|
|
|
kamira51
Active Member
HAHA WOW
First you have Mississauga "oppose" it and now Toronto? TORONTO?? This is such a circus it's hilarious.
Toronto and Mississauga have their own problems to deal with instead of a highway that doesn't even touch them them.
Haljackey
Active Member
Again, municipalities have no power whatsoever to stop this. The provincial government has all the cards. Every single city, region and county in Ontario could oppose this and yet construction could be greenlit.
robmausser
Senior Member
Yes but at that point the government would be best advised to take a hard look at their support and whether they will be the party in power come 2022. Provincial politicians have power over the municipalities, but at the end of the day if you piss off enough people in those municipalities you will end up with no power.
Scotian
New Member
Where are these places? Europe is criss-crossed with highways and ring roads and outer ring roads and tunnelled expressways through cities and if you drive any direction outside major cities like Paris, Rome, Madrid, London etc. there are nothing but bedroom communities and warehousing/industrial zones. If you take a train between Tokyo and Osaka you see the same thing for almost the entire ride. Ditto for Shanghai to Beijing. What part of the developed world isn't like this??
innsertnamehere
Superstar
The difference is NY toll roads you drive hundreds of kilometres because they are inter-regional turnpikes. The 413 isn't such a road.
Northern Light
Superstar
Enough.
You can be in favour of this highway as much as you wish; but as the rest of us have to pay for it and deal with the impact of it; we get a say.
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
Take a look at those highways in Google earth. I think (because I don't have the time right now to check) you will find most of those "highways" are nothing close to the 6 lane controlled access monstrosity being proposed. Many are 4 lanes and closer to provincial highway standards (think hwy 9). You also said the other key point , many of those cities have massive well developed transit systems.
Scotian
New Member
There's definitely more 4 lane limited-access roads in those regions and that's definitely something the GTHA lacks (but, again, many would say "for the better) but the 6 lane controlled access expressways are definitely all around those places. Basically any roadway starting with a "A" around Paris, Rome or Madrid or M around London is at least 6 lanes. Zoom in on any of those regions and there are plenty, and not all of them are long-distance highways - the A14, for example, goes from the heart of La Defense to connect to another road 20 km's away.
And yeah, transit's better. The RER is needed and I am all for laying more track wherever we can and I'd like to kick the government (and past governments) to get this moving much faster than it has. But in fairness to my earlier point, I can take a train from Toronto to Kitchener and pass through much of the area this road will get built and what is empty there today is going to be developed in the future and that train ride will look a lot like those other trips I mentioned.
ARG1
Senior Member
Where does it say the new highway will be 6 lanes wide? And also we're in the process of developing a lot of transit ourselves, so its not like this highway is being built at the expense of transit (also this highway is coming with a transitway).
north-of-anything
Active Member
Who exactly would be transported with this transitway? I don't see it being convenient for any traveller who doesn't live right near the corridor, at least the 407 passes through the urban cores of Vaughan and Markham, and Bramalea GO. There's no real value to one being built, and if the project gets scaled back any, the transitway will be the first to go.
I would be slightly more comfortable with the idea of a freeway through here if they weren't making an excessively large median for a future widening to three lanes like their Bradford Bypass plans (because that is absolutely what will happen 10-15 years after it's built) or if we can be absolutely certain this won't be sold off like the ETR (because that's why we're in this dilemma in the first place). I don't have an opinion on using the corridor for utilities or other purposes, but I still don't see how a road more like Highway 27 or even Hanlon Parkway couldn't do the same job.
I would be slightly more comfortable with the idea of a freeway through here if they weren't making an excessively large median for a future widening to three lanes like their Bradford Bypass plans (because that is absolutely what will happen 10-15 years after it's built) or if we can be absolutely certain this won't be sold off like the ETR (because that's why we're in this dilemma in the first place). I don't have an opinion on using the corridor for utilities or other purposes, but I still don't see how a road more like Highway 27 or even Hanlon Parkway couldn't do the same job.
Northern Light
Superstar
But many regions regret their construction, and in some cases segments are being downsized or removed as with the Peripherique in Paris.
Also important to note how little freight rail is used in Europe as compared to here, and the need to accommodate trucks.
Also a regret in Europe.
The fact that these areas made planning mistakes, doesn't mean we should seek to emulate them.
We also shouldn't understate how much we already have.
Toronto has a hell of a lot of highway as it is; no not as much as L.A.; but in lane km, we're right up there on a global scale.
Scotian
New Member
Fair, although Hidalgo's Peripherique plan is facing some pretty intense pushback.
Woodbridge_Heights
Senior Member
Well let's take a look at London shall we? In the greater London regions there are, m1, m40, m4, m3, m23, m20, m11, and m25, so 8 highways (10 if you count the m2 and a1). In the Toronto region we have the, qew/gardiner, 403, 401, 407, 410, 427, 400, 404/dvp, 412, and 418, total 10. And I'm not including the stub highway 409 or the remote 115/35. So it appears to me that Toronto and London have a similarly developed highway system despite London having 3 times the population of Toronto.. .
The comparison with Rome is worse as there are only 5 autostrada in the region.
Well I am on record as saying that my preference would be for a provincial style 4 lane limited access highway. However the pro highway crew have commented that we should be building 6 lane lest it be be underbuilt 30 years from now. So that's why we are discussing a 6 lane highway. I will repeat my preference for a 4 lane limited access highway a la hwy 9 vs a full 400 series highway...
Allandale25
Senior Member
Given that most of Toronto Council is in favour of the $28.5B in transit spending for the four priority projects, it shouldn't be a surprise they have an opinion on how $8-10B for a new 400-series highway could be better spent.