially given how little they can agree on at the moment. (Can you imagine the sight of a 90-year-old Hazel getting all turf-warry over asking her poor little post-sprawl Mississaugan snowflakes to foot the bill for this with their property taxes?). FWIW, the current Halton Official Plan amendment which is in the final stages of being updated to be Greenbelt compliant makes no mention of this.

There is a bit of a showdown looming on the issue of freeway expansion in general, as all the top-tier municipalities will be revising their OPs to bring them into compliance with Places to Grow, with the province in a position to reject anybody insufficiently green. York Region is refusing to drop the Bradford Bypass from its transportation plan while the province says that road's just not on the 30-year horizon. Simcoe County is even nuttier... their last draft of their long-term plan had a new 400-series outer bypass of Barrie that will no doubt make the provincial Growth Secretariat shit a brick. At some point in the next year, the province has to decide whether it'll permit those to stand or not.

^Yeah, my memory might be fuzzy but I remember the Eves government mentioning that any future freeway projects would be PPP-developed toll roads. That was something I would have actually supported the Conservatives on.
Well, at the time that was kind of a fig leaf to back up the claim that if given the choice, they'd make their 407 decision again. The cold hard truth is whether you love or hate cars, privatizing an almost-finished highway for a short-term cash hit to balance the provincial books for one year was quite possibly the single worst public policy decision that's been made in Canada in the last fifteen years.

McGuinty has announced that the 407 East extension, if it proceeds, will be wholly-publicly-owned and tolled. The 404 will be extended as far as Ravenshoe Road starting next year, without a toll.
 
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I'm with RR on this one. DO NOT WANT.

Bye bye apple orchards (the Heritage Road corridor is home to several orchards due to a localized patch gravelly soil, necessary for apple trees).

Bye bye Huttonville. And I'm sure Norval, Terra Cotta, and Cheltenham won't survive having such great highway access.

I really don't understand why it needs to be a freeway. What lays in its path if it were to be extendedis dominated by protected Niagara Escarpment, Caledon Lake Forest, and conservation lands. So that SHOULD mean that it will never get extended past Mayfield Road, or (god forbid) King Street.

The length of this proposed freeway is about 11km (407 to Mayfield Road). At 100km/h, that's a 7-minute trip. If they built a parkway-style arterial which allowed for an average speed of 60km/h, the trip would take 11 minutes. Is an extra 4 minutes that big of an issue? Particularly if it saves the cost of building a fully grade-separated road and would reduce the development pressure on the Niagara Escarpment that a freeway would create?

This whole thing stinks.
 
I'm with RR on this one. DO NOT WANT.

Bye bye apple orchards (the Heritage Road corridor is home to several orchards due to a localized patch gravelly soil, necessary for apple trees).

Bye bye Huttonville. And I'm sure Norval, Terra Cotta, and Cheltenham won't survive having such great highway access.

.

Some of those towns are going to be swallowed up by GeorgeBraMilHalton

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...because Places to Grow didn't aim to completely ban sprawl, merely constrain it to the so-called "whitebelt" and put in various carrots and sticks to ensure that the next round of urban footprint expansion would be denser, more transit-supportive and so on.

The greenbelt's boundaries were roughly calculated to correspond as much as possible to water features and area of particularly good soil quality, but at some point as you move inward the protection drops away. Ultimately, it's up the upper-tier muncipalities to decide how much whitebelt to urbanize and how much to leave agricultural.

In this case, Peel is going for broke in terms of expanding Brampton as far west as possible on every available shred of whitebelt---even stupidly jumping the Credit River into that little pocket you see on that map above. Halton's ROPA38 is marginally better, in that it actually does leave a reasonable portion of the whitebelt as agricultural. You're still looking at a monstrous Milton by 2020, mind you, population 250k (!).
 
.
In this case, Peel is going for broke in terms of expanding Brampton as far west as possible on every available shred of whitebelt---even stupidly jumping the Credit River into that little pocket you see on that map above. Halton's ROPA38 is marginally better, in that it actually does leave a reasonable portion of the whitebelt as agricultural. You're still looking at a monstrous Milton by 2020, mind you, population 250k (!).

Here's the ROPA38/Sustainable Halton map.. Milton is poised for some huge growth (p.1, 4, and 12 are key)
http://www.halton.ca/ppw/planning/PDFs/ROPA38_StaffReport_LPS114-09_ Attachment1A.pdf
 
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Oh, I understand now. And the best way to do this is to build it around a new freeway.

Indeed. Which is exactly why OGS and/or MMAH ought to give any municipality that adds freeways to its official plans a swift slap upside the head. We'll see if they have the balls to do this. Assuming Halton's final ROPA38 doesn't include this freeway, York's fetish for a Bradford Bypass will probably be the first test case for the province to weigh in on how it intends to enforce the sustainable transportation planks of PtG.

To a fair extent, the problem is that their colleagues one tower over at MTO never really kicked their asphalt habit and realized they're not just the Ministry of Well-Engineered Interchanges. These two new "corridor studies" (GTA West and Niagara-to-GTA) have basically been the same as the Harris-era studies they replaced, with the odd reference to demand being lessened somewhat by more trains here or installing a busway there. Likewise, the ongoing studies for the 427 extension and a possible 424 aren't exactly brimming with urbanist enlightenment.

So we have the Ministries of Municipal Affairs, Energy and Infrastructure, Environment, and Finance, plus Metrolinx and the Premier's Office more or less singing from the same hymm book when it comes to Places to Grow compliance, and then MTO forging ahead with these studies that pay lip service to the new planning environment but ultimately recommend exactly the same sort of solutions they were recommending ten years ago. So long as this is the case, you can't hugely fault municipalities for being no more enlightened.
 
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It's kind of weird to use the word 'freeway' for an Ontario highway project, isn't it? I've only ever heard Americans use that word.

Also, if they're going to build this, maybe it shouldn't be free.
The 401 is a freeway.
The MacDonald-Cartier Freeway.
 
I find it peculiar that a country road is being replaced by a freeway. Not to sound like a crotchety old fart or, worse, a NIMBY, but I'm not too thrilled about what this means for the population of Halton Hills and west Brampton.

Getting from Georgetown or west Brampton to the highway is currently a fairly irritating process during rush hour, but a new highway? I'm surprised that there would be money for such a venture.
 
I find it peculiar that a country road is being replaced by a freeway. Not to sound like a crotchety old fart or, worse, a NIMBY, but I'm not too thrilled about what this means for the population of Halton Hills and west Brampton.

Getting from Georgetown or west Brampton to the highway is currently a fairly irritating process during rush hour, but a new highway? I'm surprised that there would be money for such a venture.

That is a bit of an understatement! I don't want this to come out as (or be interpreted as) a "pro-highway" posting....but there really needs to be something done about the commute options to all parts of Brampton (and, I presume, Georgetown).

I have lived there nearly all my life and and have witnessed the growth and the impact it has on quality of life........I also happen to work in an industry sector where, pretty near, all of the jobs are downtown Toronto. So for several decades I have seen the drive to and from Brampton to the financial core of Toronto grow from 35-40 minutes to now, typically, 1 hour and 20 minutes....and it is only growing in one direction.

What is "fairly irritating" to me is how the Province can take a suburban city of +/- 500k which has such lousy links (transit and road) to Toronto and then designate it as a "place to grow" without some sort of solutions that will allow the free (or freer) flow of people and goods to and from that city.

Forget future growth, the current needs of Brampton are for better roads and/or transit and they are very slow in coming. In my 1 hour and 20 minute commute, fully 30 - 40 minutes of it each day are spent just moving along the 410.....this road (the one direct connection the city has) makes the 401, 427 and Gardiner parts of my commute and absolute dream by comparison.

The growth was poorly planned, yes, but that is no reason to punish the people who live there for the rest of eternity.
 

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