General Road and Highway Discussion

[Markster]

I presume you are talking about the stretch between King and Lancaster exits.  I drive that twice a day, so I have at least frequent anecdotal evidence.

Northbound traffic is slow in the mornings, though not usually terrible.  Southbound is pretty backed up (stop-and-go level) during the afternoon rush hour.  The opposite direction usually moves quite well.  Everything was recently repaved, and the bridges are being repaired at current width, so I don't expect to see widening anytime in the next 5-10 years.  There is space to widen, but there is still a cost -- roughly $4M per lane kilometre, so doing it up to Northfield (the natural narrowing spot) would probably cost about $60M.

My gripe with the Bridgeport-Lancaster section is that the Bridgeport on-ramp doesn't just continue through to become the Lancaster exit.
In an ideal world with ample freeway capacity, the current setup is safer, as it prevents cross merging.  

But we're not in an ideal world, and the Bridgeport merge is clearly where the highway gets pushed overcapacity. It would provide a little more breathing room for the People exiting at Lancaster to get out of the main flow, opening up a little space for the people entering from Bridgeport.

[Edit] okay, I totally misremembered. It already is like that.
The problem is that the cross-merge zone is tiny. They need to get that Bridgeport entrance ramp to meet up with the highway much earlier, to give people a little more time to do the cross-merging.