Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[danbrotherston]

I'm not familiar with the I-90 Chicago widening, but did they fully replace the existing roadway too? For this 401 widening project, the existing highway carriageway was identified as requiring a full and complete replacement (grading, drainage, granular, superpave asphalt surface, structures - bridge replacement over river, etc.). What the MTO needs to do here is build the new carriageway, shift traffic over to the new alignment, and then fully remove and replace the existing carriageway, and then merge the two together for the final product. That is a complex undertaking while keeping a fully operational highway carrying well over 100,000 vehicles a day.

I can see where a simple 2 lane widening would be much quicker where a new 2 lanes would just be joined with the existing roadway.

Oh this is a good point, especially cases where I've seen the "added" lanes half the time were just shoulders that people were now allowed to use.