Roads: Ontario/GTA Highways Discussion

[Paolo]

Well, Highway 7 was numbered in 1920, but only from Guelph west. The piece through Brampton was added sometime in the 1920s. So when was Queen and Boivard named? The roads are certainly older, but I don't know when they were named. I'd assume Queen Street long pre-dates the 1920s.

I may be an old fart, but when the townships were being divided up, the dividing line that split a concession east/west and north/south typically is a main provincial highway.

You may want to forget that hurontario street was known as highway 10, however. it made up the basis of how your city streets are named. anything west of highway 10, is consession 1 WHR and anything east of highway 10 is called consession 1 EHR. this means a lot, its how the street numbers got their designation, and it allows us to find if a street is east or west.

 

[nfitz]

I may be an old fart, but when the townships were being divided up, the dividing line that split a concession east/west and north/south typically is a main provincial highway.

Sometime, but not always.

And I haven't really seen the whole EHS WHS kind of thing elsewhere ... though Waterloo County certainly has some oddities.

You'd probably love this site then ... the old 1880s township by township mapping of Ontario - http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/CountyAtlas/SearchMapframes.php

Brampton can be found in - digital.library.mcgill.ca/CountyAtlas/images/maps/townshipmaps/pee-m-Chinguacousy-S.jpg

Very useful site when your trying to make sense of old documents.

 

[Dan416]

I may be an old fart, but when the townships were being divided up, the dividing line that split a concession east/west and north/south typically is a main provincial highway.

You may want to forget that hurontario street was known as highway 10, however. it made up the basis of how your city streets are named. anything west of highway 10, is consession 1 WHR and anything east of highway 10 is called consession 1 EHR. this means a lot, its how the street numbers got their designation, and it allows us to find if a street is east or west.

Most of the concession streets have been renamed already, and the ones that are still around don't even make sense anymore.

Ninth and Tenth Lines are from Halton's naming scheme I believe, which is why Ninth Line is further west of Tenth, and Second Line is the second concession west of Hurontario Street. And the very abbreviation that you're (incorrectly) using and I believe nfitz has right, EHS and WHS, are acronyms for EAST OF HURONTARIO STREET and WEST OF HURONTARIO STREET.

Note the acronyms are NOT EHT or EH10 and WHT/WH10, so you're kind of arguing against your self by using them.

The term Hurontario Street was used before, during, and after the "Highway 10" era. Seeing as it's not Highway 10 anymore, I see no reason to keep that usage alive.

 

[ShonTron]

Should I call it Centre Road south of Eglinton Avenue (oh, sorry, Toronto Base Line Road?)

 

[adma]

Well, Highway 7 was numbered in 1920, but only from Guelph west. The piece through Brampton was added sometime in the 1920s. So when was Queen and Boivard named? The roads are certainly older, but I don't know when they were named. I'd assume Queen Street long pre-dates the 1920s.

Well, you gotta remember. When numbered provincial highways went through cities and towns, their numbers didn't wind up displacing the existing street names altogether. That's why Yonge Street was concurrently Hwy 11, Avenue Rd concurrently 11A, Kingston Road concurrently Hwy 2, Bloor/Danforth concurrently Hwy 5, etc.

But on the whole, this kind of discussion just illuminates how far the "common Ontario geography" defined by the pre-400 King's Highway network has gone into eclipse--like at this point, you really have to be well over 50 or an inherent "Route 66 nostalgist" sort to even *comprehend* (let alone have a visceral mental bond to) any of these discussed arteries as "highways", in the old sense.

Incidentally re 7 in Brampton: sometime around the early 70s it was rerouted into a "bypass" via Kennedy and arcing onto the present-day Bovaird--later (I think) the newly-built 410 substituted for Kennedy, while the march of suburbia led to the Bovaird-Kennedy "bypass arc" being rationalized away on behalf of a 4-way intersection. Indeed, if one compares the Kennedy-Bovaird configuration today (and the hinterland that it serves) to 40 years ago, one can understand *why* the King's Highway network has become an incomprehensible archaism to modern-day beholders...

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

Side note. When these provincial highways start moving off in every direction (which is required I know), I just wish that there was a better way to handle the resulting intersection with the rest of the road system. For me Hwy 26 heading into Collingwood comes to mind, you make lefts and rights seemingly at every other light just to stay on hwy 26. I wish there was a way to have the "highway" appear more continuous while traveling along it, rather than making turns every so often. Say maybe a higher end round about, or an intersection that splits the other two legs of the intersection in such a way that the highway is a through path.

 

[adma]

...or maybe it's yet another reflection of the "obsolescence" of such highways as "highways", esp. in an age when county/regional roads are all too often of equal quality. Which often results, just as at Kennedy + Bovaird, in those "lefts and rights" replacing arc curves that were more reflective of highway-like continuity--nowadays, we might as well be speaking instead of a ruralized "arterial road network. In that case, that 26 remains a "highway" at all is purely vestigial.

All in all, it may be a wonder that we still have (label, sign shield and all) a "King's Highway" system--perhaps, in the 90s, it should have been abolished altogether rather than haphazardly downloaded. Leaving, as official "highways", the 400-series, quasi-400esque things like Hwy 11 through Simcoe/Muskoka, and hinterland corridors that might as well prefigure 400-series...

 

[BurlOak]

Sometime, but not always.

And I haven't really seen the whole EHS WHS kind of thing elsewhere ... though Waterloo County certainly has some oddities.

I always thought is was "East Hand Survey" or East Hand Side". There are often special survey on either side of priminent features (i.e. Grand River, Hwy 10 all the way to Owen Sound, etc.)

 

[ShonTron]

I always thought is was "East Hand Survey" or East Hand Side". There are often special survey on either side of priminent features (i.e. Grand River, Hwy 10 all the way to Owen Sound, etc.)

There's other examples. There's SDS/NDS - south/north of Durham Road, which is Highway 4 between Flesherton and Walkerton.

 

[jamincan]

The Exx etc. refer to the original township surveys which divided the township into concessions numbered away from a base line. In many cases, the base line was not at the edge of the township, so to distinguish concessions, a suffix was added referring to the main road. Later, this road typically became a highway. Some examples:

EBR/WBR - Bury Road - Highway 6 in the northern part of Bruce County.
EGR/WGR - Garafraxa Road - Highway 6 through Grey County.
NDR/SDR - Durham Road - Highway 9 in Bruce County
ETSR/WTSR - Toronto and Sydenham Road - Highway 10 in Grey County

etc.

Judging from the township maps linked to above, I initially would expect ECR/WCR (Centre Road) to be used; however, apparently the name Hurontario Street predates Centre Road, going back all the way to 1818 when the road was initially surveyed, connecting Port Credit and Collingwood (Lake Ontario and Lake Huron).

Edit to add: With a bit of research, it seems that most of these roads were settlements roads and several concessions were surveyed at the same time on either side.

 

[BurlOak]

Good question. Hanlan Parkway is slowly being converted from an expressway to a freeway (with the Laird Drive interchange construction near the Sapporo/Sleeman brewery underway), it might make sense giving the Hanlan and Guelph-Kitchener freeways a single 400-series number, and merely give concurrent Highway 6 and Highway 7 designations. Or just keep the Highway 7 designation as 7 and 8 maintain their designations in the freeway portions of the Conestoga Expressway.

I always get confused in this area. Going north from 401, I feel I am on the same highway but it changes from hwy. 8 to hwy. 7 to hwy. 85 to cty rd. 85 in a very short distance.

I would like to see hwy. 408 go from 401 to St. Jacobs and Hwy. 407 go from Guelph to New Hamburgh (Stratford) - co-signed in the middle. If you don't like the 400 series, I would use hwy 85 and 7. Highway 8 would become a discontinuous highway from Hamilton to Cambridge and then Stratford to Goderich. Remember that highway 7 is not continuous either. The Hanlon could be either 406 or stay as 6 until it is upgraded all the way to Hamilton. The current hwy. 406 could become 458 or 440 is extended a bit beyond Welland.

 

[nfitz]

I always thought is was "East Hand Survey" or East Hand Side".

It's Hurontario Street. This goes back to the survey's nearly 200 years ago. I don't know if the name Hurontario Street is older than 200 years or not ... but it's at least that old. It was well over 100 years old before anyone thought up the Highway 10 number.

 

[nfitz]

I always get confused in this area. Going north from 401, I feel I am on the same highway but it changes from hwy. 8 to hwy. 7 to hwy. 85 to cty rd. 85 in a very short distance.

It is 2 highways though. It seemed a lot simpler when it was signed as the Conestoga Expressway ... but those signs all seem to have vanished (probably didn't help that a Conestoga Expressway sign used to be a staple of University of Waterloo scavenger hunts). If you were going to number it as one highway, it would start in the north at St. Jacobs, go down past Victoria (where it turns into 7), past Ottawa Street and past highway 8 to New Hamburg. The stretch from Highway 8 to New Hamburg (and beyond) is currently signed as 7/8.

I would like to see hwy. 408 go from 401 to St. Jacobs and Hwy. 407 go from Guelph to New Hamburgh (Stratford) - .... Highway 8 would become a discontinuous highway from Hamilton to Cambridge and then Stratford to Goderich. Remember that highway 7 is not continuous either.

That makes no sense ... you'd turn the 408 from one highway to another at the current 7/8 interchange. And then you send 408 one way ... but you have to go the other way to Stratford. Why not just eliminate all the numbers, and call it the Conestoga Expressway - and then you avoid the issue of part of it being owned by the Region, and part by the province.

 

[adma]

That makes no sense ... you'd turn the 408 from one highway to another at the current 7/8 interchange. And then you send 408 one way ... but you have to go the other way to Stratford. Why not just eliminate all the numbers, and call it the Conestoga Expressway - and then you avoid the issue of part of it being owned by the Region, and part by the province.

And again, the whole issue could have been avoided if they either (a) downloaded the routes but maintained the "highway status", or (b) killed the entire Kings Highway system off completely.

Indeed, just calling it the Conestoga Expressway sans numbers fits into today's "ruralized/regionalized arterial road network" scenario I've described--just like nobody knows or cares these days what the regional-road numbers are for Airport Road or Major Mac. And in an age when GPS is increasingly displacing old-school paper maps and atlases, the old red-line numbered-highway coordinates, complete with mileage gauges, mileage-between-towns, etc, are meaningless...

 

[Lone Primate]

It's Hurontario Street. This goes back to the survey's nearly 200 years ago. I don't know if the name Hurontario Street is older than 200 years or not ... but it's at least that old. It was well over 100 years old before anyone thought up the Highway 10 number.

Is that right? It's funny, "Hurontario" sounds like such a quirky, kind of modern portmanteau that I always assumed it was something they came up with and slapped on the more pedantic, boring, it'll-due-till-we-think-of-something-better-sounding "Highway 10". It's interesting to hear that it's in fact considerably older.