Ford and the 401 Tunnel

In My Humble Opinion
1

The 400 highways around Toronto, Canada are some of the busiest roads in the world. They connect the six boroughs of Toronto to a hundred suburbs and a thousand other towns and cities.

Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, much in the news for using Reagan’s quotes in an anti-tariff ad broadcast in the US, has recently championed digging a big tunnel beneath the highway to ease congestion at a cost of a bajillion dollars.

But this thread is not about politics, but the mechanics and consequences of digging a big tunnel under a busy highway.

Ford argues they dug a tunnel under the English Channel, so it can be probably done if you go deep enough. Previous studies felt the risk and enormous costs of a collapse make this unrealistic, which many would agree with.

People like to quote Las Vegas, as if a short train to the Convention Centre is in any way comparable. This tunnel would be hundreds of kilometres long and have eight lanes. It would need continual lighting. It is more ambitious than the Big Dig which paralyzed Boston for a decade.

Then there is the fact it probably is not fun to drive 100 miles in a tunnel. Only long haulers would choose to do it?

If it could be done, how deep would you have to go? What would be the benefits, and what are the obvious and not obvious problems this idea would cause - floods, earthquakes, spills, evacuating those in accidents, gas and electric lines, whatever…

This been done anywhere else at scale? The Mexican town of Guanajuato made tunnels out of abandoned mines and a river bed, but these were already there and are only for a mile or two.

Thoughts, criticisms, experiences?

2

According to Wikipedia, the world’s longest tunnel is the Delaware Aqueduct at 85 miles. But there’s a pretty big difference between an aqueduct and a road tunnel. All of the longest tunnels are aqueducts or railway tunnels. The longest road tunnel is the Laedal Tunnel in Norway, at 15 miles.

3

First hearing about this, but a quick check of news articles show that it’s not 100 miles, but potentially as long as 100 kilometers (for us Yanks, that’s about 60 miles). The only thing approved so far appears to be a feasibility study, which should show the potential costs for a tunnel of various lengths up to 100km…

CBC Article

The CBC article mentions the Lærdal Tunnel in Norway as the longest such type of tunnel in the world at 24km (15mi):

Of note, the tunnel in Norway takes 20 minutes to transit, and I am not sure if it allows the volume of traffic envisioned by Ford.

IMHO this is a massive boondoggle meant to distract from other pressing issues - what else needs attention in Ontario?

4

That tunnel appears to be two lanes? Maybe four, if that’s two lanes per direction. That’s a fraction of the 401 as it passes through the center of Toronto. There’s at least 4 express lanes each way, with two or three collector lanes each way in the widest part of the 401, so you’re looking at at least 4-5 times the width.

Also, that tunnel seems to be in a mountainous area, where tunnels, though expensive, are the most practical way to deal with mountains. The 401 is pretty much flat for the vast majority of its length. There’s no hill high enough to justify a tunnel in its own right. So you’d be digging a tunnel just because you want a tunnel. Which, you know, I’m okay with, I like tunnels, but let’s be honest with ourselves here!

But the real factor here is: Doug Ford Loves Highways. And he hates just about every other form or transportation there is. He’s actively trying to do away with bike and bus lanes that already exist, and not just in Toronto, but throughout the province.

So yeah, a boondoggle being pushed because Doug Ford Wants It.

5

Doug loves his developer friends more than he loves highways. Can’t wait to get on the Rob Ford Memorial Tunnel at the Loblaw Corp entrance and take it to the Cortellucci Family exit.

I’d like to point out that these tunnels he’s comparing it to a) have no real alternatives (mountains or ocean in the way) and b) typically have an entrance/exit on each end. Adding the cost and complexity of exit and entrance ramps along the length of the 401 through Toronto would be either very expensive or sheer madness.

6

Doug Ford is in office to enrich his developer buddies, his contractor pals, and his construction industry friends, all of whom have spent the last ten years filling Toronto up with teeny tiny one million dollar condos that nobody wants to live in, and now that the real estate bubble is deflating his pals need another cash cow. If Ford really wants to help relieve traffic congestion, he could just make the entire 407 highway toll-free - you know, the 407, the highway a previous Conservative government built and then sold off to a “consortium of Canadian and Spanish investors” as Wikipedia says. But big, dumb, useless projects - like former mayor Rob - are kind of a Ford family tradition.

7

One of the dumbest moves in history….no quite at the Manhattan Island for some wampum but citizens just pay and pay. Perhaps the worst part of the deal …he conned the gov into collecting “no pays” by witholding new liciences and registrations.

That said Boston did the big tunnel.

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/the-big-dig-project-background

8

This is what needs to be done. Yes, I know what the conditions of the deal were at the time, but it seems to me that the operators of the 407 broke those conditions long ago by jacking tolls well beyond what was agreed to, and providing lousy customer service (and I’m being kind by describing it that way) when somebody receives an incorrect bill. “I did not travel on the 407 that day. Yes, I’m from the GTA, but my car was in my garage while I was in Calgary on that date.” “Well, our records show that you were on the 407 that day, so pay up or we sue you.”

Buy the road back for what Ontario received for it 25-some years ago. Not whatever the operators are asking; it’s a take it or leave it proposition. Take it, and we’re all good; leave it and we’ll just seal off all entrance ramps from all provincial/regional/township roads, so you won’t have any revenue-generating traffic on it at all. We’re the province, we can do that.

The 407 was supposed to be a Toronto bypass, so traffic didn’t have to go through the GTA. Then the Harris government got the brilliant idea that it could be sold, and it was. Point is, that no new tunnel is needed as long as the 407 is there. And buying it back would cost a lot less than digging a tunnel under the existing highway.

9

I agree. First of all let’s acknowledge the problem – the 401 over the top of Toronto is the busiest highway in North America, despite its expanse of something like 14 lanes through that section.

Supplementing this with a parallel underground tunnel is sheer madness. If you look at the cost of subway construction, even the cost of a narrow tunnel would be astronomical, and it wouldn’t do much good unless it was nearly as wide as the 401 above it.

There are only three approaches that make sense, and they need to be used together. Reclaiming the 407 is one – it’s not exactly a replacement for the 401 for all travelers as it’s way further north and doesn’t exactly parallel it, but in many cases it’s an excellent alternative and would hugely reduce congestion on the 401. Ever since the lunatic troglodytes of the Mike Harris Conservatives sold it to private interests, it’s been a source of shameless profiteering for its owners.

Another one is improving public transit so there are fewer cars on the road to begin with.

And the third, recognizing how much of the traffic congestion on the 401 is due to large long-haul semi-trailers passing through the area, is to incentivize offloading a lot of this crap onto the railroads, which can handle it far, far more efficiently than trucks.

10

But I’ve always heard that if the $24 (actually 60 guilders, equivalent to about $1,000-$1,200 today) worth of items traded to the Indians, had it been invested then, would now be worth something not too far from the assessed value of Manhattan today.

So maybe it was not the sale that was dumb, but the squandering of that windfall. Something still pretty common today, as shown by the actions of most lottery winners.

11

But having an entrance/exit on each end is what makes it a tunnel, not just a long narrow cave.

12

Surely, the simpler option would be to build above, rather than to build below. Build a bridge structure over the existing road. There’s already plenty of roadways like that, and it would leave both levels exposed to natural light and ventilation.

13

This thread is not about politics as such.

The Chunnel goes under the English Channel, which weighs an incredible amount. So Ford is probably right it could be done. I am surprised it is only 75m below the sea bed. Is it worth doing? The cost of any disruptions or collapses would be too high to risk it. And the Chunnel, though 50km, has no off or on ramps. Just trains and a few lanes for passenger vehicles. Bogartibg the 407 makes much more sense.

14

I’ve gone through the Ryfylke Tunnel in Norway which is much deeper. Much narrower than the 401, of course!

15

That didn’t work out very well here but maybe you don’t need to consider earthquakes there.