Undead
Senior Member
Politics are the darndest thing, aren't they?
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Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion
- Thread starter Haljackey
- Start date
Haljackey
Active Member
Not taking sides here but want to state that this widening is taking place in the 401's existing right of way. No additional farm land is being eaten up by this project or similar ones taking place in Cambridge, Tilbury and elsewhere. The same cannot be said for new builds like the 413 for example.
darth_freeman
Active Member
Road bad. Why don't people just take the Milton - Vaughan subway??
ARG1
Senior Member
But road widenings basically don't help anyone. One of the biggest contributors to traffic is things like weaving and extra lanes only make this problem worse. New highways that serve different areas and offer new routes are far more impactful at adding extra road capacity.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
This is absolutely not true and is a wild misconception.
There is a very clear differential between new infrastructure inducing new trips and it actively making traffic *worse*. I can guarantee you that the 401 through Milton and Mississauga will operate far, far better than it did before the widening once it was complete. It may not operate perfectly forever as growth occurs, but it's not going to be the same situation as it was before for at least a generation.
The highway widenings that seem "pointless" are the ones that add only a small amount of capacity in an area experiencing high growth. I.e. widening the Gardiner would not really improve traffic at all as it would simply convert transit trips and serves a high growth area, or the QEW widening through Halton a decade ago which increased the road capacity by only about 20% on a highway which has been experiencing extremely rapid demand growth, resulting in traffic returning to it's pre-widening state within a decade.
The 401 to Milton is effectively doubling capacity on the highway, it will be adequate outside of peak rush hour for decades to come.
ARG1
Senior Member
Ok if we're talking about extending the Express to Milton, then yes you are correct. My point was about just adding the extra lane though. Furthermore extending the express to Milton does nothing for the overcrowded Toronto and eastern Mississauga sections.
The QEW through Halton did add an HOV lane though, which has been extremely useful.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Indeed it is, albeit it hasn't improved traffic much on the QEW a decade later. Particularly in rush hours it's fairly underutilized and has a minimal impact on overall throughput. It is heavily used on weekends for recreational traffic though, which I generally agree should be the focus.
Had the QEW widening featured a new GP lane as well as the HOV, traffic would be operating a lot better albeit likely still experience some level of congestion.
Halton Region in general is lucky it has the LSW line which removes a ton of demand along the corridor. Really Burlington / Oakville / Hamilton are connected to Toronto via only a 6+2 lane road and the 407, which normally would require far more capacity for that many people. Going north of Toronto to northern York Region (i.e. north of Richmond Hill) has probably a smaller population and demand level, but a lower transit modal share and sees generally similar traffic with a far higher effective capacity between the 404 / 400.
darth_freeman
Active Member
Very few, if any, projects actually simply add an additional general lane to a highway. They either add HOV/managed lanes, are combined with bridge replacements, rehabilitations, or convert express/collector lanes, increase safety by extending merge/weaving distances, etc.
So many articles about why adding lanes is bad, but it's so rare that lanes are simply added for capacity only. The 401 express/collector conversion will add redundancy as well incase there is an accident on one set of lanes.
So many articles about why adding lanes is bad, but it's so rare that lanes are simply added for capacity only. The 401 express/collector conversion will add redundancy as well incase there is an accident on one set of lanes.
Haljackey
Active Member
At least this project is doing what it can to reduce weaving. Collector-express config reduces multi-lane changes, and the buffered HOV lane controls the entrance/exit points.
When complete there won't really be much 'demand to induce'. It's already there. Milton is growing like a weed and the 401 is the lifeblood of Ontario's economy. Whatever we can do to make it flow better benefits us all. This ain't just one commuter highway for suburbs/exurbs, it handles more than commuters. Just in time inventory truckers, long distance drivers, vacationers/tourists, etc all traverse this highway. While the 407 does help act as a bypass in the Toronto area, its expensive. Elsewhere in the province there really isn't a good alternate to the 401 when it is heavily congested/closed.
However I am in full agreement that we have to do more than just widen / build more highways. Getting folks on transit and WFH more will help. I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to WFH permanently now thanks to the pandemic, so that's one less road user in rush hour or one less bus rider (which takes like 4-5x as long for me to get to downtown London vs driving... and yes I live in the city
)
innsertnamehere
Superstar
Ontario generally has been building HOVs with any new urban widening project - but they definitely still add GP lanes. The 427 widening north of the 409 took it from 4 to 6+2HOV for example, The 401 widening through Mississauga and milton is taking it from 6 to 8/10+2HOV, the 401 widening in Cambridge took it from 6 to 12, there are a bunch of 6-laning projects on rural parts of the 401 in various stages of construction and approval, the 417 is getting widened from 6 to 8 lanes through the eastern part of Ottawa, etc.
ARG1
Senior Member
6 to 8+2HOV but carry on
kamira51
Active Member
It's hard to take these kinds of people seriously, they need to realize that car infrastructure is a necessity in Ontario, especially in the GTA, but I can also understand the other side of the coin.
The biggest issue is the current rail network only benefits people going to and from Toronto, but for people who want to go anywhere else, requires a car and that means having a good road network and that means more highway infrastructure.
I belive it all stems from the fact we ripped up perfectly good railway corridors across the province, we wouldn't need to rely on the automobile
This is the situation we created, so how do you fix it?
Deadpool X
Senior Member
It was a way of saying that such low density suburbs 50+ km from city centre will never have subways or extensive bus network and they will always be car reliant. The best we can do is to take some more downtown bound traffic off the roads by improving GO service but on any other route, car is the only reasonable option. If we did not want to expand 401, we should have built Toronto a lot more dense and Mississauga should have been an outer suburb with high density. Milton should not have existed.
Also remember that improving GO services on Milton line is a multi-billion dollar (and possibly multi-decade) project. That's just for downtown bound traffic. It does not even address traffic for other routes. How much did the 401 expansion which not only helps Milton but also Mississauga cost? Around $850 million. And how long did it take? Just a handful of years. There you go!
(If someone claims 401 expansion only helps the routes that are along 401 then let me remind you that cars wanting to drive on 400, 404, 427, Gardiner etc will use 401 first. While using GO to travel from Milton to Brampton is not a reasonable option.)
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DirectionNorth
Active Member
The best we can do would be to stop building these goddamn places.