Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[danbrotherston]

Given how long the widenings take (three years for this one, for example), they tend to start them early. They have also started the widening between Mississauga and Milton. Once those are done, I expect they'll be widening the remaining distance between Cambridge and Milton, whether the traffic at that time warrants it or not. I think the complete widening to 4+ lanes between Toronto and Cambridge will take to somewhere close to 2030, and they are working with their traffic projections for that same timeline.

It's not like widening a single city street that can typically be done in a single construction season.

As little as I personally drive on the 401, and as much as I hate that driving experience, it's pretty much a necessary evil, for both people and goods. Even if we do get the all-day two-way GO (at an improved speed?) the 401 traffic will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

This is the policy that has driven widening for the past 70 years, widening only makes the traffic worse, the only way to stop increasing traffic is to stop widening.

If we stopped widening, people would use other modes. If we want to remove congestion, pricing, not infinite widening is a solution that would actually reduce volumes.

And widening with the belief that traffic will grow for another 30 years is investing in failing to solve climate change, that's a bad decision in every way.

At this point, no road widening project is a good idea, all are driven by status quo conservatism, but some are more harmful than others, this is probably not one of the better ones.