Red Hill Valley Parkway (Hamilton)

[Millstone]

That's it? I'd almost expect a controlled or semi-controlled (a la 35/115, or 11 out Barrie/Orillia way) arrangement all the way to the 401...

You mean a RIRO. The cheap solution, not necessiarily the best.

I've not heard anything of Hwy 5 and 6 being interchanged.

 

[waterloowarrior]

You mean a RIRO. The cheap solution, not necessiarily the best.

I've not heard anything of Hwy 5 and 6 being interchanged.

http://www.hamiltoncatch.org/view_article.php?id=71

http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/pubs/shp2007/future.html

 

[Northern Light]

Reviving this moribund thread for actual news; though less about the highway than the inquiry into the highway's shortcomings.......which may, itself, cost $20,000,000

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/red-hill-valley-parkway-inquiry-cost-20-million-1.6278533

Excerpts:

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[innsertnamehere]

absurd that the city will find ways to waste that much money on lawyers over this. The problem was fixed last year, move on and use that money for better purposes. $20 million isn't a small sum of money for a municipality the size of Hamilton.

 

[Branden Simon]

The years-long slippery Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry released its findings Wednesday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/red-hill-parkway-inquiry-1.7043315

 

[innsertnamehere]

Should Ontario take over Hamilton's municipal parkways?

Mayor Andrea Horwath said she wants to raise the prospect of an "upload" of the Red Hill and Linc with the province.

www.thespec.com

Should Ontario take over Hamilton's municipal parkways?​

Mayor Andrea Horwath wants to talk to the province about taking over Hamilton’s two increasingly busy, costly and occasionally contentious municipal parkways.
Her planned pitch comes in response to Tory Premier Doug Ford’s decision to “upload” responsibility for Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway as part of a “new deal” for Canada’s largest and apparently most cash-strapped metropolis.
It also follows a four-year judicial inquiry into a scandal involving the Red Hill Valley Parkway that will likely cost local taxpayers about $28 million.
Horwath is trying to schedule a meeting with new provincial Infrastructure Minister Kinga Surma and plans to bring up the idea of uploading both the Red Hill and Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway.
“I would really love it if the province took a view of making those changes provincewide, not just in Toronto, including for the Linc and the (Red Hill) parkway,” she said in an interview, adding Hamilton and other cities are still dealing with the fiscal fallout of government “downloading” former provincial highways two decades ago.

It won't be the first time the city has made such a request, noted Coun. Brad Clark, who also included parkway uploading as part of his own 2014 mayoral campaign.
But he argued there is a “logic” to a provincial takeover of two parkways that increasingly serve as a “shortcut” for transport trucks connecting between 400-series highways. “There is an argument to be made we are paying to maintain what is now a part of the provincial highway system,” he said.
Costs do add up fast on the parkways that connect the lakeside QEW to Highway 403 atop the escarpment.

 

[BrenWilson]

It's a mixed bag. On the one hand it becomes someone else's problem but on the other hand the city loses control of the interchanges and surrounding landuse as well. Hamilton's expressways aren't elevated (for the most part) and aren't the same financial drain that something like the gardiner is because of that.

 

[innsertnamehere]

They are still probably 20-30% of the city's annual road budget.

MTO doesn't control land use adjacent, FYI. MTO permits are annoying, but the city doesn't give up so much control as to it be worth the literally hundreds of millions the Province uploading them would save. MTO generally doesn't care about land use beyond a minimum setback requirement and has gotten a lot better about multi-modal facilities across their freeway bridges recently as well.

Remember that the City is staring down a likely 100+ million bill to widen the expressways towards the end of the decade, then large rehabilitation costs going into the 2030's and 2040's as the bridges associated with the roads reach end of life.

The Linc and RHVP also function as provincial road facilities to an even greater extent than the Gardiner and DVP do, IMO - they serve as a critical connection from Niagara and the US east coast to SW Ontario and Michigan.