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Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

Interestingly, the Eglinton Crosstown and Highway 413 are both in the same order of magnitude of cost - $5B (property acquisitions for each are another matter).

Both are forecasted to have about 5,000 users per direction in the peak hour and 200,000 daily users.

There is no answer as to which one is "better" or provides "more benefit", I'm sure different people will have different opinions. Each project is definitely very suited for the area that they are located in.
 
Steve X said:
It's probably cheaper and easier to stick to schedule to just level homes to build subways on the surface. :)

Just sell the air rights and build condos on top afterwards!
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With today's house prices, levelling homes would be many times more expensive than deep bore tunneling.
 
Deadpool X said:
With today's house prices, levelling homes would be many times more expensive than deep bore tunneling.
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Including reselling land afterwards? I'm not convinced. When underground stations cost $500M-$1B a pop...
 
afransen said:
Including reselling land afterwards? I'm not convinced. When underground stations cost $500M-$1B a pop...
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It will take decades to resell that much land at profit. Also we have not considered levelling more homes to build approach roads to these new buildings. You won't make money from those roads. Also, building dozens of bridges on roads to cross this at grade line. Anyways, we are discussing something that is unrealistic and impractical.
 
Deadpool X said:
It will take decades to resell that much land at profit. Also we have not considered levelling more homes to build approach roads to these new buildings. You won't make money from those roads. Also, building dozens of bridges on roads to cross this at grade line. Anyways, we are discussing something that is unrealistic and impractical.
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Literally at grade is probably a silly idea, but to widen ROWs slightly where necessary to enable an elevated line is probably not unrealistic. Especially where we literally have SFHs with driveways facing arterials--absolute madness from a traffic engineering perspective.
 
afransen said:
Literally at grade is probably a silly idea, but to widen ROWs slightly where necessary to enable an elevated line is probably not unrealistic. Especially where we literally have SFHs with driveways facing arterials--absolute madness from a traffic engineering perspective.
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Elsewhere it's a silly idea. The GTA just can't seem to get transit cost under control nor can they build anything in a reasonable time. A decade later, the Crosstown is still not opened. They certainly took way less time to level homes to trench the 401 in Windsor.

Certainly leveling homes ain't cheep. Probably around $75-100m per km just to buy all the property. If they can trench it and build it at a reasonable $100-150m per km, it's certainly not a bad deal considering the cost of deep tunneling subways are in the range of $500m per km now.
 
Steve X said:
Elsewhere it's a silly idea. The GTA just can't seem to get transit cost under control nor can they build anything in a reasonable time. A decade later, the Crosstown is still not opened. They certainly took way less time to level homes to trench the 401 in Windsor.

Certainly leveling homes ain't cheep. Probably around $75-100m per km just to buy all the property. If they can trench it and build it at a reasonable $100-150m per km, it's certainly not a bad deal considering the cost of deep tunneling subways are in the range of $500m per km now.
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The 401 extension in Windsor is the most expensive highway per km in Ontario history and cost only something like $100m/km.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Niagara mid peninsula is dead and will not be getting built any time soon.
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This one makes sense- but the QEW needs some love if this isn't built. Hamilton to St. Catharines can really use an extra lane right now. That merge just past the Red Hill Niagara-bound is atrocious. You have 4 lanes from the QEW and 2 from the Red Hill merging into 3. Getting a 4th lane built, even if it is HOV will really help the bottleneck out.

Eventually when the Garden City Skyway is twinned you could see 8 lanes on the QEW all the way to the 405 interchange or perhaps even the 420. The widening in St. Catharines would be tough tho.. that's a narrow corridor to add another lane in, especially if it is HOV with a proper buffer zone.

Bonus bucks if you can somehow extend the HOV through the Freeman Interchange in Burlington and cannibalize one of the lanes on the Burlington Skyway for HOV. That would allow a HOV lane to run all the way to the 403 split in Oakville!
 
Haljackey said:
This one makes sense- but the QEW needs some love if this isn't built. Hamilton to St. Catharines can really use an extra lane right now. That merge just past the Red Hill Niagara-bound is atrocious. You have 4 lanes from the QEW and 2 from the Red Hill merging into 3. Getting a 4th lane built, even if it is HOV will really help the bottleneck out.

Eventually when the Garden City Skyway is twinned you could see 8 lanes on the QEW all the way to the 405 interchange or perhaps even the 420. The widening in St. Catharines would be tough tho.. that's a narrow corridor to add another lane in, especially if it is HOV with a proper buffer zone.

Bonus bucks if you can somehow extend the HOV through the Freeman Interchange in Burlington and cannibalize one of the lanes on the Burlington Skyway for HOV. That would allow a HOV lane to run all the way to the 403 split in Oakville!
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MTO has plans to add HOV’s, but I don’t think they are particularly needed right now past Grimsby, and definitely not past the 406. The QEW through St Catharines was just widened, what, 10-15 years ago and operates just fine.

The Garden City Skyway is planned to be twinned and widened to 8 lanes in the next few years, mostly as a result of rehabilitation needs of the existing bridge. It’s a waste of money if you ask me as the extra capacity really isn’t needed, they probably could have gotten away with simply reducing the bridge to 4 lanes for a few years to do a staged rehabilitation.

MTO does plan to eventually widen the Burlington Skyway again as well, from what I recall it involved a widening of the eastbound structure from the 1980’s. nothing immediate though as it is obviously a very expensive project. In the interim the HOVs through Oakville and Burlington will be extended to the immediate base of the bridge at North Shore Boulevard.
 
innsertnamehere said:
MTO has plans to add HOV’s, but I don’t think they are particularly needed right now past Grimsby, and definitely not past the 406. The QEW through St Catharines was just widened, what, 10-15 years ago and operates just fine.

The Garden City Skyway is planned to be twinned and widened to 8 lanes in the next few years, mostly as a result of rehabilitation needs of the existing bridge. It’s a waste of money if you ask me as the extra capacity really isn’t needed, they probably could have gotten away with simply reducing the bridge to 4 lanes for a few years to do a staged rehabilitation.
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Just seems if the Garden City Skyway is going to be 8 lanes whenever the new bridge is finished, you may as well maximize this capacity with 8 lanes to and from the bridge. Aside from busy holiday weekends, the QEW flows fine through St Catharines but 8 lanes would sure be nice here and toward the 405/420 when the skyway is twinned.

Regarding the skyway project itself, I do happen to agree with you BUT it is good to have redundancy in the network. You can close one of the bridges completely for rehab work, and you get full shoulders on each side vs the 0 shoulders today. Ever been traveling on the QEW when there is a breakdown/crash on the skyway? It ain't fun.

As for the HOVs, yes get them pushed to Grimsby at least for now, and eventually to the 406. That will help stagger the 6-3 lane merge at the Red Hill interchange quite a bit further down the road. You'd still have a bottleneck, but at least it's a long bottleneck and not a stubby :p
 
Haljackey said:
This one makes sense- but the QEW needs some love if this isn't built. Hamilton to St. Catharines can really use an extra lane right now. That merge just past the Red Hill Niagara-bound is atrocious. You have 4 lanes from the QEW and 2 from the Red Hill merging into 3. Getting a 4th lane built, even if it is HOV will really help the bottleneck out.
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Does Red Hill add net traffic on eastbound QEW? I am assuming a lot of eastbound traffic on QEW would also exit to Red Hill making it net zero addition to QEW.
 
AADT drops by 10,000 from 130,000 to 120,000 at Centennial Parkway, which is basically the Red Hill. MTO doesn’t separate out the Red Hill specifically, presumably since it basically overlaps with Centennial.

AADT drops below 100,000 east of Grimsby, which is why the widening isn’t needed as much past there. Long weekends in the summer might see congestion, but generally congestion exists west of Grimsby and particularly west of Fifty Road.

AADT through St Catharines is generally in the ~80k range, which is well within the capacity of a 6-lane road.

Bridges generally need extra lanes as the grades reduce effective capacity. A 6-lane bridge can carry a lot less cars than a 6-lane flat freeway. It’s why the Burlington Skyway is regularly congested while the QEW through Hamilton is rarely congested despite having roughly the same AADTs.
 
Haljackey said:
Just seems if the Garden City Skyway is going to be 8 lanes whenever the new bridge is finished, you may as well maximize this capacity with 8 lanes to and from the bridge. Aside from busy holiday weekends, the QEW flows fine through St Catharines but 8 lanes would sure be nice here and toward the 405/420 when the skyway is twinned.

Regarding the skyway project itself, I do happen to agree with you BUT it is good to have redundancy in the network. You can close one of the bridges completely for rehab work, and you get full shoulders on each side vs the 0 shoulders today. Ever been traveling on the QEW when there is a breakdown/crash on the skyway? It ain't fun.

As for the HOVs, yes get them pushed to Grimsby at least for now, and eventually to the 406. That will help stagger the 6-3 lane merge at the Red Hill interchange quite a bit further down the road. You'd still have a bottleneck, but at least it's a long bottleneck and not a stubby :p
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Would also adding a bus lane on QEW help with overall traffic, on top of the insane ridership we see to/from Niagara? It could definitely help with the lack of more train service for now.
 
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