Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[Markster]

When will we see more lanes?

As my post says, there will be 4 years of construction. So 2019.

I thought they were expanding it all the way into Mississauga with the 2 inner lanes being HOV lanes.

Eventually, one day.
The project website is here, but it's a little stale.

Are the outer two lanes going to be bus only lanes, or will it be ten lanes plus bus bypass shoulders?

10+bypass shoulders

[jamincan]

I noticed that they were clearing trees north of the 401 on my way in to town this morning. Does anyone know what the timeline for widening is?

[GtwoK]

Between Hespeler and Hwy 8? That's supposed to be done by 2019.

As well, I noticed the culvert at the corner of Shantz Hill / Fountain has been completely cleared of all the trees that once stood there, very odd looking now. I suppose they'll be starting reconstrucion of the intersection soon?

[The85]

I noticed that they were clearing trees north of the 401 on my way in to town this morning. Does anyone know what the timeline for widening is?

Large scale tree clearing is common this time of year to get in before it is prohibited during breeding bird periods (usually April to June for many migratory species) regulated under the federal Migratory Birds Convention Act.

Because of this, it may be that work where this tree clearing is currently happening is months and months away.

[Canard]

So this past week, the lane arrangement at the base of the flyover connecting Highway 8 East to 401 East was reconfigured. For the worse.

Previously, 2 lanes on the ramp connected to 3 lanes on 401 - briefly making a 5-lane arrangement, allowing traffic to merge, before the right two lanes ended sequentially dropping from 4, then to 3 lanes.

The new configuration ends the rightmost lane of the two on the ramp just before the merge point. On 401, the rightmost lane disappears just before the merge, so 401 goes down to two lanes. The single lane on the ramp becomes the third, rightmost lane on 401 continuing on.

The problem with this arrangement is that the effective lane capacity decreases before it increases, creating an absolutely massive bottleneck on 8 every morning.

The shift only moved the merge points 100 m or so West, but it's absolutely destroyed whatever efficiency was left at this interchange.

[panamaniac]

So this past week, the lane arrangement at the base of the flyover connecting Highway 8 East to 401 East was reconfigured. For the worse.

Previously, 2 lanes on the ramp connected to 3 lanes on 401 - briefly making a 5-lane arrangement, allowing traffic to merge, before the right two lanes ended sequentially dropping from 4, then to 3 lanes.

The new configuration ends the rightmost lane of the two on the ramp just before the merge point. On 401, the rightmost lane disappears just before the merge, so 401 goes down to two lanes. The single lane on the ramp becomes the third, rightmost lane on 401 continuing on.

The problem with this arrangement is that the effective lane capacity decreases before it increases, creating an absolutely massive bottleneck on 8 every morning.

The shift only moved the merge points 100 m or so West, but it's absolutely destroyed whatever efficiency was left at this interchange.

I'm trying to imagine this - does it happen anywhere else on the 401?  It seems to give reason to all those drivers who insist on sitting only in the centre lane of the 401.

[Markster]

They are doing earthworks and need the Hwy 8 lanes to merge in much much sooner, so that's why they're doing it. It's not a permanent feature, so it's not something you'll see anywhere else.

It's pretty terrible for hwy 8. It means that there is 1 effective lane south of Sportsworld. They may as well close the second lane up to there.

[Canard]

I'm trying to imagine this - does it happen anywhere else on the 401?  It seems to give reason to all those drivers who insist on sitting only in the centre lane of the 401.

Here's are some very crude drawings, and I've tried to mark the effective lane capacity.  Here's how it used to be:

   

Here's how it is now:

   

Here's how it will be in 2019 (or whenever!), which will be absolutely fantastic based on human dynamics:

   

So, you can see the previous arrangement got wider, before it got narrower again - which gives people time to merge and shift over.  But the new arrangement creates two restriction points (for both 401 and 8), before it goes back to being 3 lanes again. As Markster says, it's temporary for construction, but I wish they'd found some other way to maintain a minimum legacy capacity through here, instead of making it worse before it gets better.

The new arrangement will have no restriction points, and the rightmost lane (5) will peel off at 24, then the 2nd (lane 4) will peel off at Franklin.  Beautiful.

[darts]

It helps the 401 traffic move along a bit better since previously people would stay in the lanes that are ending right to the end and it would spillover into the 2 leftmost lanes on the 401 slowing them down as well. Hopefully they can do the work quickly to open up the lanes again

[jamincan]

You're supposed to use the entire lane, it's called a zipper merge and actually leads to traffic moving more efficiently.

[Canard]

Supposed to, but nobody knows how to do anything properly, so that results in a massive backlog of traffic that completely screws 8.

[The85]

So this past week, the lane arrangement at the base of the flyover connecting Highway 8 East to 401 East was reconfigured. For the worse.

Previously, 2 lanes on the ramp connected to 3 lanes on 401 - briefly making a 5-lane arrangement, allowing traffic to merge, before the right two lanes ended sequentially dropping from 4, then to 3 lanes.

The new configuration ends the rightmost lane of the two on the ramp just before the merge point. On 401, the rightmost lane disappears just before the merge, so 401 goes down to two lanes. The single lane on the ramp becomes the third, rightmost lane on 401 continuing on.

The problem with this arrangement is that the effective lane capacity decreases before it increases, creating an absolutely massive bottleneck on 8 every morning.

The shift only moved the merge points 100 m or so West, but it's absolutely destroyed whatever efficiency was left at this interchange.

I'm trying to imagine this - does it happen anywhere else on the 401?  It seems to give reason to all those drivers who insist on sitting only in the centre lane of the 401.

There used to be similar arrangement on the 401 core WB in Mississauga at the 410, where the right lane (of 3 total lanes) ended and the 2 lanes of the collectors collapsed into the express, with the left collector lane becoming the new right hand lane, and the right lane of the collectors exited to Hurontario. Once the collectors were extended a few years ago to Hurontario, this was of course reconfigured, but it was like this for some time and created a significant bottleneck.

[panamaniac]

My sister called me at about 1500hrs today to see what the problem was on Hwy 8. She was heading to Markham and said it was "a mess".

[Canard]

Always is. It's bad during the weekdays, but far, far worse on the weekends when you get people who aren't used to driving it daily trying to figure it out.

[clasher]

I noticed that congestion the other day when I was coming back to town... mid-afternoon it was backed up. I'm usually leaving around 5 or 6 if I am heading out of town so I didn't notice the lane reduction. I guess if I gotta head out of town during the day I'll be taking the back way over to Townline road instead, I can't stand sitting in traffic.