Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

[innsertnamehere]

Ontario Newsroom

news.ontario.ca

Shovels in the Ground to Widen Highway 3​

Ontario investing $50 million to build a new Banwell interchange for Windsor

Highway 3 isn't new, but funding for the Banwell Road interchange on the E.C. Row and the Lauzon Parkway interchange are both new as far as I know.

I expect a few of these announcements in the next few weeks in the run up to the provincial budget.

 

[ericmacm]

Ontario Newsroom

news.ontario.ca

Highway 3 isn't new, but funding for the Banwell Road interchange on the E.C. Row and the Lauzon Parkway interchange are both new as far as I know.

Yes both of those are new. City of Windsor recently announced that they were going to fund and start work on grading the ramps for the Banwell/E.C. Row interchange (similar to the staged approach we saw for the Tremaine/HWY 401 interchange in Milton), looks like this is the province chipping in the rest.

I’m glad to finally see this happening. E.C. Row/CR 22 through Tecumseh has been a busy road for a while now and will only get busier with the battery plant.

 

[innsertnamehere]

yup.

Some other wishlist roads projects for this year:

- Further 400 widening, ideally all the way up to 11, but in the interim I could see it going up to Bradford and through Barrie
- Address the 403 through Oakville, particularly on the north-south component which has seen a ton of growth around it recently and is severely congested
- 410 widening north of Queen St - MTO has been studying this with a detailed construction design so I imagine it's coming soon

I have some other ones I would love but think are generally less likely..

- 11 interchange reconfiguration in Gravenhurst
- Start working towards 4-laning 7/8 to Stratford - perhaps just the Nafziger Rd interchange for now
- Cookstown Bypass on 89 (this one will probably happen if Honda ends up doing the massive EV plant they are talking about in Alliston)
- 4-lane Highway 5 from Waterdown to the 5/8 split
- Thorold Stone Rd interchange rebuild - probably the most substandard interchange left on the 400-series network and it creates an awkward 4-lane section of the QEW between the 420 and 405

 

[Northern Light]

Ontario Newsroom

news.ontario.ca

Highway 3 isn't new, but funding for the Banwell Road interchange on the E.C. Row and the Lauzon Parkway interchange are both new as far as I know.

I expect a few of these announcements in the next few weeks in the run up to the provincial budget.

Here's a question for UT's Highway expert:

Are there any plans for this section Highway 3:

I feel quite strongly that this section should either remain a local road, where applicable, or even be removed (re-aligned) entirely. Its very close to the water and really cuts off Lake access in some measure, most of the properties on the south (lake side) are subject to erosion issues and may have to be removed anyway. Better to rebuild the road further north, particularly east of Wheatley and line it up to #6 or #8 east of Merlin.

 

[innsertnamehere]

That stretch is a municipal road and has been for a while - I imagine it’ll stay more or less as it is for the foreseeable future. I can’t imagine it’s particularly busy, and mostly just provides local access to the area.

There are a whole ton of little cottages and houses along the lake there though that need access so I don’t see its removal as being particularly useful.

 

[IRT_BMT_IND]

I feel quite strongly that this section should either remain a local road, where applicable, or even be removed (re-aligned) entirely. Its very close to the water and really cuts off Lake access in some measure, most of the properties on the south (lake side) are subject to erosion issues and may have to be removed anyway. Better to rebuild the road further north, particularly east of Wheatley and line it up to #6 or #8 east of Merlin.

That hasn't been highway 3 since the mid 90s Mike Harris downloading. And parts of it were actually washed out years ago and still never rebuilt (though officially the closure is still "temporary").

 

[Northern Light]

There are a whole ton of little cottages and houses along the lake there though that need access so I don’t see its removal as being particularly useful.

As I noted, many of those cottages are at risk of being washed out into the Lake.

I favour converting that space to parkland and the Lake Erie Waterfront Trail, when critical masses of them come out (which they will). Erosion mitigation here would be prohibitively expensive, and an aesthetic blight (shoreline hardening and/or a breakwall)

 

[ARG1]

Anyone know what's going on with the 404 widening north of H7? I swear its been under construction for 6-7 years now and it feels like work has completely stalled for the last 2. The section north of Major Mack has basically looked done since summer 2019 and it is still not open due to the expansion south of MM still being worked on.

 

[Leo_Chan]

Anyone know what's going on with the 404 widening north of H7? I swear its been under construction for 6-7 years now and it feels like work has completely stalled for the last 2. The section north of Major Mack has basically looked done since summer 2019 and it is still not open due to the expansion south of MM still being worked on.

The website does says it should open in June 2024.

This is just speculation on my part, but I think they are waiting for the completion of the 16th Ave widening before opening the HOV lanes on Hwy 404. However, that makes no sense as the main widening for twin underpasses is already complete so there should be little to no impact.

Edit: This has been delayed quite a bit. I wonder what caused the 2 year delay. This is from the page 4 years ago:

 

[innsertnamehere]

There were massive delays on the 404 project which already had a ridiculously long construction schedule in the first place. I'm unsure of exactly what the issue was though, but it's at least finally almost done.

 

[Haljackey]

Some other wishlist roads projects for this year:

I have some other ones I would love but think are generally less likely..
- Thorold Stone Rd interchange rebuild - probably the most substandard interchange left on the 400-series network and it creates an awkward 4-lane section of the QEW between the 420 and 405

This one is so weird as the overpass is new-ish yet they didn't bother to reconfigure the ramps as part of that project. Getting the QEW 6-laned to the 420 makes total sense and the QEW won't need to go down to a single through lane (Toronto bound anyway).

With a 420 extension no longer possible, beefing up Thorold Stone Road is important so you can use Highways 406 and 57/58 cross the Welland Canal while the Garden City Skyway rebuild takes place. The QEW is often congested between the Garden City Skyway and 405 due to all those outlet stores like Bass Pro Shop and the crazy weaving people do to avoid taking the left exit to the 405. The DDI the built near the outlet mall does next to nothing to improve traffic flow on the QEW itself.

I'd love an alternative to get to Niagara Falls. I'm planning on going there for the Solar Eclipse on April 8th (assuming a clear day) and can already imagine the traffic chaos as schools are closed for it.

 

[innsertnamehere]

The Skyway is getting widened to 8-lanes as a part of it's rehabilitation in the next few years. It's a questionable project in terms of priority to me as it hardly ever gets really congested, but it is what it is.

MTO some times confuses me as they have quite a lot of low-hanging projects which could make a big difference (QEW widening for example - no structural changes needed west of Grimsby and the platform is already widened in many places.. minimal structural widening required east of Grimsby as well.. widening would be cheap and address a pretty badly congested stretch, but it's not even close to being on the priority list), but then go ahead and spend a billion dollars to twin a bridge that doesn't really need any new capacity.

 

[Haljackey]

The Skyway is getting widened to 8-lanes as a part of it's rehabilitation in the next few years. It's a questionable project in terms of priority to me as it hardly ever gets really congested, but it is what it is.

MTO some times confuses me as they have quite a lot of low-hanging projects which could make a big difference (QEW widening for example - no structural changes needed west of Grimsby and the platform is already widened in many places.. minimal structural widening required east of Grimsby as well.. widening would be cheap and address a pretty badly congested stretch, but it's not even close to being on the priority list), but then go ahead and spend a billion dollars to twin a bridge that doesn't really need any new capacity.

Whenever I use the Garden City Skyway it's often congested but I am one of those slubs that use it on long weekends, holidays, peak travel times and whatnot which are likely by far it's busiest days.

Don't they want to add a HOV lane to the QEW? That extra lane will let them build one from the Burlington Skyway all the way to the 405 (although it would need to be really squeezed in east of the 406 through St. Cathrines).

I think the desire to build a new Skyway bridge is that rehab work on the existing bridge will be lengthy, costly, somewhat unsafe for workers and have significant traffic impacts. Building a new bridge means you can shift traffic to the new one and now you can do a full rehab on the existing structure without all the construction staging/traffic shifts.

...And then there's the matter of redundancy. Should anything stupid/unexpected happen to the Skyway, you have another span you can divert traffic to.

Costly yes, but perhaps behind closed doors perhaps there was a major issue found with the existing span that is threatening its lifespan and needs serious work to fix.

----

Then again, as stated in my previous post, if you beefed up Thorold Stone Road you'd then have a somewhat redundant route for the Skyway via the 406 and highways 57/58.

 

[2323]

I have some other ones I would love but think are generally less likely..

- 11 interchange reconfiguration in Gravenhurst
- Start working towards 4-laning 7/8 to Stratford - perhaps just the Nafziger Rd interchange for now
- Cookstown Bypass on 89 (this one will probably happen if Honda ends up doing the massive EV plant they are talking about in Alliston)
- 4-lane Highway 5 from Waterdown to the 5/8 split
- Thorold Stone Rd interchange rebuild - probably the most substandard interchange left on the 400-series network and it creates an awkward 4-lane section of the QEW between the 420 and 405

Any plans to reconfigure 401 through Belleville? That to me seems much more substandard than Thorold Stone.

 

[Square_Clock]

Do we thing we could ever see Bradford bypass extended west to connect to Alliston instead of hwy 89 bypass as talked about above