BurlOak
Senior Member
It is definitely an interesting idea, and would have a significantly smaller environmental impact than increasing the ROW width and making a larger cut.
I'm not really a big fan of making an E-W highway that starts at Highway 407 and continues further west. Dumping passenger flow onto a private tolled highway seems like a bad idea to me (W4 on the map). Unless of course they create a separate highway beside it up to the 403-407 interchange, and sign that highway as 403.
And it's kind of strange to me that the Highway 6 upgrades are so far down the list. Seems to me that a 400-series link between the 401 and 403 somewhere around the 6 corridor should be one of the top priorities in the west GTHA.
They were happy to dump people onto the 407 on the East end, so I do not see any reason why they would not do likewise in the West. 403 through Hamilton is essentially a parallel route to option W4 so people do have an option. 407 would be a more or less continuous highway from Newcastle to West Hamilton - but the agreements may be different on the East, West and Central portions.
As I understand it, highway 6 will remain a RIRO highway (similar to hwy 11 through Barrie) with the freeway only occuring at the south end to Dundas (Highway 5) and bypassing Morriston to the 401. I do not think the options are either or. Maybe they will choose the Westmost alignment from Kitchener to Hamilton West (W1) and the extension of highway 407 to West Hamilton (W4). I think the environment is more sensitive along the W2 and W3 routes.