The 401 is the busiest highway in North America running through the largest city in Canada and the fourth largest city in North America. On top of that, we have fallen horribly behind on transit. Toronto has added one short transit line since the 1970s, fewer than 10 new stations on existing lines, and in fact lost a transit line a few years ago when Line 3 was shut down when the rolling stock became unrepairable. We’re talking 2-3 generations of avoiding proper transit planning.
They are slowly starting to make some progress on transit with 2 new light rail lines in final testing, including one partially parallel to the 401, and a new heavy rail line that has just started construction running from downtown to the north-eastern parts of the city. The 401 itself is at capacity and there are natural choke points on the west side of the city where there is really no room to widen it.
I’m no urban planner, but I’ve lived here my entire life and traffic on the 401 has never gotten lighter in the 40 years I have been driving, and each expansion doesn’t even keep pace with the growth of the city.
I think that supports @Dinsdale ‘s point about never being able to keep up with demand. I am not sure if it has been or would be considered in this case, but maybe some creative thinking to use the existing road that’s already there more efficiently. Perhaps banning heavy trucks on the road during peak hours - is there an alternate route that they could use? Here’s an example.
Is the traffic directional, meaning there is heavy traffic in one direction in the morning and the opposite in the evening? They could design a reversable lane that utilizes a lane in the other direction during peak commutes (perhaps separating traffic with a movable barrier)? Examples here. I think people like to assume “just build more roads” as the easy answer, but with the cost and disruption it can be easier and cheaper to use the road you have, but better.
I was just in Toronto this past weekend (visiting the wife’s family). We stayed at a hotel in Markham and unfortunately had to use the 401 for much of our cross town driving. I would estimate that a good 75% of all the nightmarish traffic encountered at all hours was single occupant cars, not trucks.
Like I said, no knowledge of Toronto and the 401. But traffic isn’t exactly light around Chicago.
I don’t know how accurately stats support “the busiest highway” claims, but I doubt Toronto’s situation is unique among large cities. However much this tunnel would cost, those funds could go some ways towards building other infrastructure and encouraging alternative behavior.
There are no “peak times” on the 401, there are just “times”. I’ve driven through Toronto many many times over the last 35+ years, and there’s never been a day, or time of day, that the 401 didn’t have near- or greater-than-capacity traffic.
In the mid 90s they built the 407 as a bypass north of Toronto. It was tolled, but publicly owned. Not long afterwards, the Progressive Conservative government of the day sold it off as a one time fix to a budget deficit. Since then, tolls have increased to as much as CAN$0.80/km for cars and more for trucks. There have been campaigns to buy it back and force through truck traffic off the 401, but there hasn’t been the political will or financial capital to do anything.
As to your comment about directional lanes aka zipper lanes like they have in Boston, traffic is bi-directional and heavy about 16-18 hours a day. There is no am/pm split where they could steal lanes at certain times of day.
Our current Premier spent most of his pre-politics career running the US branch of his family business in Chicago. I’m pretty sure many of his backroom deals were learned there.
The Mississauga portion is heavily travelled by trucks from the distribution centres heading to the 400 for destinations west of Ontario. My office from 2012-2024 was directly south of the 401 opposite Pearson and I watched planes and trucks all day.
Yeah, the 401 is used by big trucks, but mostly outside the downtown core during the day, East and West of Actual Toronto, there are more trucks on average, but it really isn’t the trucks slowing things down.
When we left at 5:30a Sunday morning to try and beat the incoming snowy weather, the traffic was delightfully “light” :D. I could actually reach the posted speed limit!
I live in midtown and when my office was near the airport it took about 40 minutes on city streets which was was faster than the 401. During the depths of Covid, I still needed to go into the office to check on the servers, get the mail, and water the plants. I could get there on the 401 in under 20 minutes since there was no traffic.
It sounds like a reasonable alternative, except that these structures tend to deteriorate over time. This is what happened in Boston with the “Big Dig” to replace the elevated Central Artery of I-93 with a tunnel, and Toronto is similarly having problems with the elevated Gardiner Expressway as already mentioned. I believe Montreal is as well with the elevated Metropolitan Boulevard expressway.
So, the problem is that Toronto isn’t properly maintaining their infrastructure, and Ford thinks that a tunnel is the solution to that problem? Lemme know how that works out.
To be clear, the 401 is fully a provincial responsibility as the equivalent to an Interstate in the US. The Gardiner Expressway was built by the now defunct Metro Toronto government, a former senior government that sat between the cities and towns in the Toronto area and the province. It disappeared when the province amalgamated the remaining 6 municipalities into modern day Toronto in 1997.
Funding for the Gardiner has been wildly inconsistent since it was built in the 1950s, but the cost of maintenance has now been transferred back to the province.
