Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

[Haljackey]

Niagara Area Highway Improvement stuff

Highway 58 is a full freeway from the 406 through the Welland Canal tunnel. I've always wondered why it wasn't extended to the QEW; potentially meeting up at the 420 interchange.

This would give you a freeway alternate for the Garden City Skyway, a godsend during those busy tourist times in the summer.

Alas, with the development west of the 420, you can't route a freeway to meet up with the QEW anymore in Niagara Falls- it would need to connect somewhere south of the city instead. That won't really help traffic to/from Niagara Falls as it would be too far out of the way.

---

QEW could use some widening to the 420 interchange. There was a project that pushed 6 lanes east of the 405, but it didn't go all the way. There's a lot of weaving in the 4 lane section since both the 420 and QEW are reduced to a single lane Toronto bound through the interchange.

---

Regarding the Peace Bridge - I agree twinning isn't needed as the bridge itself isn't the bottleneck right now- it's the customs plazas. A second span has been studied in the past, but I don't see it getting built any time soon as travel between to the US has been going down, not up. I could see a replacement built closer to when the Peace Bridge could use significant renovations, so you could divert all traffic to the new span and close the old one for maintenance work.

Once refurbishments are complete you could have 2 lanes (one way) instead of 3 on the current bridge as that would give you a shoulder and wider lanes, maybe dedicating one for trucks. That might help increase it's lifespan too since it would only take the weight of 2 lanes if fully backed up instead of 3- less stress on the structure. (I'd assume the twinned span would have 2-3 lanes).

---

406 Extension seems novel to me, haven't heard of this before, but it would be nice for Port Colborne residents for sure.

---

Finally, glad to see the bottleneck at the QEW and Red Hill getting addressed. Niagara-bound, you have 7 lanes merging into 3 here so at least staggering the lane drops would be nice- full 8 lane widening (with or without HOVs) to the 406 would be useful in the peak tourist season. The Garden City Skyway twinning also allows 8 laning to the 405, and maybe they could do something about eliminating the dedicated left exit lane to the 405 which always causes last second weaving for Niagara-bound traffic.

I always leave extra space and have my wits about me once I see Bass Pro Shops. I know a lot of drivers who aren't veterans driving this stretch might make some sudden lane changes.

 

[Dreambig1]

I kinda wondered why Ford and the Ontario Government didn't put together an "Ontario style" projects list like the Prime Minister is doing to advance what Carney calls "nation building projects" but on a provincial scale that could see a wide range of infrastructure projects that are Ontario specific be prioritized by Queen's park over the remaining part of the decade or so. esentially you would have federal and provincial projects happening at the same time which i see as a huge boost to the national and provincial economies and would provide benifits to the people.

 

[2323]

One more lane bro.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2000303818505170965

Let's actually just reduce all 400 series highways to 2 lanes. Surely demand will evaporate into thin air, right?

 

[PL1]

Let's actually just reduce all 400 series highways to 2 lanes. Surely demand will evaporate into thin air, right?

No, but adding lanes and then using those extra lanes to justify further sprawl leads to more congestion. And the lanes at the destination (e.g. Toronto) cannot be expanded, so traffic gets worse

 

[6ixGod]

Let's actually just reduce all 400 series highways to 2 lanes. Surely demand will evaporate into thin air, right?

I’m going to leave this video here for you. Please take notes. The fact you even wrote this in 2025 is mind boggling….induced demand has been a thing known to urban planners since the 1950s!

Stop it….

 

[innsertnamehere]

I’m going to leave this video here for you. Please take notes. The fact you even wrote this in 2025 is mind boggling….induced demand has been a thing known to urban planners since the 1950s!

Stop it….

What I take issue with is how misconstrued induced demand is.

I don't think anyone thinks induced demand isn't real - it's how people treat it and wildly misunderstand what it actually is.

When new infrastructure is built, it makes mobility easier. This is a good thing, and is true for all forms of infrastructure, be it cycle lanes, subway lines, or new or expanded highways.

When mobility is easier, people travel more. Again - this is a good thing! People are more willing to make trips when they are easier and get to enjoy a higher quality of life by making the trips to do the things they want to do. Amazing!

What the common media perception of induced demand does is several things:

1. Inflates all those extra trips as being worthless. "If travel times will be the same, we may as well not build the infrastructure" type deal.. which completely ignores that if you double the size of a highway, even if travel times stay the same, you can still accommodate twice as many trips generating GDP, wealth, and quality of life.
2. Assumes that induced demand is unlimited in depth. This is simply not true. The examples used for induced demand in locations like Houston often said "well, traffic was fixed for a few years, then it was just as bad as before", ignoring that population growth was a major driving factor in those trip growth patterns and that without the new infrastructure that trip times would likely be even worse. Houston is one of the fastest growing metro areas on the continent - it needs new infrastructure. When new road infrastructure is built in low-growth areas, it generally does induce new additional trips but rarely sees congestion return to the same level. It's not inherent in the road itself that these cars appear apparently out of nowhere - those cars come from growth, be it GDP, population, etc.

What induced demand actually is and does is:

1. Better infrastructure attracts more users. This is true of all infrastructure, both transit and highways. A new highway will see more people travel in that corridor just like a new subway line will see more people use it than the bus it replaced. This is good! It's literally the whole reason we build infrastructure.
2. New infrastructure induces demand often by pulling trips off existing corridors - the trips are not inherently new, but when an existing highway is heavily congested people are more likely to use other routes (like local streets). Similarly when a new subway line is built, people using parallel bus routes are more likely to detour to the faster rapid transit route. This detour will continue until travel times decline to an extent that the existing routes become a better option again.. So even if a highway is built and returns to 90% of the congestion it once was, it can still have significant benefits for other areas. This also opens up new opportunities to change the infrastructure on routes that are no longer as busy..
2. New infrastructure influences land use - people are more likely to move somewhere if infrastructure is better. A new highway will encourage more growth around the interchanges just like a new subway line will encourage more growth around the stations.

The "one more lane bro" meme of all highway projects being automatically worthless is just as cringey and incorrect as those who rep highway projects regardless of benefits or impacts.

The reality is that a modern society needs roads - what we as a society should be doing is not banning new roads, particularly since many can have major actual benefits to communities by removing regional traffic off local streets and vastly improving safety.

The reality is that roads and transportation infrastructure in general is tied closely to land use and that there is a lot of nuance on how we can build cities better while not resigning them to being traffic-filled messes because "road=bad".

Many, including not-just-bikes, looks at the Netherlands as a model of how to plan our cities. What you will notice when you look at the Netherlands is that they don't shy away from highways. In fact, the Netherlands has had one of the largest highway expansion programs in europe in the last 20 years. The difference between a place like the Netherlands and Houston is not that the Netherlands doesn't do roads, it's that it balances roads with other options which it carefully designs through both land use plans and infrastructure design for those alternatives to be a competitive choice to driving. The Netherlands over the last 20 years has built out an excellent freeway network and that has allowed cars to be mostly removed from local streets and has built the infrastructure so that it enjoys something remarkable - minimal peak hour congestion even with an extensive and very high quality roads network. This is Amsterdam and Rotterdam at 5:40pm on a wednesday - very little congestion outside of a few accidents.

How does the Netherlands do this? They build big highways, they provide alternative options, and they build infrastructure faster than the population grows. And with this new infrastructure, they have an excellent quality of life with the public being able to choose transit, cycling, walking, or driving depending on what works best for them and a GDP per capita now 25% higher than Canada.

Freeways should actually be friends of urbanists as they remove traffic from local streets - the Netherlands knows this and builds lots of freeways for cars to operate safely, quickly, efficiently, and away from pedestrians. Stroads are what we should be avoiding - lets build car roads for cars and streets for people.

 

[urbancog]

But the Netherland's key strategy is getting people out of single-user vehicles. The modal share of private motor vehicles for the Amsterdam area was only 43% compared to Toronto CMA at 76%. In accordance with stereotype, it's cycling that contributes the most, with walking and public transport having only slightly higher modal share. I don't have numbers but I'd imagine that a much higher percentage of inter-urban trips are also made by private motor vehicle here in Canada than in the Netherlands.

 

[innsertnamehere]

But the Netherland's key strategy is getting people out of single-user vehicles. The modal share of private motor vehicles for the Amsterdam area was only 43% compared to Toronto CMA at 76%. In accordance with stereotype, it's cycling that contributes the most, with walking and public transport having only slightly higher modal share. I don't have numbers but I'd imagine that a much higher percentage of inter-urban trips are also made by private motor vehicle here in Canada than in the Netherlands.
View attachment 703425

yes absolutely - the modal share is less different out of big cities though.

As I said however - the Netherlands achieved that modal share through land use decisions and building alternatives to the car, not purposefully strangling roads.

Toronto is actually investing a tonne in public transit right now so it's doing the right thing in this way, and land use is fairly compatible with this goal too (low-rise housing is a small fraction of total housing starts these days). My point is that we can build nice cities and nice roads at the same time. they aren't mutually exclusive - the key is go give people other options as they will take them even in the face of lots of road access.

 

[2323]

I’m going to leave this video here for you. Please take notes. The fact you even wrote this in 2025 is mind boggling….induced demand has been a thing known to urban planners since the 1950s!

Stop it….

I'm very much aware of what induced demand is and I am an avid consumer of urbanist content. I actually walk, cycle (yes, in the winter too), and use public transit more than I drive. As insertnamehere explained really well, it's not necessarily a bad thing. The Netherlands has some roads that rival the 401 in terms of design. I think it's actually a bigger problem when people just say "one lane bro" or send a link to a youtube video preaching an idea without actually knowing both sides to the argument. If you are sending this video to me, you should at least know NJB's own manifesto, in which he very much prefers that cars are kept on highways instead of on stroads or other arterials. He frequently mentions and lauds many cases of cars being rerouted onto bypasses and the former road being right-sized or prevented from expansion because it was no longer needed. And yes, if a highway is just built purely as a sprawl accelerator, it's bad, but that's not even necessarily what the 413 or Bradford Bypass is. The land is being developed with or without the highway. I really do hope Brampton takes the opportunity to narrow lanes and get rid of slip lanes. The Bradford Bypass will be very effective at, well, bypassing Downtown Bradford and maybe they can actually do something nice with it. It's all about policy, which is why highway expansion works in the Netherlands but it might lead to endless sprawl in Houston. There is nothing stopping us from enforcing stricter density laws and in fact many of the suburbs built in the last decade are increasingly mixed use and have multiplexes. My point is that there is more to it than just parroting the "highways are bad no matter what" attitude. A lot of people with that attitude would have been opposed to the 401 or 400 if it was being built today.

 

[nfitz]

But the Netherland's key strategy is getting people out of single-user vehicles. The modal share of private motor vehicles for the Amsterdam area was only 43% compared to Toronto CMA at 76%. In accordance with stereotype, it's cycling that contributes the most, with walking and public transport having only slightly higher modal share. I don't have numbers but I'd imagine that a much higher percentage of inter-urban trips are also made by private motor vehicle here in Canada than in the Netherlands.
View attachment 703425

I've barely ever heard of Alicante. Why does no one cycle?

 

[innsertnamehere]

I've barely ever heard of Alicante. Why does no one walk?

no-one cycles, not walks. I'd guess nobody cyles because its in southern spain with very high average temperatures and that there is minimal to no cycling infrastructure. That, or the data is missing or was assigned to walking or another mode for some reason.

 

[nfitz]

I'd guess nobody cyles because its in southern spain with very high average temperatures and that there is minimal to no cycling infrastructure. That, or the data is missing or was assigned to walking or another mode for some reason.

Perhaps the latter. A quick look at Google maps shows bike lanes.

Very mild winters. And while the summers are hot, it's on the sea, and is apparently one of the driest cities in Europe, which would mean very low humidity, and a lower humidex than Toronto in the summer. The summer is particularly dry, averaging only 26 mm of rain from June through August.

 

[Civdis]

What I take issue with is how misconstrued induced demand is.

I don't think anyone thinks induced demand isn't real - it's how people treat it and wildly misunderstand what it actually is.

When new infrastructure is built, it makes mobility easier. This is a good thing, and is true for all forms of infrastructure, be it cycle lanes, subway lines, or new or expanded highways.

When mobility is easier, people travel more. Again - this is a good thing! People are more willing to make trips when they are easier and get to enjoy a higher quality of life by making the trips to do the things they want to do. Amazing!

What the common media perception of induced demand does is several things:

1. Inflates all those extra trips as being worthless. "If travel times will be the same, we may as well not build the infrastructure" type deal.. which completely ignores that if you double the size of a highway, even if travel times stay the same, you can still accommodate twice as many trips generating GDP, wealth, and quality of life.
2. Assumes that induced demand is unlimited in depth. This is simply not true. The examples used for induced demand in locations like Houston often said "well, traffic was fixed for a few years, then it was just as bad as before", ignoring that population growth was a major driving factor in those trip growth patterns and that without the new infrastructure that trip times would likely be even worse. Houston is one of the fastest growing metro areas on the continent - it needs new infrastructure. When new road infrastructure is built in low-growth areas, it generally does induce new additional trips but rarely sees congestion return to the same level. It's not inherent in the road itself that these cars appear apparently out of nowhere - those cars come from growth, be it GDP, population, etc.

What induced demand actually is and does is:

1. Better infrastructure attracts more users. This is true of all infrastructure, both transit and highways. A new highway will see more people travel in that corridor just like a new subway line will see more people use it than the bus it replaced. This is good! It's literally the whole reason we build infrastructure.
2. New infrastructure induces demand often by pulling trips off existing corridors - the trips are not inherently new, but when an existing highway is heavily congested people are more likely to use other routes (like local streets). Similarly when a new subway line is built, people using parallel bus routes are more likely to detour to the faster rapid transit route. This detour will continue until travel times decline to an extent that the existing routes become a better option again.. So even if a highway is built and returns to 90% of the congestion it once was, it can still have significant benefits for other areas. This also opens up new opportunities to change the infrastructure on routes that are no longer as busy..
2. New infrastructure influences land use - people are more likely to move somewhere if infrastructure is better. A new highway will encourage more growth around the interchanges just like a new subway line will encourage more growth around the stations.

The "one more lane bro" meme of all highway projects being automatically worthless is just as cringey and incorrect as those who rep highway projects regardless of benefits or impacts.

The reality is that a modern society needs roads - what we as a society should be doing is not banning new roads, particularly since many can have major actual benefits to communities by removing regional traffic off local streets and vastly improving safety.

The reality is that roads and transportation infrastructure in general is tied closely to land use and that there is a lot of nuance on how we can build cities better while not resigning them to being traffic-filled messes because "road=bad".

Many, including not-just-bikes, looks at the Netherlands as a model of how to plan our cities. What you will notice when you look at the Netherlands is that they don't shy away from highways. In fact, the Netherlands has had one of the largest highway expansion programs in europe in the last 20 years. The difference between a place like the Netherlands and Houston is not that the Netherlands doesn't do roads, it's that it balances roads with other options which it carefully designs through both land use plans and infrastructure design for those alternatives to be a competitive choice to driving. The Netherlands over the last 20 years has built out an excellent freeway network and that has allowed cars to be mostly removed from local streets and has built the infrastructure so that it enjoys something remarkable - minimal peak hour congestion even with an extensive and very high quality roads network. This is Amsterdam and Rotterdam at 5:40pm on a wednesday - very little congestion outside of a few accidents.

View attachment 703395

How does the Netherlands do this? They build big highways, they provide alternative options, and they build infrastructure faster than the population grows. And with this new infrastructure, they have an excellent quality of life with the public being able to choose transit, cycling, walking, or driving depending on what works best for them and a GDP per capita now 25% higher than Canada.

Freeways should actually be friends of urbanists as they remove traffic from local streets - the Netherlands knows this and builds lots of freeways for cars to operate safely, quickly, efficiently, and away from pedestrians. Stroads are what we should be avoiding - lets build car roads for cars and streets for people.

Excellent response, thanks!

 

[innsertnamehere]

MTO has initiated planning studies for widening highway 401 from Cobourg to Kingston:

Highway 401 Planning Study in Quinte West

www.hwy401quintewest.ca

Highway 401 Belleville to Kingston

hwy401bellevilletokingston.ca

Highway 401 Cobourg to Colborne

www.highway401cobourgcolborne.ca

This is in addition to studies previously completed for Colborne-Brighton and through Belleville, completed in 2021 and 2018.

All studies assume an "ultimate" width of 8 lanes, with an interim measure of 6 lanes. Notably they also include design changes to the highway to increase the design speed to 130km/h, including a large number of grading profile changes and re-alignments around substandard curves. These changes will make the project of implementation to be quite expensive.

 

[2323]

Most of the curves are fine to be honest, the curve down the hill right as you come into Kingston is substandard though.