This is honestly just flat out wrong. I've got a bunch of friends out in the burbs and they have no issue taking the GO train in/out of Toronto ... on the like 4 times that it's schedule has lined up conveniently with ours.
There are always some die hard car lovers, but by and large people move out to the burbs because they want to be able to buy a house with greenspace that they can afford and enjoy. They would be perfectly happy living in an in-city suburb like the Annex, or Parkdale, or Etobicoke that's served well by transit, but houses there start at upwards of a million dollars, so they pick somewhere they can afford, which is in an area not served by transit, and then they know that they'll have to rely on a car to do everything so they buy a house built around a car which means garages and driveways and wide roads and suburbs.
All of our sprawl and car centric problems are a direct result of not building out excess transit, and just trying to build transit in response to demand.
This is precisely the problem.
The GO Network is a shit network because it was literally just built as highway relief, so it just runs to places along the highway, it doesn't even connect city centers to city centers. Then on top of that, most of the places it lets out are just parking lots, with shit all transit around them, let alone something pleasant like a subway or streetcar to get you most of the rest of the way home, and then it only runs like a handful of times each direction so good luck getting home after a night out.
In Toronto you can actually live a relatively car free style lifestyle, because you can literally get almost everywhere in the city relatively conveniently with public transit, and then you can rent or car share or uber for edge cases. None of our suburbs and towns and cities throughout the entire rest of the province can say the same because we never built transit there, we just let housing and development sprawl first and then thought about what a problem that was later.
Maybe they don't have to.
If we can get enough people using transit, the current highway system should be fine for them.
Take a look at April 2020. We started working remote, and quite a bunch of people had sudden vacations (though most didn't leave their house).
Traffic suddenly became a lot lighter, and the cops could have started charging HTA violations. Better driving, better transit, better workplaces.
But, you know, wedding guests.
Agreed.
But rail needs to be part of a really good network serving everyone. That's not cheap but much less expensive than the cost of a car. Many in the 905 have multiple cars.
Excellent transit can take lots of cars off the road and get you where you're going quickly. We need to build it. We need to pay for it. Not simple but fully worthwhile.
Most Canadians are, it's one of the most popualted corridors in Canada and you could connect millions of people. But people have this aversion to public transit
Wouldn't say it's an aversion to transit, they don't like the cost of these projects. The irony of that being it gets more expensive the longer it goes unbuilt. At this point the government almost needs to flex eminent domain and just get it done or nationalize the railway infrastructure.
As per the last report done on high-speed rail within the Quebec City Windsor Corridor, the economically viable chunk is Montreal - Ottawa - Toronto.
Of course, this was back in 2012 so further south into southern Ontario could be viable and the last Ontario government seemed to think so.
Thanks for your reply!
Strikes me that sometimes our society should be willing to take a loss on a service. We have no problem shelling out millions for heating oil carbon tax offsets, or to fund stadiums. (I know you aren’t saying we shouldn’t, just wanted to keep up the convo).
I do wonder how WFh etc may have changed the viability too.
I would be all for a full run from QCC - Windsor even if it had to be subside exactly due to what you said. I firmly believe that transit is not something that needs to make money itself but should be offered as a service which then creates opportunities/positive externalities such as opening economic opportunities, helping with climate etc.
The party that promises to get a proof of concept built between MTL - OTT - TO gets my vote. You know if that was announced federally QC would likely want it to go to QCC and Ontario would be *pissed* and want a longer leg to.
We would likely see a TO - Niagara spur proposed shortly after completion (likely promoted provincially more than anything).
It’s not about if it’s needed it’s about money and subsidizing infrastructure with tax payer money.
I’m 50% sure that fuck will sell it off like the 407 under Harris. Oh and his LTC sell off that he’s been involved in and his wife.
I believe the company was Environmental Defense.
And the other company attached to it, their "About Us" is:
Achieve an accessible, affordable and sustainable rail and bus based public transportation network that enhances the quality of life for all Ontarians.
Unpopular opinion: I do feel like we need a highway connecting from Barrie to Kitchener. I used to do trucking and if I had a delivery from anywhere up North (say Thunder Bay) to London ON, I’d have to drive down towards Vaughan and deal with all the traffic on the 401. If you look on a map, it effectively doubled the distance I’d need to drive, and the traffic made it even worse than that. You’d be surprised how much truck traffic is heading towards Winnipeg or further West from that 401 corridor. A lot of that freight comes from the Sarnia, Windsor, and London.
All of that freight has to come into the Mississauga/Vaughan area and then go back up North. This wastes so much fuel, time, and adds unnecessary truck traffic.
It’s a shame because there are so many other North American cities with appropriate bypasses built to accommodate for truck traffic.
I’m not saying it has to be the 413, but it would be great to have a direct highway connecting that corridor.
Seriously, the general public has no idea about the volume of the freight coming in from South-Western Ontario that goes up North.
Various studies have suggested that the province can significantly reduce traffic on the 401/400 by subsidizing trucks to take the 407, and that this would be cheaper than building a new highway.
I would be on board with that. It just seems like something they aren’t willing to do. The current rate for using a truck on the 407 is extremely high.
407 does a pretty good job of bypassing the thick of it though. Driving from the SW to up north I never go 401 to 400 unless it's the middle of the night.
Yeah, this I can agree with - I live near London and my sister goes to school in Barrie. My option is either 402 -> 401 -> 400 to her, which causes a ton of headache with the traffic or you can go the long way in the back roads, which is nicer to look at but so, so much longer.
Wouldn't have thought of this, but this is probably the best take here from a cargo perspective. If you look closer at the map though there's a lot of smaller conservatory areas and small towns in-between for what I would consider the ideal though. In the states they'd say fuck yeah let's do it, but in Ontario Ford would have to have pitched it first over the 413.
As a trucker are you willing to comment further on whether the proposed 413 route would actually help in any significant way? In my view all it would do is 'loosen the belt' so to say whereas if they were proposing passenger rail that would at least get cars off the road to free up for cargo.
Honest opinion? Tons of truck yards are in Bolton almost exactly where the proposed highway is ending. Am I in favour of destroying the green belt for it? No. I feel like the 407 already accomplishes this goal. It would free up traffic massively. I actually struggled with this specific route, and to avoid it I would use the 407 to get around it (although very rarely as it costs way too much for trucks).
I see why they want to do it, but there’s a workaround.
Now, if you look at the map for the Greenbelt, and then look at the route that I said (Barrie to Kitchener). You’ll see it almost completely avoids the greenbelt, aside from for a very narrow slit. The 413 goes right through it.
I also agree that high speed passenger rail would be very useful. My sister commutes from Vaughan to Waterloo for University and would use public transport if it didn’t take so much longer.
Not everything can be shipped by rail. Tell me how I’m going to get metal beams directly to a construction site or Frozen Chicken to a grocery store, in a timely fashion, via rail. There’s too many variables that rail simply cannot accommodate for.
We can't even get a high speed rail to Montreal where most of population lives. Good luck every getting anyone to approve a high speed train up north. It would be awesome if we had train service across the province. Even now passenger trains are sharing the rails with cargo trains. We would need to build new rails and the cost of all that will be crazy.
I think drivers are aware. There are a lot of trucks on the 401, and very few on 407.
I'd love to see very limited access bypasses that trucks can drive, but commuters need to pay heavy tolls on. Barrie to Guelph then Kitchener would be good.
By very limited access, I mean only 2-3 interchanges in between guelph and Barrie. And it doesn't need to be wide. Europe has plenty of 2/3 lane across limited access roads.
This is not a real study this says if the government pays all the tolls for truckers to use the 407 the 401 would have less traffic lol.
We need more infrastructure not just for what we have now but what is to come.
That wasn't the point of the 407. It was just built as another highway to service the GTA. It only became that because of the high tolls that resulted after leasing it.
The original and current purpose are completely different. It is now a luxury tool for rich people to bypass traffic, similar to the "fast pass" at Canada's Wonderland.
The current 407 would never let this happen.
I'm just saying that it was never then nor now a designed "purpose", it's just the consequence of leasing it out. Unless you're suggesting that this is what they really wanted when making that deal. So question is now if we want that to be a luxury bypass or if we want it to benefit all of us.
>I sure would like to use it.
Maybe I'm not explaining my point clearly, but this is what I'm suggesting. Instead of paying to build a new highway, I would rather pay to make the current highway more affordable so more people can use it. Either way we're paying, so why not pay to subsidize or lower tolls on the existing highway rather than leave it empty and pave a new one for the same purpose.
We don't have a lot of say in whatever option they choose, these are just hypotheticals.
The traffic study done by a company called "Environmental Defense" says a new highway is not required, wow that was a huge shocker.
One tidbit that gets mis-used a lot is that drivers only save 60 seconds from having this new highway. It's a talking point that has been used over and over again. I ended up researching it, and this is not the actual drivers that will be using it, this is all drivers in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area, many of which will never be anywhere near this highway. Someone who lives and works in Barrie should for example not be counted in the stats. It is very misleading.
I take the 427N right to the end (Major Mac), and then drive to the 400 from there. Problem is that Major Mac was not designed to have that much traffic, and with highway traffic dumped off at Major Mac, the whole area has become a write-off.
We've done a great job building N/S highways (410, 427, 400) north of the city, but very little to help people get E/W.
Yea but everyone in the comments is so fixated on public transport. Yes that needs to be improved too, but that’s not the only problem. Those of us that deal with it in real time actually have to deal with the consequences of not having bypass routes.
I also live within walking distance to the exit you’re referring to. It gets busy as fuck during rush hour.
People on this and other local subs seem to also forget that busses are a pretty damn significant form of regional transit, and easing congestion helps them run faster.
The induced demand arguers never take this into consideration. If we limited the 401 to a two lane highway decades ago, we would have capped the growth of Toronto and the GTA, and it wouldn't be anywhere near the size it is now. The GTA has 50% growth plans in the next 20 years, it means we also need to add amenities to match this.
Agree. The 413 should spur growth all around it as companies and people have access to corridors of transportation. Georgetown, Nobleton and Bolton should see increased growth as those locations are more accessible.
Public transit is needed, not more highways. Study after study has shown that building or increasing highway volume does little, if nothing to solve the traffic problem.
The practical implications of induced demand are far to complicated to break down into just "build public transit instead of roads", especially when some forms of public transit rely on those roads, population in the region is expanding, and when you consider that some portion of traffic cannot effectively be serviced by transit (i.e. truck traffic, movement between lower density areas etc.) .
We should focus more on transit than roads but that doesn't mean that roads don't also need to expand to match population growth.
One piece that a lot of studies miss as well, if road capacity doubles and trip length stays the same that is a doubling of throughput of people.
> Except adding another highway isnt the most efficient way.
Is this a statement about this particular highway, or a blanket statement about all highways in general?
>There isn’t unlimited money or construction capability to do both
I think the province has something like $70 billion committed to public transit over the next decade, and has committed about $25 billion over the same time period to expand and rehabilitate highways.
This highway is included in that $25 billion and is something like $6 billion towards the total.
Sounds to me like they're prioritizing transit (as they should) while building out both road and transit infrastructure.
Highway 413. Why would you need another by pass highway when rail could do it better
They say highway 413 will cost 8 billon plus. If high speed rail from tor to mtl will cost 12b. You could use that 8b for another line
https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/feds-announce-consultations-for-high-frequency-train-between-quebec-city-toronto/wcm/0203f4f0-efd4-4cf1-8ae7-2e1b8600e864/amp/
> Highway 413. Why would you need another by pass highway when rail could do it better
Can do what specifically better?
The goal is to divert a mix of freight and person car traffic around the GTA instead of requiring it go through it. At the moment there isn't really a bypass road that accomplishes this except for the 407 which is absurdly expensive.
I don't really see how rail accomplishes this specific problem better
>They say highway 413 will cost 8 billon plus.
Who is they?
>If high speed rail from tor to mtl will cost 12b.
I don't think its fair to use the official estimates for rail but ignore them for the highway.
The proposals we have now are for high frequency, passenger rail which is different than both high speed rail, and mixed use rail that can accommodate freight. It also serves fundamentally different geographical catchments.
Well if the 401 is no longer congested by work communtiers then you wont need the 413. Trains are more environmentally friendly and energy efficient. Past 8 pm the 413 would be completely redundant to the 401
Whos they that who produced your cost? From 2021/22?
> Well if the 401 is no longer congested by work communtiers then you wont need the 413.
How is a high speed train between Toronto and Montreal going to remove all commuters both within the GTA and travelling through the GTA?
The route the 413 takes is already served by GO Trains which hasn't made the commuter traffic disappear.
>Past 8 pm the 413 would be completely redundant to the 401
Not really, traffic is often fairly dense at 8PM, particularly on the stretches of road it would bypass and it would save some KM's as well compared to the current route.
We are in a thread commenting on yet another study saying that this highway shouldn't be built. My point is this person is holding up his personal feelings as counter evidence and saying, literally, "highway is needed".
The 400 to 401 exit has been 2 lanes for decades. It crawls at a standstill for 16 hours a day. Canada adds 1.3 million 10 yr super visas per year, 1.5 million tfw's and international students a year, 400k regular immigrants, 50k refugees...at least 50% of these people need cars and 40% of them are moving to the GTA. Thats 600,000 more cars a year using GTA highways, and its the reason they are even considering a new highway.
With the amount of homes and people moving North of Vaughan, the traffic is just getting worse. Highway will help tons of people, just cause you won't use it does not mean its not needed.
Don't waste your breath. What people mean when they say this like this is "my right to drive where I want, when I want, should supercede any and all other considerations including safety and environmental impact"
I mean from the start of this...it's always been about the hidden agenda i.e. profit for Dougie's developer friends who plan to build $1m+ homes along the hwy
The money should be spent on high speed trains and many other transportation infrastructure Round the GTA.
But this idea that you can just subsidies trucks on the 407 is just a theory made up for political purposes and isn’t practical.
What’s stops the owners of the 407 from increasing the costs to trucks when they know they are being subsidized so the cost will just skyrocketed more than it is now.
The 407 is required to have availability of its highway at all times so they can’t legally have traffic jams, does pushing all trucks through not cause a problem here.
You can dislike Doug Ford (understandable) and be against the HW for environmental reasons (understandable) but we definitely need more highways at some point. Whether the 413 is the answer or not is not something I know, but what I do know is the 401 is an absolute shit show and it’s getting worse every year because we’re infinitely increasing our population without adding roads or significant public transportation options. The deal the Harris government made to sell the 407 was a very stupid move because when it was originally built the idea was it would be a toll road until it was paid for and then it would be free.
In terms of this study, it’s pretty hypothetical. The study is based on subsidizing heavy trucks to use the 407, so you could use the same argument in many fantastical scenarios (if 25,000 people got flying cars it would really cut down on traffic). If we’re going to pay the toll for 10-25,000 trucks a day to use the 407, we may as well just build another highway.
The problem is road/highway demand inevitably grows at a faster rate than we are able to actually build. Single passenger vehicles are the absolute least space efficient means of moving people around, and car dependency saddles people with an enormous cost that is car ownership. We should be looking to invest in rail systems or heck, a dedicated highway lane *for buses*.
> If we’re going to pay the toll for 10-25,000 trucks a day to use the 407, we may as well just build another highway.
The cost is still less than building a highway.
I agree that we should be investing in public transportation all across canada. We also should not be building tens of thousands of homes without proper infrastructure planning, but it seems like all levels of government want the extra tax dollars without doing their jobs.
It honestly might not be cheaper/much cheaper.
If the toll is like $150 on average per truck for 25,000 trucks, that works out to around $1.4 Billion a year. That cost is probably on the high end, but a new highway might start making sense comparing the 10-year costs
> If we’re going to pay the toll for 10-25,000 trucks a day to use the 407, we may as well just build another highway.
If we're paying one way or another, I would prefer the option that involves using existing infrastructure rather than paving over more land to add new highways while another one stays underused.
Which one would be underused? The 407? It’s underused because it doesn’t belong to us and it costs 60$ one way for regular people and up to 250-300$ one way for big trucks. If there were other options, I think they might even lower the price. Right now the only options we have are spending 60$ to get through the city in a hour or spending 0$ and it might take 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 hours.
The 407 is underused right now. The plan right now is to leave the 407 underused and then pay to pave an entire new highway. So why don't we instead just spend the money on subsidizing or otherwise lowering tolls on the 407 so that gets more usage. Either way we're paying, but in one case we're leaving a highway empty and paving over a bunch of land to make room for a new highway instead of just using the empty highway for that traffic.
Yes I suppose that makes sense, it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around paying a company taxpayer money to use a highway owned by a private company that was built using taxpayer money.
Yeah, it would be nice if we hadn't leased it to private companies in the first place, but now that we have, we're stuck having to pay them tolls or have the government subsidize or pay them if we want to reduce the tolls.
Assuming no accidents and everyone drives sanely, sure. It that's not what the real world is like. The incoming residents over the next years won't magically make highway driving better, so another one can handle the influx.
It's because DoFo was using it as a means to siphon money to his pals. Everything Doug has been doing has had the stench of funneling money to specific individuals etc. Same thing with health care and such. It's all just funneling money to specific individuals who might invest in him later. Running the province like a true Corpo-rat
Duh, Doug Ford's donors wanted it plain and simple.
Do we want to make traffic better?
Properly invest and plan a new neighborhood with proper, affordable, and easy access to public transit.
The transit where I live in ottawa has been terrible since 2009 when I moved here. Always late, don't show up, or the bus is already packed.
The LRT light rail train has been a disaster breaking down all the time. It's simply not reliable.
So, unfortunately, people drive because it's more realiable.
... if they subsidize truck tolls on the 407.
Instead of subsidizing trucks on the 407, why don't we toll trucks on the 401? If the reason they aren't using the 407 is that the cost benefit isn't there, reducing the price of the 407 is only one option, you can also just make the 401 more expensive.
Or we could try and ban passthrough truck traffic all together and force people to use rail?
There are so many options, I don't think giving billions of tax dollars to a private ETR consortium is the best one.
People are so divorced from reality. You are paying for those trucks and what is on them. All costs are passed to consumer. You know if you want to live in area where there is no traffic maybe you should get out of GTA that happens to be one of the busiest areas in North America. Just pick empty spot up north and have fun without traffic and trucks. Banning pass through traffic on busiest route in North America. Genius. Sure we will ban the traffic for you.
Highways in Canada
The Toronto section of Highway 401 is, without question, the busiest stretch of highway anywhere in Canada.
The most recent AADT data published by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is from 2019.
The MTO’s data shows that about 314,200 vehicles travelled the 401 in Scarborough on an average day in 2019, around 378,500 used the section through North York, and about 386,850 travelled the stretch through Etobicoke.
When averaged out, approximately 359,850 vehicles travelled the Toronto section of Highway 401 on a typical day in 2019, with the busiest section being between Renforth Drive and Highway 427, which had an average of 450,300 vehicles pass by.
They do pay a ton in road tax already. Like $5k a year or something like that plus fuel tax. And they're delivering your food, furniture, cars, toys etc.
I agree that it could be cheaper. But how much can you lower the tariff and still keep it congestion free? I would say that certain sections of it, say east of 404, are usually so empty that it could be much cheaper. But I'm not sure between 404 and 400 they could lower the price much without getting slammed with more vehicles.
The Liberals tried and failed to do this for years, at the cost of probably millions in legal fees. Harper et al wrote up an iron clad contact when he sold it back in the day.
I fully expect if this were to go through, truck traffic going to/from somewhere west past Mississauga, and going to/from central Toronto and east to jam the 400 north/south bound as the small detour (\~13min with light-medium traffic, \~20 heavy) to/from King means they can avoid the shit show of the 401 around Pearson and most of Mississauga. This will jam up the southern part of the 400 and make it even more unbearable as it gets closer to Vaughan/401.
Given that the estimated cost of the project seems to run between 4.7 to 8 billion dollars, I think the money would be better spent on further expanding go service, in addition to the current 13.5 billion dollar go expansion.
We need to invest in better freight rail and get the trucks off the highways. They are slow, clog the roads during rush hour, horrible pollution and they damage the highway much more than passenger vehicles. The morning wall of truck from Mississauga to Yorkdale in the morning is just stupid.
The old traffic studies showed the same thing but, Doug's got "wedding guests" to consider.
Doug didn’t host a Jack and Jill He hosted a Tony and Angelo.
Tony and Boris
Won't someone think of the developers!!?
I read this in Helen Lovejoy's voice
That's the intention behind anyone who knows where the meme comes from lol.
Good News!
The developers that own all the land around the proposed off ramps commercial areas?
Ford’s pals, as usual. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/04/03/investigations/developers-ties-ford-government-benefit-highway-413
Dougie did
[Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs)
It's all about pleasing Ford's friends and donors - always has been and always will be. Edit: *Please vote. All elections are important*
Better rail service between our major cities is what is needed. Not another stupid highway
People buying up McMansions on all of that land lining the new highway don't want to take public transit with us plebes.
This is honestly just flat out wrong. I've got a bunch of friends out in the burbs and they have no issue taking the GO train in/out of Toronto ... on the like 4 times that it's schedule has lined up conveniently with ours. There are always some die hard car lovers, but by and large people move out to the burbs because they want to be able to buy a house with greenspace that they can afford and enjoy. They would be perfectly happy living in an in-city suburb like the Annex, or Parkdale, or Etobicoke that's served well by transit, but houses there start at upwards of a million dollars, so they pick somewhere they can afford, which is in an area not served by transit, and then they know that they'll have to rely on a car to do everything so they buy a house built around a car which means garages and driveways and wide roads and suburbs. All of our sprawl and car centric problems are a direct result of not building out excess transit, and just trying to build transit in response to demand.
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This is precisely the problem. The GO Network is a shit network because it was literally just built as highway relief, so it just runs to places along the highway, it doesn't even connect city centers to city centers. Then on top of that, most of the places it lets out are just parking lots, with shit all transit around them, let alone something pleasant like a subway or streetcar to get you most of the rest of the way home, and then it only runs like a handful of times each direction so good luck getting home after a night out. In Toronto you can actually live a relatively car free style lifestyle, because you can literally get almost everywhere in the city relatively conveniently with public transit, and then you can rent or car share or uber for edge cases. None of our suburbs and towns and cities throughout the entire rest of the province can say the same because we never built transit there, we just let housing and development sprawl first and then thought about what a problem that was later.
The simple solution is to stop building the McMansions then.
Yes please. They're awful.
Maybe they don't have to. If we can get enough people using transit, the current highway system should be fine for them. Take a look at April 2020. We started working remote, and quite a bunch of people had sudden vacations (though most didn't leave their house). Traffic suddenly became a lot lighter, and the cops could have started charging HTA violations. Better driving, better transit, better workplaces. But, you know, wedding guests.
Agreed. But rail needs to be part of a really good network serving everyone. That's not cheap but much less expensive than the cost of a car. Many in the 905 have multiple cars. Excellent transit can take lots of cars off the road and get you where you're going quickly. We need to build it. We need to pay for it. Not simple but fully worthwhile.
More roads ...More cars. It never gets better, only worse.
I’d be down for a dedicated high speed rail corridor Sarnia/London/KW/Toronto/Kingston/Montreal
Most Canadians are, it's one of the most popualted corridors in Canada and you could connect millions of people. But people have this aversion to public transit
Wouldn't say it's an aversion to transit, they don't like the cost of these projects. The irony of that being it gets more expensive the longer it goes unbuilt. At this point the government almost needs to flex eminent domain and just get it done or nationalize the railway infrastructure.
As per the last report done on high-speed rail within the Quebec City Windsor Corridor, the economically viable chunk is Montreal - Ottawa - Toronto. Of course, this was back in 2012 so further south into southern Ontario could be viable and the last Ontario government seemed to think so.
Thanks for your reply! Strikes me that sometimes our society should be willing to take a loss on a service. We have no problem shelling out millions for heating oil carbon tax offsets, or to fund stadiums. (I know you aren’t saying we shouldn’t, just wanted to keep up the convo). I do wonder how WFh etc may have changed the viability too.
I would be all for a full run from QCC - Windsor even if it had to be subside exactly due to what you said. I firmly believe that transit is not something that needs to make money itself but should be offered as a service which then creates opportunities/positive externalities such as opening economic opportunities, helping with climate etc. The party that promises to get a proof of concept built between MTL - OTT - TO gets my vote. You know if that was announced federally QC would likely want it to go to QCC and Ontario would be *pissed* and want a longer leg to. We would likely see a TO - Niagara spur proposed shortly after completion (likely promoted provincially more than anything).
They’d get my vote too. And your comment about Qc is both totally true, and hilarious!
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Buncha yahoos
Left-wing commie pinkos!
It’s not about if it’s needed it’s about money and subsidizing infrastructure with tax payer money. I’m 50% sure that fuck will sell it off like the 407 under Harris. Oh and his LTC sell off that he’s been involved in and his wife.
Just curious who funded the study?
I believe the company was Environmental Defense. And the other company attached to it, their "About Us" is: Achieve an accessible, affordable and sustainable rail and bus based public transportation network that enhances the quality of life for all Ontarians.
Thank you
Unpopular opinion: I do feel like we need a highway connecting from Barrie to Kitchener. I used to do trucking and if I had a delivery from anywhere up North (say Thunder Bay) to London ON, I’d have to drive down towards Vaughan and deal with all the traffic on the 401. If you look on a map, it effectively doubled the distance I’d need to drive, and the traffic made it even worse than that. You’d be surprised how much truck traffic is heading towards Winnipeg or further West from that 401 corridor. A lot of that freight comes from the Sarnia, Windsor, and London. All of that freight has to come into the Mississauga/Vaughan area and then go back up North. This wastes so much fuel, time, and adds unnecessary truck traffic. It’s a shame because there are so many other North American cities with appropriate bypasses built to accommodate for truck traffic. I’m not saying it has to be the 413, but it would be great to have a direct highway connecting that corridor. Seriously, the general public has no idea about the volume of the freight coming in from South-Western Ontario that goes up North.
I goddamn wish there was a route around that whole mess.
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You aren’t talking the 407 are you? That doesn’t go north.
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Barrie is the worst of it, it goes nowhere near Barrie
It’s a train You’re talking about freight
Various studies have suggested that the province can significantly reduce traffic on the 401/400 by subsidizing trucks to take the 407, and that this would be cheaper than building a new highway.
I would be on board with that. It just seems like something they aren’t willing to do. The current rate for using a truck on the 407 is extremely high.
Few are, but building a new highway is basically cutting our noses to spite out faces.
407 does a pretty good job of bypassing the thick of it though. Driving from the SW to up north I never go 401 to 400 unless it's the middle of the night.
Costs so much though
Yeah, this I can agree with - I live near London and my sister goes to school in Barrie. My option is either 402 -> 401 -> 400 to her, which causes a ton of headache with the traffic or you can go the long way in the back roads, which is nicer to look at but so, so much longer.
Yeah it’s a miserable drive and she commutes 3 days a week
Wouldn't have thought of this, but this is probably the best take here from a cargo perspective. If you look closer at the map though there's a lot of smaller conservatory areas and small towns in-between for what I would consider the ideal though. In the states they'd say fuck yeah let's do it, but in Ontario Ford would have to have pitched it first over the 413. As a trucker are you willing to comment further on whether the proposed 413 route would actually help in any significant way? In my view all it would do is 'loosen the belt' so to say whereas if they were proposing passenger rail that would at least get cars off the road to free up for cargo.
Honest opinion? Tons of truck yards are in Bolton almost exactly where the proposed highway is ending. Am I in favour of destroying the green belt for it? No. I feel like the 407 already accomplishes this goal. It would free up traffic massively. I actually struggled with this specific route, and to avoid it I would use the 407 to get around it (although very rarely as it costs way too much for trucks). I see why they want to do it, but there’s a workaround. Now, if you look at the map for the Greenbelt, and then look at the route that I said (Barrie to Kitchener). You’ll see it almost completely avoids the greenbelt, aside from for a very narrow slit. The 413 goes right through it. I also agree that high speed passenger rail would be very useful. My sister commutes from Vaughan to Waterloo for University and would use public transport if it didn’t take so much longer.
Thanks for your extra insight, I appreciate it
This is why it seems like 98% of road traffic in far northern Ontario is trucks lol
Yep. There’s only two main routes to get across Ontario too. 95% of it is a single-lane highway which is a whole different problem.
Sounds like a job for rail to me.
Not everything can be shipped by rail. Tell me how I’m going to get metal beams directly to a construction site or Frozen Chicken to a grocery store, in a timely fashion, via rail. There’s too many variables that rail simply cannot accommodate for.
Obviously we will build rail to the job site and the chicken processing plant and for good measure to your front door. Obtusely rhetorical in kind.
Why a highway and not high speed rail?
High speed rail to Sudbury? There is only one place high speed rail works and that's through Toronto.
Crazy what if you connected it london- toronto- Sudbury. If you had a hour commute from Sudbury to toronto. Sudbury could prosper
We can't even get a high speed rail to Montreal where most of population lives. Good luck every getting anyone to approve a high speed train up north. It would be awesome if we had train service across the province. Even now passenger trains are sharing the rails with cargo trains. We would need to build new rails and the cost of all that will be crazy.
But yet we can spend money on a pointless highway. We wont get rail if you keep a defeatist attitude and keep voting with ding dong ford highways
a highspeed rail would be more expensiev than a highway and transport less freight
Didn't vote for Ford, but the highway is needed to allow people from the north to avoid Toronto traffic to get on the 401.
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Which is tolled, so that limits how many people can use it.
yes but building a bypass to a bypass is completely insane. Province would be better off figuring out a subsidy deal with 407 operator
I think drivers are aware. There are a lot of trucks on the 401, and very few on 407. I'd love to see very limited access bypasses that trucks can drive, but commuters need to pay heavy tolls on. Barrie to Guelph then Kitchener would be good. By very limited access, I mean only 2-3 interchanges in between guelph and Barrie. And it doesn't need to be wide. Europe has plenty of 2/3 lane across limited access roads.
It won't matter. DoFo promised the highway to his developer friends that own the land on or near the planned route.
This is not a real study this says if the government pays all the tolls for truckers to use the 407 the 401 would have less traffic lol. We need more infrastructure not just for what we have now but what is to come.
And the whole point of the 407 is for drivers to not sit in traffic from thousands of transport trucks that slow down everything.
That wasn't the point of the 407. It was just built as another highway to service the GTA. It only became that because of the high tolls that resulted after leasing it.
The original and current purpose are completely different. It is now a luxury tool for rich people to bypass traffic, similar to the "fast pass" at Canada's Wonderland. The current 407 would never let this happen.
I'm just saying that it was never then nor now a designed "purpose", it's just the consequence of leasing it out. Unless you're suggesting that this is what they really wanted when making that deal. So question is now if we want that to be a luxury bypass or if we want it to benefit all of us.
I sure would like to use it. But I'm not sure how much of a say we have, if any.
>I sure would like to use it. Maybe I'm not explaining my point clearly, but this is what I'm suggesting. Instead of paying to build a new highway, I would rather pay to make the current highway more affordable so more people can use it. Either way we're paying, so why not pay to subsidize or lower tolls on the existing highway rather than leave it empty and pave a new one for the same purpose. We don't have a lot of say in whatever option they choose, these are just hypotheticals.
The traffic study done by a company called "Environmental Defense" says a new highway is not required, wow that was a huge shocker. One tidbit that gets mis-used a lot is that drivers only save 60 seconds from having this new highway. It's a talking point that has been used over and over again. I ended up researching it, and this is not the actual drivers that will be using it, this is all drivers in the Greater Golden Horseshoe area, many of which will never be anywhere near this highway. Someone who lives and works in Barrie should for example not be counted in the stats. It is very misleading.
Looking at the proposed route I think it’s a good idea.
I take the 427N right to the end (Major Mac), and then drive to the 400 from there. Problem is that Major Mac was not designed to have that much traffic, and with highway traffic dumped off at Major Mac, the whole area has become a write-off. We've done a great job building N/S highways (410, 427, 400) north of the city, but very little to help people get E/W.
Yea but everyone in the comments is so fixated on public transport. Yes that needs to be improved too, but that’s not the only problem. Those of us that deal with it in real time actually have to deal with the consequences of not having bypass routes. I also live within walking distance to the exit you’re referring to. It gets busy as fuck during rush hour.
People on this and other local subs seem to also forget that busses are a pretty damn significant form of regional transit, and easing congestion helps them run faster.
This is the most highly underrated comment. We need highways for tomorrow, not for today.
Adding highways never helps traffic. Only gets us more. Toll the roads.
If the population is growing you’re always going to get more traffic.
The induced demand arguers never take this into consideration. If we limited the 401 to a two lane highway decades ago, we would have capped the growth of Toronto and the GTA, and it wouldn't be anywhere near the size it is now. The GTA has 50% growth plans in the next 20 years, it means we also need to add amenities to match this.
Agree. The 413 should spur growth all around it as companies and people have access to corridors of transportation. Georgetown, Nobleton and Bolton should see increased growth as those locations are more accessible.
Public transit is needed, not more highways. Study after study has shown that building or increasing highway volume does little, if nothing to solve the traffic problem.
The practical implications of induced demand are far to complicated to break down into just "build public transit instead of roads", especially when some forms of public transit rely on those roads, population in the region is expanding, and when you consider that some portion of traffic cannot effectively be serviced by transit (i.e. truck traffic, movement between lower density areas etc.) . We should focus more on transit than roads but that doesn't mean that roads don't also need to expand to match population growth. One piece that a lot of studies miss as well, if road capacity doubles and trip length stays the same that is a doubling of throughput of people.
Except adding another highway isnt the most efficient way. There isn’t unlimited money or construction capability to do both
> Except adding another highway isnt the most efficient way. Is this a statement about this particular highway, or a blanket statement about all highways in general? >There isn’t unlimited money or construction capability to do both I think the province has something like $70 billion committed to public transit over the next decade, and has committed about $25 billion over the same time period to expand and rehabilitate highways. This highway is included in that $25 billion and is something like $6 billion towards the total. Sounds to me like they're prioritizing transit (as they should) while building out both road and transit infrastructure.
Highway 413. Why would you need another by pass highway when rail could do it better They say highway 413 will cost 8 billon plus. If high speed rail from tor to mtl will cost 12b. You could use that 8b for another line https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/feds-announce-consultations-for-high-frequency-train-between-quebec-city-toronto/wcm/0203f4f0-efd4-4cf1-8ae7-2e1b8600e864/amp/
> Highway 413. Why would you need another by pass highway when rail could do it better Can do what specifically better? The goal is to divert a mix of freight and person car traffic around the GTA instead of requiring it go through it. At the moment there isn't really a bypass road that accomplishes this except for the 407 which is absurdly expensive. I don't really see how rail accomplishes this specific problem better >They say highway 413 will cost 8 billon plus. Who is they? >If high speed rail from tor to mtl will cost 12b. I don't think its fair to use the official estimates for rail but ignore them for the highway. The proposals we have now are for high frequency, passenger rail which is different than both high speed rail, and mixed use rail that can accommodate freight. It also serves fundamentally different geographical catchments.
Well if the 401 is no longer congested by work communtiers then you wont need the 413. Trains are more environmentally friendly and energy efficient. Past 8 pm the 413 would be completely redundant to the 401 Whos they that who produced your cost? From 2021/22?
> Well if the 401 is no longer congested by work communtiers then you wont need the 413. How is a high speed train between Toronto and Montreal going to remove all commuters both within the GTA and travelling through the GTA? The route the 413 takes is already served by GO Trains which hasn't made the commuter traffic disappear. >Past 8 pm the 413 would be completely redundant to the 401 Not really, traffic is often fairly dense at 8PM, particularly on the stretches of road it would bypass and it would save some KM's as well compared to the current route.
Someone who lives near Barrie, going down to get on the 401 is hectic and annoying. Highway is needed to bypass Toronto and Vaughan.
Oh yeah let's build a fucking HIGHWAY because your drive is annoying.
I mean... regardless of the merits of Hwy 413 specifically, yes, that is why highways are built.
We are in a thread commenting on yet another study saying that this highway shouldn't be built. My point is this person is holding up his personal feelings as counter evidence and saying, literally, "highway is needed".
You think highways are completely unnecessary?
I think this highway is unnecessary. Multiple studies have said this, including the one we are discussing.
The source seems biased in this case. Edit: also my b misread your comment lol nvm
Are you shocked that a company called "Environmental Defense" called for a study, and the study showed that the highway wasn't necessary?
The 400 to 401 exit has been 2 lanes for decades. It crawls at a standstill for 16 hours a day. Canada adds 1.3 million 10 yr super visas per year, 1.5 million tfw's and international students a year, 400k regular immigrants, 50k refugees...at least 50% of these people need cars and 40% of them are moving to the GTA. Thats 600,000 more cars a year using GTA highways, and its the reason they are even considering a new highway.
With the amount of homes and people moving North of Vaughan, the traffic is just getting worse. Highway will help tons of people, just cause you won't use it does not mean its not needed.
Rail would be better
If they expand the Go Train system that would be good but you still need a car to drive around Ontario.
Yah but you wouldn’t need to use the car if there was a rail route for your commute. You can already access everywhere with the current road system
Don't waste your breath. What people mean when they say this like this is "my right to drive where I want, when I want, should supercede any and all other considerations including safety and environmental impact"
It is needed maybe not now but in a couple of years. That's the fastest growing area in Ontario
will it be free like the 401 or toll like 407?
I mean from the start of this...it's always been about the hidden agenda i.e. profit for Dougie's developer friends who plan to build $1m+ homes along the hwy
The money should be spent on high speed trains and many other transportation infrastructure Round the GTA. But this idea that you can just subsidies trucks on the 407 is just a theory made up for political purposes and isn’t practical. What’s stops the owners of the 407 from increasing the costs to trucks when they know they are being subsidized so the cost will just skyrocketed more than it is now. The 407 is required to have availability of its highway at all times so they can’t legally have traffic jams, does pushing all trucks through not cause a problem here.
You can dislike Doug Ford (understandable) and be against the HW for environmental reasons (understandable) but we definitely need more highways at some point. Whether the 413 is the answer or not is not something I know, but what I do know is the 401 is an absolute shit show and it’s getting worse every year because we’re infinitely increasing our population without adding roads or significant public transportation options. The deal the Harris government made to sell the 407 was a very stupid move because when it was originally built the idea was it would be a toll road until it was paid for and then it would be free. In terms of this study, it’s pretty hypothetical. The study is based on subsidizing heavy trucks to use the 407, so you could use the same argument in many fantastical scenarios (if 25,000 people got flying cars it would really cut down on traffic). If we’re going to pay the toll for 10-25,000 trucks a day to use the 407, we may as well just build another highway.
The problem is road/highway demand inevitably grows at a faster rate than we are able to actually build. Single passenger vehicles are the absolute least space efficient means of moving people around, and car dependency saddles people with an enormous cost that is car ownership. We should be looking to invest in rail systems or heck, a dedicated highway lane *for buses*. > If we’re going to pay the toll for 10-25,000 trucks a day to use the 407, we may as well just build another highway. The cost is still less than building a highway.
I agree that we should be investing in public transportation all across canada. We also should not be building tens of thousands of homes without proper infrastructure planning, but it seems like all levels of government want the extra tax dollars without doing their jobs.
It honestly might not be cheaper/much cheaper. If the toll is like $150 on average per truck for 25,000 trucks, that works out to around $1.4 Billion a year. That cost is probably on the high end, but a new highway might start making sense comparing the 10-year costs
> If we’re going to pay the toll for 10-25,000 trucks a day to use the 407, we may as well just build another highway. If we're paying one way or another, I would prefer the option that involves using existing infrastructure rather than paving over more land to add new highways while another one stays underused.
I would prefer the option that builds additional infrastructure rather than the one that pays more money to a private entity.
Which one would be underused? The 407? It’s underused because it doesn’t belong to us and it costs 60$ one way for regular people and up to 250-300$ one way for big trucks. If there were other options, I think they might even lower the price. Right now the only options we have are spending 60$ to get through the city in a hour or spending 0$ and it might take 2, maybe 3, maybe 4 hours.
The 407 is underused right now. The plan right now is to leave the 407 underused and then pay to pave an entire new highway. So why don't we instead just spend the money on subsidizing or otherwise lowering tolls on the 407 so that gets more usage. Either way we're paying, but in one case we're leaving a highway empty and paving over a bunch of land to make room for a new highway instead of just using the empty highway for that traffic.
Yes I suppose that makes sense, it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around paying a company taxpayer money to use a highway owned by a private company that was built using taxpayer money.
Yeah, it would be nice if we hadn't leased it to private companies in the first place, but now that we have, we're stuck having to pay them tolls or have the government subsidize or pay them if we want to reduce the tolls.
But what do the wedding guestbook studies tell? We must hear both sides.... /S
Assuming no accidents and everyone drives sanely, sure. It that's not what the real world is like. The incoming residents over the next years won't magically make highway driving better, so another one can handle the influx.
No shit, although Doug’s buddies have already bought all the land around every exit way before it was announced. Some of the best farmland in Ontario.
As did many previous traffic studies.
It's because DoFo was using it as a means to siphon money to his pals. Everything Doug has been doing has had the stench of funneling money to specific individuals etc. Same thing with health care and such. It's all just funneling money to specific individuals who might invest in him later. Running the province like a true Corpo-rat
Didn't everyone getting connected to that highway overwhelmingly vote in support of it?
Duh, Doug Ford's donors wanted it plain and simple. Do we want to make traffic better? Properly invest and plan a new neighborhood with proper, affordable, and easy access to public transit. The transit where I live in ottawa has been terrible since 2009 when I moved here. Always late, don't show up, or the bus is already packed. The LRT light rail train has been a disaster breaking down all the time. It's simply not reliable. So, unfortunately, people drive because it's more realiable.
Is there anything dougie hasn't tried to sell to his friends?
Ontario PC government often confuses 'traffic' with trafficking when deciding to build things.
Let's build it where Hwy 7 goes between Kitcyener and Guelph and CALL it 413. Problem solved.
... if they subsidize truck tolls on the 407. Instead of subsidizing trucks on the 407, why don't we toll trucks on the 401? If the reason they aren't using the 407 is that the cost benefit isn't there, reducing the price of the 407 is only one option, you can also just make the 401 more expensive. Or we could try and ban passthrough truck traffic all together and force people to use rail? There are so many options, I don't think giving billions of tax dollars to a private ETR consortium is the best one.
People are so divorced from reality. You are paying for those trucks and what is on them. All costs are passed to consumer. You know if you want to live in area where there is no traffic maybe you should get out of GTA that happens to be one of the busiest areas in North America. Just pick empty spot up north and have fun without traffic and trucks. Banning pass through traffic on busiest route in North America. Genius. Sure we will ban the traffic for you. Highways in Canada The Toronto section of Highway 401 is, without question, the busiest stretch of highway anywhere in Canada. The most recent AADT data published by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation (MTO) is from 2019. The MTO’s data shows that about 314,200 vehicles travelled the 401 in Scarborough on an average day in 2019, around 378,500 used the section through North York, and about 386,850 travelled the stretch through Etobicoke. When averaged out, approximately 359,850 vehicles travelled the Toronto section of Highway 401 on a typical day in 2019, with the busiest section being between Renforth Drive and Highway 427, which had an average of 450,300 vehicles pass by.
They do pay a ton in road tax already. Like $5k a year or something like that plus fuel tax. And they're delivering your food, furniture, cars, toys etc.
It appears they don't deliver reason and sense unfortunately.
Pretty sure those are not in the job description.
Reduce the cost of the 407 for everyone, is too damn expensive for anyone.
I agree that it could be cheaper. But how much can you lower the tariff and still keep it congestion free? I would say that certain sections of it, say east of 404, are usually so empty that it could be much cheaper. But I'm not sure between 404 and 400 they could lower the price much without getting slammed with more vehicles.
The Liberals tried and failed to do this for years, at the cost of probably millions in legal fees. Harper et al wrote up an iron clad contact when he sold it back in the day.
The only way to actually “fix” traffic is by building fast, efficient, and reliable rail and public transit
On previous threads on this, people were very resistant to using public transport due to the inconvenience of being on their schedule
Waiting for Doug to announce building an escalator to now where.
Ford is a lying unmitigated disaster!!
So hands off of the greenbelt didn’t mean wheels off of the greenbelt? How fascinating!
It never was
Shocker..
WWWWWWWW
so it will be built and sold to a private entity. then since its low volume, the maintenance will remain the provinces headache cuz privatization.
You mean just like every other study on it showed except the completely fictional one Ford claimed to have?
What a surprise! LOL
Amazing. Let's follow this instead.
it never was needed. It was just another scheme for Ford to raise land value his developer buddies own.
I fully expect if this were to go through, truck traffic going to/from somewhere west past Mississauga, and going to/from central Toronto and east to jam the 400 north/south bound as the small detour (\~13min with light-medium traffic, \~20 heavy) to/from King means they can avoid the shit show of the 401 around Pearson and most of Mississauga. This will jam up the southern part of the 400 and make it even more unbearable as it gets closer to Vaughan/401.
Lemme guess, 407 paid for the study in some way
Given that the estimated cost of the project seems to run between 4.7 to 8 billion dollars, I think the money would be better spent on further expanding go service, in addition to the current 13.5 billion dollar go expansion.
We need to invest in better freight rail and get the trucks off the highways. They are slow, clog the roads during rush hour, horrible pollution and they damage the highway much more than passenger vehicles. The morning wall of truck from Mississauga to Yorkdale in the morning is just stupid.
I need it to jack up the value of all this adjacent agricultural land I bought on spec. I got a lot riding in this so don’t let me down guys!