Well, yes... I'm genuinely surprised that this is apparently coming as news to you. The 401 has been beyond stipulated design capacity for decades, and it's no secret. Just about every year one paper or another does a major piece on it. I might be off the mark, but I seem to recall, about twenty years ago, the figure of design capacity quoted in an article of the Toronto Star of 48.000 vehicles a day past any given point when it was opened. Back then, it had four lanes. So if we extrapolate and assume a capacity of 12,000 cars per day per lane, the 440,000 using it vastly exceeds the 144,000 at a typical 12-lane point and the 192,000 at a 16-lane point. That's why the traffic crawls for about four hours in the morning and four hours again in the evening. I'm guessing you don't travel the 401 during rush hour all that often. Neither do I, thank God.
Part of the change is due to the growth of Toronto, part of it is due to women now typically working outside the home, and part of it is due to a sea change in the way we ship things. In the 1950s, rail and water transport were more important than they are now. Sometime in the 70s, shipping by 18-wheeler in "just in time" scenarios really took off. The 401 is very much a part of that. I read a few years ago that the US Defense Department considers Hwy 401, due to its importance in trade, the most important strategic asset outside the United States. Most of those changes weren't anticipated when the 401 was designed in the 50s and redesigned in the 60s. Even if they had been, we can only make a given highway so big. The 407 was planned, roughly, in the 1960s, but it wasn't realized for 30 years and when it was, it was as a toll road that hobbles its attractiveness as an alternative to the freeway.
I think it's useful for getting some people off the highway, but it really wouldn't change all that much. REX isn't going to get people to the DVP, the 404, the 427, the 410, or other routes north and south. The problem with rail transit is that it's doomed to remain on rails. It can't turn at right angles, take a new course, or deliver you directly to your destination. It sure isn't going to get goods from the distribution centre straight to POS locations... that's one of the reasons 18-wheelers became so crucial to our delivery systems. We went from putting it on a truck to put it on a train to put it on a truck, to just putting it on a truck. Don't get me wrong; I'd be delighted to see high speed rail transit between cities. But it's only a partial solution; it can't replace the facility and virtuosity of the road grid. Something might, one day, but I really can't conceive of what yet so I imagine that "one day" is still a long way off.
