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Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

Leo_Chan said:
Agreed. It was the first separated highway in Ontario right?
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Sort of.

It was the first, but as a grade-separated freeway - it was not completed until the 1970's. 400 and 401 (Oshawa to YYZ) were basically tied as the first full freeways.
qew-245_lg.jpg
 
Jasmine18 said:
I think the 401 can be tolled like in the US for express lanes.

My point was that expanding the 401 in lanes is not a bad idea as it is the only real highway through southern Ontario.
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In the rural sections, yes (it should be minimum 3 lanes per direction Province-wide), but the existing express-collector system sections shouldn't be widened beyond what they are now.
 
MTO has added a few lanes here and there on the 401 through Toronto over the last few years as a part of the highway rebuilds. It could use a lane or two in a few key bottlenecks, but it would be basically impossible to bring the highway up to an acceptable level of operation. You could probably double its width from 14 to 28 lanes and it would still see significant congestion at rush hours.
 
You know there was a crazy idea a few years back of stacking the 401. Express lanes elevated above Collectors, or vice versa. Would allow more lanes in the current ROW
 
I could imagine seeing something like the highway in Dallas with the express lanes trenched and the collectors half overhanging above the express lanes for the 401 between the 409 and the 427 - but I don't think MTO is planning anything in terms of highway widening for the 401 right now.
 
Leo_Chan said:
Can you imagine 48 lanes of traffic? The amount of ramps would be unimaginable.
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Don't forget about having to redo every bridge as well. The Hoggs Hollow Bridge system may have to be rebuilt completely.

Good thing Toronto is not located near a seismically active area, despite receiving a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in 2010 (though the epicentre is in Quebec).
 
The only discussion I recall about stacking them was limited to the stretch between 427 and Weston Road where the corridor narrows and the express/collectors merge into one creating a huge bottleneck.

In that limited use, could work.
 
This 400 v QEW as the most important Ontario highway after 401 is a very Toronto-centric debate. The Queensway / 417, with original portions constructed in 1957-66, has to be right up there with those two.
 
Dougall Avenue in Windsor, if you ask me. 2A connects to Kingston road which is a hugely busy arterial. Dougall Avenue connects to a smaller arterial road and goes to the 401 - which is only used for inter-regional trips in Windsor. I'd imagine traffic counts are quite low on it.
 
44 North said:
My money is on St Thomas Expressway. So tiny and lightly-used, but also pretty neat.
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I really like Highway 58 in Thorold. It's not unimportant - it's a major connection under the Welland Canal, but it isn't ever busy.

But apart from perhaps the St. Thomas Expressway, Ontario never built big transportation infrastructure that was never really needed, unlike say the Lasalle Expressway across the Love Canal in NFNY. Instead, most Ontario transportation infrastructure projects are reactive - built long after the demand exceeded the status quo (much like the Kitchener-Guelph highway).

The St. Thomas project was, I think, part of the province's expectation that the Haldimand-Norfolk Region was going to be a big population and industrial centre. Townsend was built as a nucleus of a "new town" of tens of thousands of people, but got 2,000 max. Nanticoke got some industry, but nothing like was was planned. Sleepy Halidimand and Norfolk Counties were joined into a regional municipality to manage all that growth that never came.
 
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