Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

[MisterF]

Montreal spent over a billion on that line, so if you want to increase the project budget by 1000%, sure.

Interesting. Seems excessive. Railways don't tend to be any more expensive than freeways so it can't be typical for both sharing a right of way to cost 10x what each on their own would cost. It's a pretty common setup.

 

[ShonTron]

Interesting. Seems excessive. Railways don't tend to be any more expensive than freeways so it can't be typical for both sharing a right of way to cost 10x what each on their own would cost. It's a pretty common setup.

The old Toronto and York Radial Railway right-of-way is still pretty much intact from north Newmarket to Ravenshoe Road. You can still see it on satellite imagery. Though why should we be building a commuter line to Keswick?

 

[gweed123]

Since there are no railways to Keswick or any of the other communities along the south shore of Lake Simcoe, it would have made a lot of sense to build the 404 extwnsion with a commuter rail line in the right of way. It could have been a branch of the Barrie line, with a link built somewhere around Green Lane. Montreal recently extended one of its commuter lines doing something similar. I suppose it's too late now, but it seems like it would have been a great opportunity. If we can justify spending $85 million building a new commuter freeway to a small town, surely we can justify spending a little more to balance out the modal split.

Interesting idea. Although I think an extension of the Richmond Hill line would be more practical, especially considering they're going to be extending to Bloomington Rd, with the station right beside the 404 anyway.

 

[wopchop]

The old Toronto and York Radial Railway right-of-way is still pretty much intact from north Newmarket to Ravenshoe Road. You can still see it on satellite imagery. Though why should we be building a commuter line to Keswick?

I think you'd be better off branching a line off from a future extension of the Richmond Hill line to Mt. Albert. I don't know if it's an old railroad ROW or what, but if you look at satellite imagery, you can see the remains of something that goes up to Sutton.

 

[MisterF]

The old Toronto and York Radial Railway right-of-way is still pretty much intact from north Newmarket to Ravenshoe Road. You can still see it on satellite imagery. Though why should we be building a commuter line to Keswick?

You could ask the same question about building a freeway to Keswick. And continuing it farther north in future phases to even smaller towns.

I realize it's not going to happen. I'm just challenging the notion that highways are the natural order of things and railways are less feasible. In most of the world it's the opposite. For all our talk of reducing our reliance on cars we're still encouraging driving as the default choice with the infrastructure we build.

 

[ShonTron]

I think you'd be better off branching a line off from a future extension of the Richmond Hill line to Mt. Albert. I don't know if it's an old railroad ROW or what, but if you look at satellite imagery, you can see the remains of something that goes up to Sutton.

It's an old railway ROW between Stouffville and Jackson's Point, later shortened to between Mount Albert and Sutton. It never saw much use after the T&Y was opened, but the rails weren't removed until 1981.

 

[innsertnamehere]

for most of the world it absolutely isn't the opposite, even europe. They don't ignore rail as much historically as we have however, which means that they likely would have some sort of basic rail service already, but they would be upgrading their highways before they upgraded the railway. Even in europe over 80% of trips are made by car, and they realize that.

 

[MisterF]

for most of the world it absolutely isn't the opposite, even europe. They don't ignore rail as much historically as we have however, which means that they likely would have some sort of basic rail service already, but they would be upgrading their highways before they upgraded the railway. Even in europe over 80% of trips are made by car, and they realize that.

That's not true at all. It's pretty rare to find a town in Europe that has a freeway but no rail service. But there are countless examples of the opposite. Passenger rail networks in Europe dwarf freeway networks. The same is true on other continents including low density, car obsessed Australia. It's hard for us in Canada to wrap our heads around that since we've been in prioritizing roads over rail for so long.

Good point that in North America we let our tracks get abandoned and ripped up to an extent that other continents didn't. But the question here is that if we're going to spend tens of millions on new infrastructure to serve a small town and enable new development, is a freeway really the best option?

 

[DarnDirtyApe]

The problem is that rural & exurban areas have been developing in an auto-oriented fashion for almost 100 years now. Rail works best serving relatively dense points along a line, but the origins and destinations within northern York region are very spread out so rail would be underutilized. People using the 404 are heading to Keswick, Georgina, Beaverton, the Kawarthas and all points in between. I would imagine that there are relatively few commuting downtown from those areas...

That being said, I think the extension is excessive and primarily being done for political purposes. MTO seems to also like inventing work for themselves, so they will probably just keep on planning highway extensions forever unless political leaders step in.

 

[ShonTron]

At the same time we shouldn't be building Highway 404 to serve Keswick, we shouldn't be building commuter rail there either. Keswick shouldn't be a growth area. Full stop. There's lots that I could say about Keswick that isn't very nice, but I won't say it here.

At the same time, Highway 404 north of Newmarket wasn't just built to serve Keswick as much as it was to serve cottage country and other traffic headed to and from the northeast. But the MTO is very much misguided in building a new freeway, especially beyond the new terminus at Woodbine and Ravenshoe. Highway 48 and Highway 12 are very annoying to drive and overburdened with traffic, but they're two-lane highways. Four-laning Highway 12 around Beaverton, and improving Highway 48 is the most logical solution, instead of extending Highway 404 all the way into Brock Township. But this is the same MTO that won't simply widen Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph, but instead opts to built a new freeway around it instead.

 

[Translude15]

At the same time we shouldn't be building Highway 404 to serve Keswick, we shouldn't be building commuter rail there either. Keswick shouldn't be a growth area. Full stop. There's lots that I could say about Keswick that isn't very nice, but I won't say it here.

At the same time, Highway 404 north of Newmarket wasn't just built to serve Keswick as much as it was to serve cottage country and other traffic headed to and from the northeast. But the MTO is very much misguided in building a new freeway, especially beyond the new terminus at Woodbine and Ravenshoe. Highway 48 and Highway 12 are very annoying to drive and overburdened with traffic, but they're two-lane highways. Four-laning Highway 12 around Beaverton, and improving Highway 48 is the most logical solution, instead of extending Highway 404 all the way into Brock Township. But this is the same MTO that won't simply widen Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph, but instead opts to built a new freeway around it instead.

I've never been but I am curious to know: What's wrong with Keswick exactly? Lol

 

[innsertnamehere]

Apparently MTO has decided to call the WDL Highway 412 and the EDL Highway 418.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Construction of the 407 East Extension, January aerial images:

 

[Transportfan]

The 404 extension right now is roughly 1/3rd of the originally planned Northern York region highway network they wanted to build, The 404 was originally going to go to Beaverton and there was to be an additional highway constructed between the 400 and 404 just north of Bradford.

I wonder why the MTO couldn't built the Bradford Bypass further south and cross Yonge between Green Lane and the Holland Landing split. That way, the Holland Marsh could be avoided, which I think is the reason for the cancellation.

 

[Transportfan]

Since there are no railways to Keswick or any of the other communities along the south shore of Lake Simcoe,

I've always found the rail network very illogical the way it is. Why does the Bala sub veer off to the northeast after Richmond Hill, avoiding Aurora, Newmarket (and Keswick), before turning to follow Lake Simcoe, instead of the "Newmarket" sub diverting to them, instead of running straight up to Bradford?