Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

[Haljackey]

Niagara Area Highway Improvement stuff

Highway 58 is a full freeway from the 406 through the Welland Canal tunnel. I've always wondered why it wasn't extended to the QEW; potentially meeting up at the 420 interchange.

This would give you a freeway alternate for the Garden City Skyway, a godsend during those busy tourist times in the summer.

Alas, with the development west of the 420, you can't route a freeway to meet up with the QEW anymore in Niagara Falls- it would need to connect somewhere south of the city instead. That won't really help traffic to/from Niagara Falls as it would be too far out of the way.

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QEW could use some widening to the 420 interchange. There was a project that pushed 6 lanes east of the 405, but it didn't go all the way. There's a lot of weaving in the 4 lane section since both the 420 and QEW are reduced to a single lane Toronto bound through the interchange.

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Regarding the Peace Bridge - I agree twinning isn't needed as the bridge itself isn't the bottleneck right now- it's the customs plazas. A second span has been studied in the past, but I don't see it getting built any time soon as travel between to the US has been going down, not up. I could see a replacement built closer to when the Peace Bridge could use significant renovations, so you could divert all traffic to the new span and close the old one for maintenance work.

Once refurbishments are complete you could have 2 lanes (one way) instead of 3 on the current bridge as that would give you a shoulder and wider lanes, maybe dedicating one for trucks. That might help increase it's lifespan too since it would only take the weight of 2 lanes if fully backed up instead of 3- less stress on the structure. (I'd assume the twinned span would have 2-3 lanes).

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406 Extension seems novel to me, haven't heard of this before, but it would be nice for Port Colborne residents for sure.

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Finally, glad to see the bottleneck at the QEW and Red Hill getting addressed. Niagara-bound, you have 7 lanes merging into 3 here so at least staggering the lane drops would be nice- full 8 lane widening (with or without HOVs) to the 406 would be useful in the peak tourist season. The Garden City Skyway twinning also allows 8 laning to the 405, and maybe they could do something about eliminating the dedicated left exit lane to the 405 which always causes last second weaving for Niagara-bound traffic.

I always leave extra space and have my wits about me once I see Bass Pro Shops. I know a lot of drivers who aren't veterans driving this stretch might make some sudden lane changes.

 

[Dreambig1]

I kinda wondered why Ford and the Ontario Government didn't put together an "Ontario style" projects list like the Prime Minister is doing to advance what Carney calls "nation building projects" but on a provincial scale that could see a wide range of infrastructure projects that are Ontario specific be prioritized by Queen's park over the remaining part of the decade or so. esentially you would have federal and provincial projects happening at the same time which i see as a huge boost to the national and provincial economies and would provide benifits to the people.

 

[2323]

One more lane bro.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2000303818505170965

Let's actually just reduce all 400 series highways to 2 lanes. Surely demand will evaporate into thin air, right?

 

[PL1]

Let's actually just reduce all 400 series highways to 2 lanes. Surely demand will evaporate into thin air, right?

No, but adding lanes and then using those extra lanes to justify further sprawl leads to more congestion. And the lanes at the destination (e.g. Toronto) cannot be expanded, so traffic gets worse

 

[6ixGod]

Let's actually just reduce all 400 series highways to 2 lanes. Surely demand will evaporate into thin air, right?

I’m going to leave this video here for you. Please take notes. The fact you even wrote this in 2025 is mind boggling….induced demand has been a thing known to urban planners since the 1950s!

Stop it….

 

[innsertnamehere]

I’m going to leave this video here for you. Please take notes. The fact you even wrote this in 2025 is mind boggling….induced demand has been a thing known to urban planners since the 1950s!

Stop it….

What I take issue with is how misconstrued induced demand is.

I don't think anyone thinks induced demand isn't real - it's how people treat it and wildly misunderstand what it actually is.

When new infrastructure is built, it makes mobility easier. This is a good thing, and is true for all forms of infrastructure, be it cycle lanes, subway lines, or new or expanded highways.

When mobility is easier, people travel more. Again - this is a good thing! People are more willing to make trips when they are easier and get to enjoy a higher quality of life by making the trips to do the things they want to do. Amazing!

What the common media perception of induced demand does is several things:

1. Inflates all those extra trips as being worthless. "If travel times will be the same, we may as well not build the infrastructure" type deal.. which completely ignores that if you double the size of a highway, even if travel times stay the same, you can still accommodate twice as many trips generating GDP, wealth, and quality of life.
2. Assumes that induced demand is unlimited in depth. This is simply not true. The examples used for induced demand in locations like Houston often said "well, traffic was fixed for a few years, then it was just as bad as before", ignoring that population growth was a major driving factor in those trip growth patterns and that without the new infrastructure that trip times would likely be even worse. Houston is one of the fastest growing metro areas on the continent - it needs new infrastructure. When new road infrastructure is built in low-growth areas, it generally does induce new additional trips but rarely sees congestion return to the same level. It's not inherent in the road itself that these cars appear apparently out of nowhere - those cars come from growth, be it GDP, population, etc.

What induced demand actually is and does is:

1. Better infrastructure attracts more users. This is true of all infrastructure, both transit and highways. A new highway will see more people travel in that corridor just like a new subway line will see more people use it than the bus it replaced. This is good! It's literally the whole reason we build infrastructure.
2. New infrastructure induces demand often by pulling trips off existing corridors - the trips are not inherently new, but when an existing highway is heavily congested people are more likely to use other routes (like local streets). Similarly when a new subway line is built, people using parallel bus routes are more likely to detour to the faster rapid transit route. This detour will continue until travel times decline to an extent that the existing routes become a better option again.. So even if a highway is built and returns to 90% of the congestion it once was, it can still have significant benefits for other areas. This also opens up new opportunities to change the infrastructure on routes that are no longer as busy..
2. New infrastructure influences land use - people are more likely to move somewhere if infrastructure is better. A new highway will encourage more growth around the interchanges just like a new subway line will encourage more growth around the stations.

The "one more lane bro" meme of all highway projects being automatically worthless is just as cringey and incorrect as those who rep highway projects regardless of benefits or impacts.

The reality is that a modern society needs roads - what we as a society should be doing is not banning new roads, particularly since many can have major actual benefits to communities by removing regional traffic off local streets and vastly improving safety.

The reality is that roads and transportation infrastructure in general is tied closely to land use and that there is a lot of nuance on how we can build cities better while not resigning them to being traffic-filled messes because "road=bad".

Many, including not-just-bikes, looks at the Netherlands as a model of how to plan our cities. What you will notice when you look at the Netherlands is that they don't shy away from highways. In fact, the Netherlands has had one of the largest highway expansion programs in europe in the last 20 years. The difference between a place like the Netherlands and Houston is not that the Netherlands doesn't do roads, it's that it balances roads with other options which it carefully designs through both land use plans and infrastructure design for those alternatives to be a competitive choice to driving. The Netherlands over the last 20 years has built out an excellent freeway network and that has allowed cars to be mostly removed from local streets and has built the infrastructure so that it enjoys something remarkable - minimal peak hour congestion even with an extensive and very high quality roads network. This is Amsterdam and Rotterdam at 5:40pm on a wednesday - very little congestion outside of a few accidents.

How does the Netherlands do this? They build big highways, they provide alternative options, and they build infrastructure faster than the population grows. And with this new infrastructure, they have an excellent quality of life with the public being able to choose transit, cycling, walking, or driving depending on what works best for them and a GDP per capita now 25% higher than Canada.

Freeways should actually be friends of urbanists as they remove traffic from local streets - the Netherlands knows this and builds lots of freeways for cars to operate safely, quickly, efficiently, and away from pedestrians. Stroads are what we should be avoiding - lets build car roads for cars and streets for people.