401 alignment options (historic)

[Drake]

I recall reading somewhere about the history of the 401 and the proposed alignments through our region. It strikes me that there was a northern (Kitchener) option and a southern (Galt?) option at one point, and the politico's split the difference and placed it where it currently is.

Does anyone have any insight or links to draft documents that support the options considered back in the day?

I am curious to learn where these routes would have been and speculate on how these routes would have changed the region's development.

[ookpik]

I recall reading somewhere about the history of the 401 and the proposed alignments through our region. It strikes me that there was a northern (Kitchener) option and a southern (Galt?) option at one point, and the politico's split the difference and placed it where it currently is.

Cambridge stretch of Highway 401 turns 50  

Picking a route for Highway 401 stirred up long-simmering, north-south tensions in Waterloo County — tensions that echo today.

In the early 1950s, the province mulled the route for the new east-west freeway that would link with the pre-war Queen Elizabeth Way between Toronto and Niagara Falls. The Kitchener-Waterloo Suburban Roads Commission recommended the new highway swing north of Hespeler, cross the Grand River at Freeport — three kilometres north of where it is now — then curve south again between Woodstock and Stratford.

“People in Galt, Preston, and Hespeler got wind of it,” said Bill Thomson, Kitchener’s planning director in the 1960s. “They created a plan showing it down to the south, through the (Galt Country Club) golf course.”

Queen’s Park played Solomon to silence the parochialism.

“As far I could conclude, the province figured they’d go halfway in between,” Thomson said.

The province announced that at the same time, it would widen Highway 8 to four lanes north from the Shantz Hill Road interchange at Preston, then build a new section over the Grand River ending at Fairway Road on the south Kitchener boundary.

Thomson remembers convincing Waterloo and Kitchener city engineers to look at connecting that road to an upgraded King Street and hooking it to what would become the Conestoga Parkway curving through the two cities.

“The Conestoga Parkway, joining with the 401, gave us both a gateway to the 401 and the province. It opened up our business parks.”

The Highway 401 interchange at Homer Watson Boulevard turned south Kitchener into a huge industrial basin, Thomson said.

The same thing happened in Cambridge, as two-lane Highway 24 through farm fields grew into today’s six-lane Hespeler Road chock-a-block with big-box stores and shopping plazas. It’s now the city’s shopping heartland.

To the east, industry filled up vacant land near the south — and later, north — sides of Highway 401. By the early ’80s, tracts of housing started covered the rolling countryside along what was once the gravel Back Hespeler Road. Today it’s the busy four-lane Franklin Boulevard that many drivers try to avoid at rush hour.

[jamincan]

I don't have the book handy, but that book that goes over the history of the Parkway does discuss that. As I recall, Kitchener was originally proposing that it run largely along an east-west corridor roughly concurrent to the current Parkway corridor between Hwy 8 and Fischer-Hallman. I think they may have even set aside some land for it. I think that Galt was proposing an alignment somewhere between Preston and Galt. I'm a bit foggy on it, unfortunately, and I'm in the midst of moving so the book is packed away atm. Maybe someone else on the forum has it handy?

[Andy]

There is a book going over the history of the parkway at the KPL main branch if that's the same you're referring to. It's not available for check out though, but it's worth reading through if you have the time. It's written by the Kitchener (or Waterloo region) city planner when the parkway was built.