Dan416
Senior Member
Does this make the stupid tunnel impossible? No. But I think it clearly shows that it is a bad idea and will see its own problems if it ever goes ahead. I really don't expect it to though.
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Highway 401 Transit and Auto Tunnel
- Thread starter UrbanAffair
- Start date
Steve X
Senior Member
It seems like bigger tunnels pose significantly more risk in GTA soil conditions. The 401 needs a really big tunnel carrying at least 3 lanes in each direction to even make it worth while. It'll probably never work out if they have enough trouble with the Scarborough subway tunnel.
PL1
Senior Member
God, I really wish we'd stop talking about this fever dream, worse-than-a-napkin-drawing-like-SmartTrack idea. Never is a very long time, but I don't believe this will ever happen.
Admiral Beez
Superstar
I often walk the dog after work around 5pm over the Riverdale Park pedestrian bridge, and when I look down at all the thousands of drivers trying to get to their houses in Newmarket, Ajax and the like, I think to myself (and I have to admit the lyric from Pink Floyd's The Happiest Days of Our Lives crosses my mind: "When they got home at night, Their fat and psychopathic wives Would thrash them within inches of their lives"); you could not pay me enough to do that commute.
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Admiral Beez
Superstar
One thing I don't get is why a tunnel? Why not a second level instead? That's what most highway focused urban areas do, like Taiwan, KL and China below.
Haljackey
Active Member
Northern Light
Superstar
Because its every bit as silly as the tunnel idea.
Common problem:
Insufficient capacity on interchange roads to handle more incoming or outgoing traffic.
Where are the ramps going?
Benefit: (arguably) avoid certain conditions associated with tunneling
Negative: Toronto's experience with the Gardiner indicates support piers/bents have a life expectancy below 50 years, reconstruction and ongoing maintenance in a road salt environment are hideously expensive.
Negative: Noise pollution Car traffic located above near-by housing will see noise spread far and wide, unless, of course, you want noise barriers 4 storeys high.......expensive and visual blight even before thinking about tagging.
Negative: You still need bridges over the major river valleys, but now they are bridges with piers that will straddle the existing bridges, unless you divert to the side, either way, very expensive and environmentally consequential.
*****
Up/down changes the how, but not the why/why not. The answer is still no, because it would actually make overall traffic worse than it is now, at best.........it simply cannot achieve the desired goal at any cost, let alone a reasonable one.
rbt
Senior Member
Doug has argued [mostly as a city councillor*] that subways, because they're underground, do not disrupt life on the surface during construction. It's possible he actually believes that you could build additional 401 lanes without traffic restrictions on the existing roadway.
* The Spadina Extension had lane restrictions at half a dozen major intersection at the time but that was largely ignored.
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innsertnamehere
Superstar
Subway extensions need land to throw up venting, emergency exits, and station buildings - in the case of a 401 tunnel, there would be no stations, only emergency exits and venting structures, as well as tunnel portals.
Those structures would need to go somewhere - but despite common belief the 401 has more space along it than many people think. MTO owns a corridor about 100m wide and regularly shifts lanes around as it is to make space for construction along the corridor normally. If you track the 401 as it goes across Toronto there is regularly space across the entire corridor to place structures like emergency exits and venting structures without impacting the existing highway corridor.
The most impactful part of a highway tunnel will be the tunnel portals. Strategic location of those will be key to minimize any traffic impacts - but if they are located around major interchanges, MTO often owns a lot of excess land in those areas already to place them.
Also - the 401 regularly has long-term lane reductions across it's corridor as it is. MTO just wrapped up a long term lane reduction on the 401 WB at Kennedy Rd. dropping a highway from 7 to 6 lanes has a lot less of an impact as a lane reduction somewhere like the Gardiner, which dropped from 2 to 3 lanes (a 14% lane reduction compared to a 33% lane reduction).
urbancog
Active Member
If Doug wants to reduce congestion on the 401, he should build proposed rail line 10 in the 2051 rail project assessment, taking 40,000+ car trips off the highway by offering a usable transit route instead of buses along the 407.
ARG1
Senior Member
I don't think Doug views this as an exclusive OR.
urbancog
Active Member
I'm sure you're right, unfortunately.
I just think that when we've got 28 lanes (14 each direction) on the combined 401 + 407 that it's time to think about different solutions.
just east of the creek
Senior Member
Caught this on CNN tonight. A Norwegian tunnel
Project. Makes for interesting reading..
Project. Makes for interesting reading..
CMQSD402F9011
New Member
Would’ve been better if most industries went to Rail for their freight transport in Canada especially Ontario. What’s not even known is that the former USSR had higher Rail traffic than in the U.S. or other places, both being Passenger and Freight in the USSR.
lenaitch
Senior Member
There a number of long tunnels. Not too sure of multi-level, multi-lane ones under urban spaces.
It used to be thus, then road became cheaper and more flexible (and we lost a ton of actual manufacturing). The vast majority of rail freight these days is seacans from off-shore and bulk (petro, grain, plastic pellets, etc.).