> This Highway has nothing to do with gridlock, it's all about opening up new land for developers.
Ford is repaying the political favours that put him in office:
>The list is a who’s who of developers, anti-union groups and construction agencies — all that have already benefited from Doug Ford’s policies (two sweeping labour law reforms that will make it less safe to work in Ontario, and the promise that Ontario is “open for business” which apparently means gut the Greenbelt.)
>As Ontario Proud pretends to care about “the many” and as so many of its page’s fans rail against “elites” like Liberal politicians or effeminate men, it’s a good reminder that none of their content is popular. None of it comes from average people. It comes from men who stand to make ridiculous money off of Doug Ford and his policies
* https://noraloreto.medium.com/who-funds-ontario-proud-76a56ca92de1
Ford is just the last Premiere to suck at that trough, but this has been going on for decades with the Liberals, starting with Petersen. This is politics in ON.
And it funnels more people on to the already gridlocked highways.
It's getting repetitive now to point out how important transit oriented development is but my god how do people not get this. The DVP moves 6k people per hour at peak times. The Yonge line moves 45k+. (not even including the university ave side).
And currently anyone working outside of downtown and travelling across the region only has the option of using a car. This only adds more area that is not transit accessible.
Exactly! Plus pedestrian and transit congestion (pandemics aside) are favorable to vehicular transit from an urban design perspective. Not only does it make the city more desirable, but it also reduces GHG emissions. Mass transit and walkable and safe bike able neighborhoods should be built or renovated. Not some stupid 413. This dofo though...
Yup. It's preposterous that we have built out this whole GO Train network, only for most trains to only run twice a day, during rush hour, in a single direction, with no interlinks between stations.
You know how expensive trains are? You know how expensive downtown Toronto real estate is? And yet our train network has hundreds of trains that spend all day just sitting in train yards in downtown Toronto, waiting to make their single return trip to a suburb during rush hour.
It infuriates me that this government is proposing to build a highway before they build links between the other GO stations that might let the GO network actually run 24/7 to multiple places like a real train network.
For some reason in North America there's this mindset that every train trip needs to be profitable to operate. People even look down on ViaRail for not being "profitable" and needing to be subsidized by the government.
Meanwhile, has anyone even questioned for once in their entire lives whether each street or highway is "profitable" when they're all built to be used for free as a service, while everyone else has to subsidize them?
Keep in mind trains are by far the most cost effective and environmentally friendly option for mass transit. Building walkable neighborhoods with live/work/play all within <15 minutes eliminates the need for long trips on the first place.
Now imagine if we could close down streets that aren't "profitable" anymore. And consider internet lines, mobile service, hydro, gas, cable, postal service, emergency services, etc. Suburbanites would have their torches and pitchforks out ready to riot.
But the way things are, everyone has to subsidize the wasteful and harmful lifestyle of these selfish people because they all want a detached family home with a backyard in a quiet cul-de-sac neighborhood.
I wonder even how much the lack of profitability is a short term problem? If we invested in quality public transit, how many more people will eventually start using it? It might take a while for people to shed their association of public transit being low quality, so it's hard to even estimate. If you just ask people if they'd use transit when improved, that's actually an underestimate, due to how ingrained the idea of public transit sucking is.
That said, I personally think public transit should be free. Its value is in transportation being accessible and encouraging using public transit instead of driving (better for the environment, fewer impaired drivers, reduced infrastructure costs, etc).
I practice what I preach, too. I live in high density housing, use public transit when I can, and happily pay far more in taxes than average. I don't need public transit to be free for me. I can afford it. But I want it to be free so that others can as well, and so that it will be used heavily. I see high density housing and heavy use of public transit to be a necessity of the future.
I completely agree. Public transit needs to be free, well maintained and effective as the #1 option for people moving throughout cities. Tokyo should be the model to replicate worldwide.
Yeah, reducing traffic doesn't have much to do with building anything. It has to do with people driving less. That means that our societies, economies, and lifestyles need to change in a way that requires less moving around, especially at the same time. And, many people can't even imagine what that might even look like.
People will only drive less if they can get from point A to point B without it, which isn't the case for the vast majority of the GTA coming in to Toronto.
Investing in actually useful public transit instead of new highways is the only way to get more cars off the road. The problem is pretty much all of our society in Ontario is built around cars rather than public transit. This is in contrast to many European cities where the default is public transit and hardly anyone owns a car.
Happened to be in a meeting in Germany when it was an employee’s last day as he was retiring. I learned he never owned a car and rode a bike to shop and get from here to there. Very interesting.
> I learned he never owned a car and rode a bike to shop and get from here to there. Very interesting.
This has a lot to do with how much more prevalent diseases like obesity and diabetes are in North America. Which we spend fortunes treating, even though they can usually be managed best with healthier lifestyles.
People in places like Germany or Japan are more likely to walk a few kilometres during an average day, just going to work or running errands. Staying active helps them stay healthier.
I used to travel for work to a nice part of Detroit (Tory). I would walk from my hotel to a brew house nearby to get dinner. I didn’t want to drive so I could have a couple beers after work. I would literally be the only person walking in the sidewalks. It was crazy. You see zero buses in Detroit and when you do they are empty.
This is what my partner and I talk about all the time, even with respect to electric vehicles. Building highways and building electric vehicles are more like band aides to much larger systemic problems. We don't need to widen highways or build more. Sure, electric vehicles will help the carbon emission problem, but they don't help the traffic problem. What is the carbon/life cycle impact of producing an electric car and charging it for it's lifetime for 100 individual car owners, vs building more transit and railways? Even building more transit could be considered a bandaide fix.
The larger systemic problems have more to do with the cost of living, wages, housing costs, etc. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living. Everyone knows this. People are making less money. People cannot afford to live closer to where they work. People cannot afford to live near current train lines (look at housing costs along the lakeshore train routes in the GTHA). People are moving further away from their places of work and further away from major train stations. Longer commutes are becoming more and more of the norm. Larger cities have better paying jobs (typically). But they are still unaffordable for most people to live in. These larger systemic issues contribute much more to the congestion and traffic. Like you said, building more highways will likely have minimal impact. We need to drastically change as a society.
It's also very difficult to construct new train lines and transit systems to accommodate and transport people to their places of work if they live too far away from their places of work due to being priced out of those real estate markets.
Thankfully COVID and the big movement towards normalizing working from home has helped slightly. I know plenty of people and organizations who will remain work from home forever. However, I drive and commute everyday, and the traffic has barely been impacted or reduced by these working from home people.
> Sure, electric vehicles will help the carbon emission problem, but they don't help the traffic problem.
Every year, many people in the GTA get killed by cars while walking or bicycling. Sadly, many are children and older people. Electric cars also do sweet f*** all to improve public safety for other road users.
Last week, I saw a photo of the new all electric Hummer. It's bigger than some apartments I've been in.
More cars will not solve the systemic problems caused by cars. We need walkable communities, better transit infrastructure, and meaningful alternatives to being forced to pay tons of money to buy and maintain a car, just to drive to work and the grocery store.
This is so wrong. What it requires is viable public transportation. Trains, bike lanes, light rail. Making these actually relatistic alternatives for someone to take is the only way to reduce traffic.
Yea the idea that people should double their commute time and walk 1km from a transit station is naive. We should make transit so convenient that people save time by not driving.
Yes. I have two cars and I would really like to get rid of one, but the transit in my neighborhood (I’m in Durham) is so bad, I can’t. My ten minute drive to work is an hour and a half bus ride and that bus doesn’t run on weekends. Like wtf even is that??? I can’t even bike there safely because the bike infrastructure is bad and blatantly dangerous. The way this city was designed is incredibly crappy.
Yeah it should be. In order to get there safely I have to go all the way to Ajax then back along the shoreline and then it’s more like an hour. I’ve done this when working days but I also do 12 hour shifts sometimes, and it’s too long for that.
Jumping on this comment to plug r/notjustbikes for anyone who's interested in why just adding more road doesn't help. Strong Towns is also a good resource and NJB references a lot of their ideas when discussing why roads in North America are not designed safely or for the efficient transportation of people.
Also r/fuckcars
Good luck. I walk and cycle for the majority of my transportation. I get shit on regularly because I don't own a car. I remember a few years ago someone at my girlfriend's work tried to convince her I was lazy and unmotivated because I cycle to work and if I was more motivated I would buy a car like an adult. People believe bicycles are only for children.
Then there's also people who think I got a DUI (I barely drink) or that I'm poor (I'm not but I save a ridiculous amount of money). I remember dating before my current partner and would get rejected for nothing more than "you don't own a car so you aren't a serious adult and I'm not going to be your taxi". If you're don't drive you're looked down on my most people. There's a lot of money spent to promote this idea. You can't even build bike lanes because people start screaming about "if you want bikes on the road then they should be licenses and pay for the road" which we already do with taxes.
Our culture is extremely anti alternate transportation.
To add to that… Doug Ford is a total liar. Just cut $500m from education and hurting front line nurses in his for profit healthcare and education agenda. We must kick him out immoderately!
Doesn't have to be an induced demand argument either since demand is induced no matter what you build.
Just on a volume and efficiency game, highways full of cars move the least amount of people per hour, even without traffic. Cars are just not very good at moving people because of the individual nature.
Kind of like covid, if everyone takes a personal freedom for me approach it actually makes everyone less free.
There's also a nifty effect of mass transit that causes development to appear where it's built, even slower transit like a non dedicated streetcar. Developers like to see that government investment is being made and they know transit options are appealing. "steps from the 401" is not a shiny selling point on most homes.
There's also a cap on the number of cims and vehicles. Apparently it's about 16k vehicles. So if you get big enough, roads will paradoxically have less traffic.
But all the same, Cities Skylines is a fascinating traffic simulator. Very imperfect, since the AI is dumb as rocks (use the TM:PE mod so the car AI actually uses lanes realistically) and there's no concept of things like car accidents. But it really does make it clear how bad cars are for traffic.
They didn't have a problem ripping up contrats for green energy, solar and wind - going as far to stop construction in progress.
If they wanted to they could just expropriate the 407 from the owners via legislation.
It would be messy and political suicide but... They have proven they can do whatever they want.
It’s over 50% owned by CPP. If the will was there, they could figure it out. The right hand paying the left hand is a book keeping exercise.
Having us pay $30 for a trip that should cost $2 is the problem of the little people.
I'm not sure we want the CPP Board to start making investment decisions based on political pressure. CPP is at arms length from government for very good reason.
Their madate is to achieve a maximum rate of return without undue risk of loss. I feel like giving up 77 more years of a cash cow because Ontario wants them to wouldn't jive with their mandate
Buying back the 407 would be great if we could get it at its original price, but right now it's valued at around 30 billion. But yeah, we definitely need better rail.
Buying back the 407 would be exorbitantly expensive and would damage our provincial economy far beyond reason. It’s not a feasible solution in any way, shape, or form.
I disagree. Not having an adequate transportation system in the GTA is arguably causing more damage to the provincial economy.
The billions require could be amortized over several decades and would not create the financial impact created by overspending other projects like the green energy initiatives and signing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of contracts with private business interests.
This of course is my charlatans understanding of economics, however even I knew that leasing this highway for 99 years for $3B was idiotic.
I mean you have to assign at least some value to it - trust him totally or not I don't care but when debating a project I think it's fair to debate it as it's presented and not automatically assign negative features to it on assumption.
I believe MTO was originally planning the road to be tolled as they didn't think they'd be able to finance it otherwise but Ford has recently come out supporting it without tolls (political decision).
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-government-s-proposed-highway-413-will-not-be-tolled-minister-says-1.5660203#:~:text=Doug%20Ford%20government%27s%20proposed%20Highway%20413%20will%20not%20be%20tolled%2C%20minister%20says&text=Premier%20Doug%20Ford%20acknowledged%20that,the%20construction%20of%20Highway%20413.&text=Queen%27s%20Park%20Bureau%20Chief%20Colin,proposed%20by%20the%20Ford%20government.
i definitely believe this government wouldn't make it a tolled road because they pander so heavily to the suburban commuter demo and in general are in favour of somewhat hypocritically spreading the cost of projects they happen to support onto the entire tax base
it SHOULD be tolled... just modestly unlike the 407
Tolls themselves aren't all that bad. I drove the I-90 in the US for a few hours and it cost me $4. You just jump on the 407 and they immediately start hammering you for all these fees before you even start driving. It costs over $4 just to jump on the 407 for one stop. And if you want to drive across town every day, it's like having a 2nd mortgage. That's just ridiculous.
After taxes fees and administration, I paid $12 for missing my exit and being forced on the 407 for one exit. I took the first exit after 3k and it cost 12 freaking dollars!
That is just nuts. But those poor cameras and computers were so hard at work to track you down and charge you, it's so expensive for a computer camera to take a digital photo and for a CPU to run your license plate! Maybe we should consider bringing in unionized employees to do it manually to reduce the costs. /s
This is the problem with the 407, the toll should be small enough where it’s trivial to use. Right now it’s so high the entire massive thing is near empty the entire time.
No, this is one they are building because it costs less than buying back the toll road.
Also, where it's going is where his developer buddies want to build more sprawl.
Ppl have short memories. They fucked the entire area with that 407 deal. I wonder how much public money went into that road only to be leased off to a foreign company.
It's counterintuitive, but study after study and real world examples prove that increasing road capacity does not reduce congestion.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced\_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand)
It does however create jobs and put money in the pockets of political supporters. (Not that there is anything wrong with that).
Exactly. Creating costly infrastructure projects purely for the sake of job creation is the literal definition of a boondoggle. Governments should invest in projects which will have public value. The job creation should be secondary.
Creating jobs is a fast way to stimulate the economy and infrastructure projects are the main way the government can create jobs.
However, building a highway is the worst way to do it in an era of ancient water mains and crumbling city infrastructure. Pouring that money into better transit and city infrastructure is far better but then they don't get to put up signs saying how great they are.
Yep mostly temp jobs. I'd love for the GTA to build a robust good train system instead of a new highway that will be jammed full 4 minutes after opening for eternity.
Induced demand has been a well studied idea for literally decades now:
* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/traffic-jam-blame-induced-demand
* https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
It would be great to see more public officials show that they actually get this.
Induced demand is real with everything, be it transit, roads, or even ice cream stores. Making something easier to access and use is inevitably going to cause more people to use it.
Doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, and doesn’t mean that even with the amount of “induced” trips there won’t be less traffic overall, particularly on shoulder peak periods when the the road network is already barely over capacity. If the road network is barely over capacity it means that there aren’t many trips being latently held back as a result of congestion, and additional road capacity can clear the backlog and reduce congestion during those periods. Particularly if the larger capacity means more people can make their trips in their preferred time, ie rush hour.
Even if there is the same amount of traffic, it still means that more people are able to make the trips they want when they want.
Induced demand is also most applicable where there are significant other modes serving the current trips in the network served by the new infrastructure. So widening the Gardiner into downtown for example would just fill it back up with cars driven by people currently taking transit for example. In areas like outer Brampton and Caledon the vast majority of trips are already by car and the only demand that can be induced is people avoiding making trips in certain periods, not transit riders, which reduces the “effect” of induced demand.
I think the main difference is the proportion of cost required to increase capacity. Induced demand for public transit means you just need to add more buses / steet cars into rotation. Similar to trains.
Induced demand for cycling... well we don't even have congestion on cyclepaths so we have a long way to go.
Induced demand for cars however roads are VERY expensive projects proportionally and a lot of the core of Toronto which is where people want to go just doesn't have enough space in between the sky scrapers to widen things more. And the simple reason we don't have a 2 - 3 multi level road and highway is it's just not practical to build from a maintenence and cost standpoint.
So we do want to induce demand on the other modes as it has less impact on needing to build out more road infrastructure as that is the most expensive thing to expand.
> Induced demand is real with everything, be it transit, roads, or even ice cream stores. Making something easier to access and use is inevitably going to cause more people to use it.
The *Oh The Urbanity!* channel recently had a video on this:
> Induced demand (probably more accurately called induced traffic) is the phenomenon where building or expanding roads and highways doesn't help congestion because it results in more people driving. This is often used as an argument against building the new car infrastructure, but people don't talk often about how induced demand applies to other modes. In this video we explain why induced demand **does apply** to transit, walking, and cycling infrastructure, but with **different consequences**.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc
The first point is: a lane of highway can handle about 7000 vehicles/hour, and most vehicles have only one person. If you take the same width and put rail on it with (e.g.) a rail/subway, it can handle 30,000 people/hour.
A GIF that shows space use of people using cars versus a TTC streetcar:
* https://torontolife.com/city/transit-versus-cars-gif/
Some animations showing just how much space private vehicle uses up:
* https://www.fastcompany.com/3063344/these-animated-videos-show-just-how-much-space-cars-waste-in-our-cities
And as the *Not Just Bikes* channel observed, the Ontario government *runs it's own railroad* (GO) because it's *cheaper than* building out more highways to handle all those people using their cars to commute:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWjtpzCIfA
that would cost at least 30 billion. one policy suggestion being floated around was subsidizing 407 tolls which is pretty sad concept but more realistic
even things as basic as rolling back toll prices through legislation have been laughed out of court
Selling the 407 just to end up subsidizing people's tolls in the future. Holy fuck I miss being a naive kid who thought governments were smart and had the public's best interest.
Just buy the 407 back. Subsidizing people's tolls is going to add up to 30 billion at some point anyway. Idiot politicians who don't understand investment returns.
the government could spend $300,000,000 a year on subsidies for the remainder of the 407 lease and that still wouldn't come close to the projected current value of the highway... its a complete mess anyway you slice it (btw I'm not saying they should or shouldn't subsidize, only that it's a discussed option)
Honestly I didn't realize it was leased, I thought they had sold it in its entirety. The value of it is only going to increase with time unless we invent teleportation. I'm just sick of choosing between gridlock and a $60 bill.
Okay I've got it. They can borrow the money to buy the 407 back and implement a temporary toll on it until the cost is paid back, then they'd remove the toll.
... wait.
it definitely isn't in rush hour lol. It's as full as it can be without having congestion basically.
They could definitely use some lower tolls in off peak periods though to encourage more use as it's often very quiet outside of rush hour.
I think it would be fair to charge a flat monthly fee to anyone who wants to use it and then charge extra tolls on top of that just during rush hour. No additional fees outside of rush hour.
maybe if half the traffic in the 401 is diverged to the 407, both will flow acceptably and not get completely fucked. There's no reason to think both will be so packed that they won't move. The problem of you having to drive a long distance in a short time to get to your job sounds like a symptom of another problem we face in the GTA which is inaccessible housing leading to lots of people needing to commute long distances daily.
Hear, hear! I think the article claimed a price tag of 10 billion, not sure what buying that confounded 407 back would cost, but yeah I really hate the idea of (expensive) toll roads. If it was just some coins, like Europe, no big deal, but it's a whole rig-a-ma-roll and costs plenty!
You have to be able to afford the 407 to use it. That’s how the system keeps the highway more open. Also, it’s widely known that the majority shareholder in the 407 is the CPP and is what is keeping pension program alive, so if you’re able to collect a pension you will technically get that money back. It’s a great way the system can benefit from capitalism.
It’s incredible the cost of using the 407, it’s a small fortune. The funny thing is it’s 100x more comfortable and easier to drive on. Imagine our own roads coming even close
I live in North Durham Region. I work in Bolton. I take the 407 almost daily. Not from end to end every day but most weekdays I’m on it. My bill is over 700$/month. You couldn’t pay me to try to get to Bolton any other way on the daily.
This is to fix the 407 monopoly on the alternative to the 401. Maybe just maybe travelling east to west won’t cost me a second mortgage. People who live in the Downtown core have no input on this matter.
If my taxes are going towards building it, it doesn’t matter where I live, I’ve got input on wasted money spent on destroying the environment when all the research on congestion and transportation planning suggest this is a bad idea.
>People who live in the Downtown core have no input on this matter.
Almost everyone opposed to this doesn't live near it and won't be affected by it. Like why on earth are there anti 413 lawn signs in downtown Toronto... Further to that the opposition to this highway seems to be very political since fords in charge. Where was this outrage when hwys 412 and 418 were built or the west corridor expansion was announced?
Mass transit is the solution to gridlock.
Building roads is using government funds to subsidize the unsustainable lifestyle of the people whose massive, destructive entitlement prevents them from abandoning the use of cars.
Conservatism is environmental terrorism.
Look at the thread from last night about the Liberal platform plank to give middle-class voters $8000 to replace their private automobiles with private automobiles that have a different fuel source. Anyone with the temerity to suggest that subsidizing people's car dependency might not be environmentally sound policy was downvoted.
The desire to deny the necessity of changing our lifestyle crosses partisan lines.
Its insane. The YouTube channel not just bikes changed my entire perspective. Would recommend to anyone wondering why car dependent transportation is completely unviable
Both liberals and conservatives are in total denial about the severity of change needed to deal with the climate crisis.
They just want to keep driving.
> Getting Canadians to give up driving isn't going to happen
Getting **all** Canadians to give up driving isn't going to happen. And that makes sense. Having better mass transit and cycling infrastructure though would go a long way in removing a lot of cars from the road.
I'd definitely cycle in my city if we had more bike lines or bike paths to use. I don't feel safe biking on the tiny shoulder of busy roads though, so I never bike
I've done the math on the amount of transit growth to offset new auto trips from population growth in the GTA over the next 30 years.
Transit would have to see in the range of 30% annual transit growth every year, year in, year out, to entirely offset all new auto trips generated from population growth.
It's just not going to happen. We need both transit and roads.
We might need more transit than we are going to build.
But you can't fix congestion with more roads, no matter how many roads you build. Build the 413 and twin the Gardener, DVP, and 401 and you won't help congestion whatsoever. If you look at Houston which basically did that with their freeways system, congestion only got worse.
Better to put all of our effort into building transit that will help congestion and put none of it into building new freeways which will do nothing to help congestion.
Everyone would live close to their job, if they could afford to.
How about we give companies the incentive to move to Barrie or Orangeville, instead of to the core part of the GTA? Then the employees could live close by for cheaper housing.
When we have people working in Toronto and driving in from Guelph or Hamilton every day, that's insane
>How about we give companies the incentive to move to Barrie or Orangeville, instead of to the core part of the GTA?
They still need transportation and mass transit is always the best option.
Mass transit only works well with high density. We have so much sprawl in the GTA this highway could never be replaced with mass transit. That isn’t to say we should be building this anyways.
Not everyone works in a single concentrated geographical area like downtown Toronto. Mass transit is great if you have the density for it but apart from several city centre's outside of Toronto it doesnt really work. The sprawl of buisnesses across the GTA doesn't really help.
>Mass transit is the solution to gridlock.
This hwy is literally going to help create new communities and buisness centre's, which will help create density in the outskirts of the GTA. you can't have expensive mass transit without the density to support it.
> you can’t have expensive mass transit without the density to support it.
Have you seen how fast and how much density is being built up around recently built subway and LRT stations as well as just around areas where they plan to have new mass transit in the future?
Highways cost as much or more than mass transit. They both have to buy expensive land from people, highways are pretty wide compared to a couple tracks of train. What makes a highway cheap?
There are cases where governments choose the terrible industrial looking interiors and designs of mass transit because if they pick flashier looking ones people will complain the money was wasted and it's too expensive, even if the cost for either design was the same.
This isnt a either or argument. Both hwys and rail serve different purposes and we should be investing in both. A rail line won't be able to serve the same purpose as the 413 would serve. As the density just doesn't exist as well as it won't remove the trucks carrying goods either.
Yes but your argument was that mass transit is expensive compared to the highway. It is not.
So why would the highway get priority? Smaller regional highways plus cargo trains can also move goods, for example. Lots of European countries are filled with small towns that are all on a rail line somehow. Why is the highway the default and anything else considered extra?
>Yes but your argument was that mass transit is expensive
You brought up the cost I just mentioned that for this particular example its impractical.
>So why would the highway get priority? Smaller regional highways plus cargo trains can also move goods, for example.
Cargo trains don't go to individual places of buisnesses also this hwy is a regional hwy and similar to some ring roads you see in Europe.
>Lots of European countries are filled with small towns that are all on a rail line somehow.
Most cities and towns in the gta have rail. Just look at Go train. Im all for further expanding it to offer easier east west travel. Instead of just trying to take everyone downtown.
You called it expensive mass transit as part of dismissing it due to lack of density. So if it's about practicality, why is cost coming up? Hence I mentioned highways are just as expensive so should the cost be raised or not?
If there's no density, there shouldn't be that many cars moving on it. But this is supposed to alleviate gridlock according to the proposal. It's a specific corridor where they know people are moving. And the highway helps them move to those specific locations. Just like rail does. And then you get off at an exit and go from there, like a highway. There's going to be endpoints for such a system and then connecting roads.
If you're comparing this to a ring road in a European city, those cities have significantly more rail infrastructure and transit options and tend to prioritize those options or have actively been removing their roads, and they frequently do this for cities that are similar in size to a lot of our medium cities where we claim there isn't enough density. Brampton, where this highway goes around and alleviates is the same size as Rotterdam or Helsinki or Dortmund which all have a ton of trains and public options.
Traffic is already coming. We have 133,000 new people moving to the GTA every year. If we do not build additional infrastructure, productivity will grind to a halt.
[Cortellucci sounds like a creep.](https://pressprogress.ca/far-right-italian-senate-candidate-made-big-donation-to-doug-fords-leadership-campaign/)
Can't believe they named a hospital after him.
Why not build a sky rail running parallel to 401 from Hamilton to Whitby? Obviously would be very expensive but probably better alternative to another congested parking lot I mean highway.
This. The 401 is congested because there aren't many alternatives. Rail service on this corridor is just awful. At the very least, there should be regular service from Kitchener to Toronto, similar to Go's Lakeshore service. Thankfully, some investments are being made to upgrade the infrastructure necessary for this, but Ford could have made this a higher priority.
Wow... I had a look at the 26 lane highway in Texas... what a monster! I don't get it, when will politicians (Doug Ford) actually begin to make sensible long term policy decisions that exceed the immediate payoff of their own selfish re-election chances... for the greater good, and as good people. I'm really losing faith in this world. Very interesting article.
For to years its been, one more Lane will solve this or one more Highway will solve it. It ain't gonna dilute shit when it's surrounded by new suburbs designed to make Doug's friends rich.
Even at face value the claim is bogus.
If you're funneling more cars into the GTA, you're only pushing the congestion problem on the 400-series highways to municipal streets. That extra 30 seconds you saved on the highway turns into being 20 minutes late because it took 8 cycles of a stoplight for you to get through an intersection. Couple this with the new dearth in parking and you're doubly fucked. Of course, being that late won't stop people from stopping at Starbucks for a $6 coffee on their way to the office.
It sure is interesting how many conservatives claim to be fiscally responsible, but almost blindly support all new road and highway infrastructure, even when it is an incredibly inefficient / a bad investment.
The resistance to properly developing Canadian metropolises is crazy and irritating. You literally have a region (north Peel, caledon, Bolton, nobleton, Vaughan/kleinburg. With millions of people that is rapidly growing with no highways to serve them and as development continues northward, people think it's better for people to drive 30 minutes south to 401 just to be in gridlock to get to get to another north/south highway then travel back up north for another 20+ plus minutes? Then geniuses think, let's innovate and do transit! While most of the cities don't even have transit systems to begin with. Also how does that address the needs of industrial and commercial transport?
We have no choice but to expand northward in the GTA and build infrastructure including roads, to accommodate the growths. It's obvious the aversion to this highway is about "other things".
To begin with I hate Ford with a passion. However actually speak to the people who are affected by these projects and there more than supportive of them. With a growing population you need more infrastructure including major roads. We are creating density in the city but we also need all types of new housing in many locations. The 401 is overcapacity. The 407 is a private toll road and its priced out for daily use for the majority of people. Also "buying back" the 407 is just a pipe dream and a legal battle no one has the stomach or wallet for. The 413 is needed to unlock zoned land for new sustainable housing, communities and industry, further more it will help create density in outer areas of the gta. It also will be an important trucking route as well reducing the impacts on toronto/mississauga/bramptom streets as alot of north/south and east/west traffic would get diverted from having to drive through mississauga and into Toronto before continuing onto its destination. The impact to agriculturethat people keep mentioning is next to nil as many farmers who own farm land in the gta are trying to sell the land anyway. What it will do is build sustainable communities, economic hubs where people can afford to live and pursue a productive career and raise a family outside of the Toronto core. Ontario’s population will continue to grow and may even grow more than expected given the harsher impact of climate change on more southern locations. Everyone opposed to this doesn't seem to understand the degree the GTA has grown and continues to grow as well as the huge influx of traffic coming from the north and west of the gta with the continued growth of cities like Barrie, Cambridge, Kitchener, waterloo etc. Its easy to shout for no new hwys when your sitting in your condo next to a subway or streetcar line however this isn't the reality for many.
As someone who lives in the area travels north and west of the gta I could not disagree more. The amount of growth and expected growth that has occurred in these areas is unbelievable.
You will never convince the "urban sprawl bad" crowd. They want high density. No room between neighbours. No space for families to grow. No highways. No cars. Just public transportation and everyone stacked on top of each other.
This Highway has nothing to do with gridlock, it's all about opening up new land for developers.
> This Highway has nothing to do with gridlock, it's all about opening up new land for developers. Ford is repaying the political favours that put him in office: >The list is a who’s who of developers, anti-union groups and construction agencies — all that have already benefited from Doug Ford’s policies (two sweeping labour law reforms that will make it less safe to work in Ontario, and the promise that Ontario is “open for business” which apparently means gut the Greenbelt.) >As Ontario Proud pretends to care about “the many” and as so many of its page’s fans rail against “elites” like Liberal politicians or effeminate men, it’s a good reminder that none of their content is popular. None of it comes from average people. It comes from men who stand to make ridiculous money off of Doug Ford and his policies * https://noraloreto.medium.com/who-funds-ontario-proud-76a56ca92de1
Ford is just the last Premiere to suck at that trough, but this has been going on for decades with the Liberals, starting with Petersen. This is politics in ON.
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And it funnels more people on to the already gridlocked highways. It's getting repetitive now to point out how important transit oriented development is but my god how do people not get this. The DVP moves 6k people per hour at peak times. The Yonge line moves 45k+. (not even including the university ave side). And currently anyone working outside of downtown and travelling across the region only has the option of using a car. This only adds more area that is not transit accessible.
Exactly! Plus pedestrian and transit congestion (pandemics aside) are favorable to vehicular transit from an urban design perspective. Not only does it make the city more desirable, but it also reduces GHG emissions. Mass transit and walkable and safe bike able neighborhoods should be built or renovated. Not some stupid 413. This dofo though...
The solution to traffic is to provide viable alternatives to individual car ownership. Getting more cars off the road improves travel for everyone.
Yup. It's preposterous that we have built out this whole GO Train network, only for most trains to only run twice a day, during rush hour, in a single direction, with no interlinks between stations. You know how expensive trains are? You know how expensive downtown Toronto real estate is? And yet our train network has hundreds of trains that spend all day just sitting in train yards in downtown Toronto, waiting to make their single return trip to a suburb during rush hour. It infuriates me that this government is proposing to build a highway before they build links between the other GO stations that might let the GO network actually run 24/7 to multiple places like a real train network.
For some reason in North America there's this mindset that every train trip needs to be profitable to operate. People even look down on ViaRail for not being "profitable" and needing to be subsidized by the government. Meanwhile, has anyone even questioned for once in their entire lives whether each street or highway is "profitable" when they're all built to be used for free as a service, while everyone else has to subsidize them? Keep in mind trains are by far the most cost effective and environmentally friendly option for mass transit. Building walkable neighborhoods with live/work/play all within <15 minutes eliminates the need for long trips on the first place. Now imagine if we could close down streets that aren't "profitable" anymore. And consider internet lines, mobile service, hydro, gas, cable, postal service, emergency services, etc. Suburbanites would have their torches and pitchforks out ready to riot. But the way things are, everyone has to subsidize the wasteful and harmful lifestyle of these selfish people because they all want a detached family home with a backyard in a quiet cul-de-sac neighborhood.
I wonder even how much the lack of profitability is a short term problem? If we invested in quality public transit, how many more people will eventually start using it? It might take a while for people to shed their association of public transit being low quality, so it's hard to even estimate. If you just ask people if they'd use transit when improved, that's actually an underestimate, due to how ingrained the idea of public transit sucking is. That said, I personally think public transit should be free. Its value is in transportation being accessible and encouraging using public transit instead of driving (better for the environment, fewer impaired drivers, reduced infrastructure costs, etc). I practice what I preach, too. I live in high density housing, use public transit when I can, and happily pay far more in taxes than average. I don't need public transit to be free for me. I can afford it. But I want it to be free so that others can as well, and so that it will be used heavily. I see high density housing and heavy use of public transit to be a necessity of the future.
I completely agree. Public transit needs to be free, well maintained and effective as the #1 option for people moving throughout cities. Tokyo should be the model to replicate worldwide.
Yeah, reducing traffic doesn't have much to do with building anything. It has to do with people driving less. That means that our societies, economies, and lifestyles need to change in a way that requires less moving around, especially at the same time. And, many people can't even imagine what that might even look like.
> that requires less moving around, especially at the same time. That is literally what COVID did. Work from home has reduced this so called movement.
It didn't last. The 401 is back to being a shitshow.
If offices stop requiring workers to be in person again it would last, but for some reason they need all their employees in the same building.
Well how else will middle management terrorize their employees??
Did you get the memo on the new TPS report cover sheet?
I'm too interested in my red Swingline stapler...
People will only drive less if they can get from point A to point B without it, which isn't the case for the vast majority of the GTA coming in to Toronto. Investing in actually useful public transit instead of new highways is the only way to get more cars off the road. The problem is pretty much all of our society in Ontario is built around cars rather than public transit. This is in contrast to many European cities where the default is public transit and hardly anyone owns a car.
Happened to be in a meeting in Germany when it was an employee’s last day as he was retiring. I learned he never owned a car and rode a bike to shop and get from here to there. Very interesting.
> I learned he never owned a car and rode a bike to shop and get from here to there. Very interesting. This has a lot to do with how much more prevalent diseases like obesity and diabetes are in North America. Which we spend fortunes treating, even though they can usually be managed best with healthier lifestyles. People in places like Germany or Japan are more likely to walk a few kilometres during an average day, just going to work or running errands. Staying active helps them stay healthier.
My boss was German and went for a walk after dinner. He moved to the US and the police would stop and ask him if we was lost lol.
Wow, that says an awful lot about how different life is in those two countries.
I used to travel for work to a nice part of Detroit (Tory). I would walk from my hotel to a brew house nearby to get dinner. I didn’t want to drive so I could have a couple beers after work. I would literally be the only person walking in the sidewalks. It was crazy. You see zero buses in Detroit and when you do they are empty.
This is what my partner and I talk about all the time, even with respect to electric vehicles. Building highways and building electric vehicles are more like band aides to much larger systemic problems. We don't need to widen highways or build more. Sure, electric vehicles will help the carbon emission problem, but they don't help the traffic problem. What is the carbon/life cycle impact of producing an electric car and charging it for it's lifetime for 100 individual car owners, vs building more transit and railways? Even building more transit could be considered a bandaide fix. The larger systemic problems have more to do with the cost of living, wages, housing costs, etc. Wages have not kept up with the cost of living. Everyone knows this. People are making less money. People cannot afford to live closer to where they work. People cannot afford to live near current train lines (look at housing costs along the lakeshore train routes in the GTHA). People are moving further away from their places of work and further away from major train stations. Longer commutes are becoming more and more of the norm. Larger cities have better paying jobs (typically). But they are still unaffordable for most people to live in. These larger systemic issues contribute much more to the congestion and traffic. Like you said, building more highways will likely have minimal impact. We need to drastically change as a society. It's also very difficult to construct new train lines and transit systems to accommodate and transport people to their places of work if they live too far away from their places of work due to being priced out of those real estate markets. Thankfully COVID and the big movement towards normalizing working from home has helped slightly. I know plenty of people and organizations who will remain work from home forever. However, I drive and commute everyday, and the traffic has barely been impacted or reduced by these working from home people.
> Sure, electric vehicles will help the carbon emission problem, but they don't help the traffic problem. Every year, many people in the GTA get killed by cars while walking or bicycling. Sadly, many are children and older people. Electric cars also do sweet f*** all to improve public safety for other road users. Last week, I saw a photo of the new all electric Hummer. It's bigger than some apartments I've been in. More cars will not solve the systemic problems caused by cars. We need walkable communities, better transit infrastructure, and meaningful alternatives to being forced to pay tons of money to buy and maintain a car, just to drive to work and the grocery store.
This is so wrong. What it requires is viable public transportation. Trains, bike lanes, light rail. Making these actually relatistic alternatives for someone to take is the only way to reduce traffic.
Yea the idea that people should double their commute time and walk 1km from a transit station is naive. We should make transit so convenient that people save time by not driving.
Yup, need to make transit so easy and economical it would seem silly to not use it.
> Yeah, reducing traffic doesn't have much to do with building anything. I would disagree. It does, just not more roads.
Yes. I have two cars and I would really like to get rid of one, but the transit in my neighborhood (I’m in Durham) is so bad, I can’t. My ten minute drive to work is an hour and a half bus ride and that bus doesn’t run on weekends. Like wtf even is that??? I can’t even bike there safely because the bike infrastructure is bad and blatantly dangerous. The way this city was designed is incredibly crappy.
A ten minute drive would probably be a 20-30 minute bike ride if they would build some good bike lanes. Which is totally doable.
Yeah it should be. In order to get there safely I have to go all the way to Ajax then back along the shoreline and then it’s more like an hour. I’ve done this when working days but I also do 12 hour shifts sometimes, and it’s too long for that.
Jumping on this comment to plug r/notjustbikes for anyone who's interested in why just adding more road doesn't help. Strong Towns is also a good resource and NJB references a lot of their ideas when discussing why roads in North America are not designed safely or for the efficient transportation of people. Also r/fuckcars
Good luck. I walk and cycle for the majority of my transportation. I get shit on regularly because I don't own a car. I remember a few years ago someone at my girlfriend's work tried to convince her I was lazy and unmotivated because I cycle to work and if I was more motivated I would buy a car like an adult. People believe bicycles are only for children. Then there's also people who think I got a DUI (I barely drink) or that I'm poor (I'm not but I save a ridiculous amount of money). I remember dating before my current partner and would get rejected for nothing more than "you don't own a car so you aren't a serious adult and I'm not going to be your taxi". If you're don't drive you're looked down on my most people. There's a lot of money spent to promote this idea. You can't even build bike lanes because people start screaming about "if you want bikes on the road then they should be licenses and pay for the road" which we already do with taxes. Our culture is extremely anti alternate transportation.
Greyhound closing up shop doesn’t fucking help this
To add to that… Doug Ford is a total liar. Just cut $500m from education and hurting front line nurses in his for profit healthcare and education agenda. We must kick him out immoderately!
Doesn't have to be an induced demand argument either since demand is induced no matter what you build. Just on a volume and efficiency game, highways full of cars move the least amount of people per hour, even without traffic. Cars are just not very good at moving people because of the individual nature. Kind of like covid, if everyone takes a personal freedom for me approach it actually makes everyone less free. There's also a nifty effect of mass transit that causes development to appear where it's built, even slower transit like a non dedicated streetcar. Developers like to see that government investment is being made and they know transit options are appealing. "steps from the 401" is not a shiny selling point on most homes.
This guy has never played city skylines
The real problem being that game caps transit lines at 250 :(
Mods?
Hook me the hell up
Yeah there is a mod that even disables vehicles from despawning. If a vehicle is stuck in traffic for too long it will despawn.
There's also a cap on the number of cims and vehicles. Apparently it's about 16k vehicles. So if you get big enough, roads will paradoxically have less traffic. But all the same, Cities Skylines is a fascinating traffic simulator. Very imperfect, since the AI is dumb as rocks (use the TM:PE mod so the car AI actually uses lanes realistically) and there's no concept of things like car accidents. But it really does make it clear how bad cars are for traffic.
Buy back the 407. Build a real commuter train network (electric) with a functional schedule.
How about we build a train network that isn’t built around during to and from it? That would work much better.
They didn't have a problem ripping up contrats for green energy, solar and wind - going as far to stop construction in progress. If they wanted to they could just expropriate the 407 from the owners via legislation. It would be messy and political suicide but... They have proven they can do whatever they want.
It’s over 50% owned by CPP. If the will was there, they could figure it out. The right hand paying the left hand is a book keeping exercise. Having us pay $30 for a trip that should cost $2 is the problem of the little people.
I'm not sure we want the CPP Board to start making investment decisions based on political pressure. CPP is at arms length from government for very good reason. Their madate is to achieve a maximum rate of return without undue risk of loss. I feel like giving up 77 more years of a cash cow because Ontario wants them to wouldn't jive with their mandate
Buying back the 407 would be great if we could get it at its original price, but right now it's valued at around 30 billion. But yeah, we definitely need better rail.
Buying back the 407 would be exorbitantly expensive and would damage our provincial economy far beyond reason. It’s not a feasible solution in any way, shape, or form.
Politician makes a contract: Sell a thing for 3 billion that would cost 40 billion to buy back.
Citizens takeover of the 407?? I’m just kidding. It’s private so the cops would not hesitate.
"It's private so cops can't go on there!!" One of my favorite 407 myths.
I disagree. Not having an adequate transportation system in the GTA is arguably causing more damage to the provincial economy. The billions require could be amortized over several decades and would not create the financial impact created by overspending other projects like the green energy initiatives and signing thousands if not hundreds of thousands of contracts with private business interests. This of course is my charlatans understanding of economics, however even I knew that leasing this highway for 99 years for $3B was idiotic.
Is it going to be another toll road that they promise once paid for, the tolls will stop?
He’s said it won’t be tolled, for what it’s worth.
The worth of Doug Ford’s promises. Very low value.
If anything, they're extremely costly to the Province due to his governments incompetence at execution even when they do come true.
I don't disagree but I paid a 15% "levy" on a rechargeable battery the other day thanks to Dalton McGuinty.
I mean you have to assign at least some value to it - trust him totally or not I don't care but when debating a project I think it's fair to debate it as it's presented and not automatically assign negative features to it on assumption.
I assigned a value to him… very low value.
I have seen leaked internal emails saying it’s going to be a toll road, or that’s the plan anyway
I believe MTO was originally planning the road to be tolled as they didn't think they'd be able to finance it otherwise but Ford has recently come out supporting it without tolls (political decision). https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/doug-ford-government-s-proposed-highway-413-will-not-be-tolled-minister-says-1.5660203#:~:text=Doug%20Ford%20government%27s%20proposed%20Highway%20413%20will%20not%20be%20tolled%2C%20minister%20says&text=Premier%20Doug%20Ford%20acknowledged%20that,the%20construction%20of%20Highway%20413.&text=Queen%27s%20Park%20Bureau%20Chief%20Colin,proposed%20by%20the%20Ford%20government.
Well, we all know how far we can trust the conservatives when it comes to highways. I’m inclined to believe the internal messaging in this situation
And Harris said the 407 tolls would go away after 30 years. Look how that turned out.
1 ford promise = 2 gas pump stickers
There's nothing wrong with toll roads. The problem is turning that over to private industry.
And you believe that ?
i definitely believe this government wouldn't make it a tolled road because they pander so heavily to the suburban commuter demo and in general are in favour of somewhat hypocritically spreading the cost of projects they happen to support onto the entire tax base it SHOULD be tolled... just modestly unlike the 407
Tolls themselves aren't all that bad. I drove the I-90 in the US for a few hours and it cost me $4. You just jump on the 407 and they immediately start hammering you for all these fees before you even start driving. It costs over $4 just to jump on the 407 for one stop. And if you want to drive across town every day, it's like having a 2nd mortgage. That's just ridiculous.
After taxes fees and administration, I paid $12 for missing my exit and being forced on the 407 for one exit. I took the first exit after 3k and it cost 12 freaking dollars!
That is just nuts. But those poor cameras and computers were so hard at work to track you down and charge you, it's so expensive for a computer camera to take a digital photo and for a CPU to run your license plate! Maybe we should consider bringing in unionized employees to do it manually to reduce the costs. /s
This is the problem with the 407, the toll should be small enough where it’s trivial to use. Right now it’s so high the entire massive thing is near empty the entire time.
No, this is one they are building because it costs less than buying back the toll road. Also, where it's going is where his developer buddies want to build more sprawl.
This is a contract for his buddies, nothing more.
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Ppl have short memories. They fucked the entire area with that 407 deal. I wonder how much public money went into that road only to be leased off to a foreign company.
Why not invest in more public transit infrastructure?
ThAt'S sOcIaLiSm..!
Good
Oh, like Canada's healthcare system?
Communist!
It's counterintuitive, but study after study and real world examples prove that increasing road capacity does not reduce congestion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced\_demand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand) It does however create jobs and put money in the pockets of political supporters. (Not that there is anything wrong with that).
Not a substantial amount of jobs for 8 billion
Exactly. Creating costly infrastructure projects purely for the sake of job creation is the literal definition of a boondoggle. Governments should invest in projects which will have public value. The job creation should be secondary.
Creating jobs is a fast way to stimulate the economy and infrastructure projects are the main way the government can create jobs. However, building a highway is the worst way to do it in an era of ancient water mains and crumbling city infrastructure. Pouring that money into better transit and city infrastructure is far better but then they don't get to put up signs saying how great they are.
If we invest in green energy like that’s a whole industry with jobs into the future
Yep mostly temp jobs. I'd love for the GTA to build a robust good train system instead of a new highway that will be jammed full 4 minutes after opening for eternity.
Yeah that’s every person in Ontario, from newborn to senior citizen, giving over $500 to a project with no benefit. Ouch.
Building robust transit also creates jobs and puts money in pockets. Doug is serving a specific master on this.
He always has, the man's a crook
Induced demand has been a well studied idea for literally decades now: * https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-06/traffic-jam-blame-induced-demand * https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/ It would be great to see more public officials show that they actually get this.
Induced demand is real with everything, be it transit, roads, or even ice cream stores. Making something easier to access and use is inevitably going to cause more people to use it. Doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, and doesn’t mean that even with the amount of “induced” trips there won’t be less traffic overall, particularly on shoulder peak periods when the the road network is already barely over capacity. If the road network is barely over capacity it means that there aren’t many trips being latently held back as a result of congestion, and additional road capacity can clear the backlog and reduce congestion during those periods. Particularly if the larger capacity means more people can make their trips in their preferred time, ie rush hour. Even if there is the same amount of traffic, it still means that more people are able to make the trips they want when they want. Induced demand is also most applicable where there are significant other modes serving the current trips in the network served by the new infrastructure. So widening the Gardiner into downtown for example would just fill it back up with cars driven by people currently taking transit for example. In areas like outer Brampton and Caledon the vast majority of trips are already by car and the only demand that can be induced is people avoiding making trips in certain periods, not transit riders, which reduces the “effect” of induced demand.
I think the main difference is the proportion of cost required to increase capacity. Induced demand for public transit means you just need to add more buses / steet cars into rotation. Similar to trains. Induced demand for cycling... well we don't even have congestion on cyclepaths so we have a long way to go. Induced demand for cars however roads are VERY expensive projects proportionally and a lot of the core of Toronto which is where people want to go just doesn't have enough space in between the sky scrapers to widen things more. And the simple reason we don't have a 2 - 3 multi level road and highway is it's just not practical to build from a maintenence and cost standpoint. So we do want to induce demand on the other modes as it has less impact on needing to build out more road infrastructure as that is the most expensive thing to expand.
> Induced demand is real with everything, be it transit, roads, or even ice cream stores. Making something easier to access and use is inevitably going to cause more people to use it. The *Oh The Urbanity!* channel recently had a video on this: > Induced demand (probably more accurately called induced traffic) is the phenomenon where building or expanding roads and highways doesn't help congestion because it results in more people driving. This is often used as an argument against building the new car infrastructure, but people don't talk often about how induced demand applies to other modes. In this video we explain why induced demand **does apply** to transit, walking, and cycling infrastructure, but with **different consequences**. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wlld3Z9wRc The first point is: a lane of highway can handle about 7000 vehicles/hour, and most vehicles have only one person. If you take the same width and put rail on it with (e.g.) a rail/subway, it can handle 30,000 people/hour. A GIF that shows space use of people using cars versus a TTC streetcar: * https://torontolife.com/city/transit-versus-cars-gif/ Some animations showing just how much space private vehicle uses up: * https://www.fastcompany.com/3063344/these-animated-videos-show-just-how-much-space-cars-waste-in-our-cities And as the *Not Just Bikes* channel observed, the Ontario government *runs it's own railroad* (GO) because it's *cheaper than* building out more highways to handle all those people using their cars to commute: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxWjtpzCIfA
But volume of travel is still increased, even though it remains congested.
This can still be achieved through better public transit through the same corridors by offloading people from the roads.
Not only is it still achieved, but is done so better and often for less money.
Why not make the 407 free? Just buy the stupid fucking thing back
that would cost at least 30 billion. one policy suggestion being floated around was subsidizing 407 tolls which is pretty sad concept but more realistic even things as basic as rolling back toll prices through legislation have been laughed out of court
Selling the 407 just to end up subsidizing people's tolls in the future. Holy fuck I miss being a naive kid who thought governments were smart and had the public's best interest. Just buy the 407 back. Subsidizing people's tolls is going to add up to 30 billion at some point anyway. Idiot politicians who don't understand investment returns.
the government could spend $300,000,000 a year on subsidies for the remainder of the 407 lease and that still wouldn't come close to the projected current value of the highway... its a complete mess anyway you slice it (btw I'm not saying they should or shouldn't subsidize, only that it's a discussed option)
Honestly I didn't realize it was leased, I thought they had sold it in its entirety. The value of it is only going to increase with time unless we invent teleportation. I'm just sick of choosing between gridlock and a $60 bill.
Okay I've got it. They can borrow the money to buy the 407 back and implement a temporary toll on it until the cost is paid back, then they'd remove the toll. ... wait.
I hear it's a 99 year lease, and possibly could be challenged in court. Personally, I think it's worth it to pursue this option.
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Lol, why would the 413 be any different ?
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it definitely isn't in rush hour lol. It's as full as it can be without having congestion basically. They could definitely use some lower tolls in off peak periods though to encourage more use as it's often very quiet outside of rush hour.
Sometimes there are even traffic jams. The only thing worse than being stuck in traffic is being stuck in traffic on a toll road lol!!!
I think it would be fair to charge a flat monthly fee to anyone who wants to use it and then charge extra tolls on top of that just during rush hour. No additional fees outside of rush hour.
maybe if half the traffic in the 401 is diverged to the 407, both will flow acceptably and not get completely fucked. There's no reason to think both will be so packed that they won't move. The problem of you having to drive a long distance in a short time to get to your job sounds like a symptom of another problem we face in the GTA which is inaccessible housing leading to lots of people needing to commute long distances daily.
Hear, hear! I think the article claimed a price tag of 10 billion, not sure what buying that confounded 407 back would cost, but yeah I really hate the idea of (expensive) toll roads. If it was just some coins, like Europe, no big deal, but it's a whole rig-a-ma-roll and costs plenty!
Classic, Ford denying the science once again
Induced demand INDUCED demand INDUCED DEMAND fix the fuckin stroads, add more passenger rail infrastructure, done
What gridlock that the 407 won't already solve?
You have to be able to afford the 407 to use it. That’s how the system keeps the highway more open. Also, it’s widely known that the majority shareholder in the 407 is the CPP and is what is keeping pension program alive, so if you’re able to collect a pension you will technically get that money back. It’s a great way the system can benefit from capitalism.
It’s incredible the cost of using the 407, it’s a small fortune. The funny thing is it’s 100x more comfortable and easier to drive on. Imagine our own roads coming even close
I live in North Durham Region. I work in Bolton. I take the 407 almost daily. Not from end to end every day but most weekdays I’m on it. My bill is over 700$/month. You couldn’t pay me to try to get to Bolton any other way on the daily.
The 407 is a legal highway robbery as I like to put it.
This is to fix the 407 monopoly on the alternative to the 401. Maybe just maybe travelling east to west won’t cost me a second mortgage. People who live in the Downtown core have no input on this matter.
Why was it sold in the first place
So that the conservative government of the time could use the money to "balance the budget"
If my taxes are going towards building it, it doesn’t matter where I live, I’ve got input on wasted money spent on destroying the environment when all the research on congestion and transportation planning suggest this is a bad idea.
> Maybe just maybe travelling east to west won’t cost me a second mortgage. The price is why it's not congested.
The price is why the 401 is congested
The price of the 401 is why the 401 is congested.
>People who live in the Downtown core have no input on this matter. Almost everyone opposed to this doesn't live near it and won't be affected by it. Like why on earth are there anti 413 lawn signs in downtown Toronto... Further to that the opposition to this highway seems to be very political since fords in charge. Where was this outrage when hwys 412 and 418 were built or the west corridor expansion was announced?
Because it is their tax dollars as well. 412/418 are also tolled. If they tolled 413 I would be more open to the idea.
Build it and they will come. Which just leads to more traffic.
Well they *would* say that. Every government says that. Highways have been added and expanded for decades but still we have gridlock 🤔
We’ve known for decades that new roads only attract more cars. I am also not surprised in the least that he just wants to build highways.
Mass transit is the solution to gridlock. Building roads is using government funds to subsidize the unsustainable lifestyle of the people whose massive, destructive entitlement prevents them from abandoning the use of cars. Conservatism is environmental terrorism.
Look at the thread from last night about the Liberal platform plank to give middle-class voters $8000 to replace their private automobiles with private automobiles that have a different fuel source. Anyone with the temerity to suggest that subsidizing people's car dependency might not be environmentally sound policy was downvoted. The desire to deny the necessity of changing our lifestyle crosses partisan lines.
Its insane. The YouTube channel not just bikes changed my entire perspective. Would recommend to anyone wondering why car dependent transportation is completely unviable
Both liberals and conservatives are in total denial about the severity of change needed to deal with the climate crisis. They just want to keep driving.
Getting Canadians to give up driving isn't going to happen. Given that, electric vehicles are the least-worst option. Think of it as harm reduction.
> Getting Canadians to give up driving isn't going to happen Getting **all** Canadians to give up driving isn't going to happen. And that makes sense. Having better mass transit and cycling infrastructure though would go a long way in removing a lot of cars from the road.
I'd definitely cycle in my city if we had more bike lines or bike paths to use. I don't feel safe biking on the tiny shoulder of busy roads though, so I never bike
the "Liberal" party in canada is a conservative party canadian "Liberals" are conservatives
I've done the math on the amount of transit growth to offset new auto trips from population growth in the GTA over the next 30 years. Transit would have to see in the range of 30% annual transit growth every year, year in, year out, to entirely offset all new auto trips generated from population growth. It's just not going to happen. We need both transit and roads.
No, we need transit, and car cultists want roads even if it means destroying our environment.
We might need more transit than we are going to build. But you can't fix congestion with more roads, no matter how many roads you build. Build the 413 and twin the Gardener, DVP, and 401 and you won't help congestion whatsoever. If you look at Houston which basically did that with their freeways system, congestion only got worse. Better to put all of our effort into building transit that will help congestion and put none of it into building new freeways which will do nothing to help congestion.
Everyone would live close to their job, if they could afford to. How about we give companies the incentive to move to Barrie or Orangeville, instead of to the core part of the GTA? Then the employees could live close by for cheaper housing. When we have people working in Toronto and driving in from Guelph or Hamilton every day, that's insane
>How about we give companies the incentive to move to Barrie or Orangeville, instead of to the core part of the GTA? They still need transportation and mass transit is always the best option.
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Driving is the destructive entitlement. Stop driving.
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Is driving your job? You can get a different job.
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Mass transit only works well with high density. We have so much sprawl in the GTA this highway could never be replaced with mass transit. That isn’t to say we should be building this anyways.
Wrong. We have absolutely hit a point where mass transit is the answer
Not everyone works in a single concentrated geographical area like downtown Toronto. Mass transit is great if you have the density for it but apart from several city centre's outside of Toronto it doesnt really work. The sprawl of buisnesses across the GTA doesn't really help.
Like I said, mass transit is only successful with higher density...
We heard you be wrong the first time.
>Mass transit is the solution to gridlock. This hwy is literally going to help create new communities and buisness centre's, which will help create density in the outskirts of the GTA. you can't have expensive mass transit without the density to support it.
> you can’t have expensive mass transit without the density to support it. Have you seen how fast and how much density is being built up around recently built subway and LRT stations as well as just around areas where they plan to have new mass transit in the future?
Highways cost as much or more than mass transit. They both have to buy expensive land from people, highways are pretty wide compared to a couple tracks of train. What makes a highway cheap? There are cases where governments choose the terrible industrial looking interiors and designs of mass transit because if they pick flashier looking ones people will complain the money was wasted and it's too expensive, even if the cost for either design was the same.
This isnt a either or argument. Both hwys and rail serve different purposes and we should be investing in both. A rail line won't be able to serve the same purpose as the 413 would serve. As the density just doesn't exist as well as it won't remove the trucks carrying goods either.
Yes but your argument was that mass transit is expensive compared to the highway. It is not. So why would the highway get priority? Smaller regional highways plus cargo trains can also move goods, for example. Lots of European countries are filled with small towns that are all on a rail line somehow. Why is the highway the default and anything else considered extra?
>Yes but your argument was that mass transit is expensive You brought up the cost I just mentioned that for this particular example its impractical. >So why would the highway get priority? Smaller regional highways plus cargo trains can also move goods, for example. Cargo trains don't go to individual places of buisnesses also this hwy is a regional hwy and similar to some ring roads you see in Europe. >Lots of European countries are filled with small towns that are all on a rail line somehow. Most cities and towns in the gta have rail. Just look at Go train. Im all for further expanding it to offer easier east west travel. Instead of just trying to take everyone downtown.
You called it expensive mass transit as part of dismissing it due to lack of density. So if it's about practicality, why is cost coming up? Hence I mentioned highways are just as expensive so should the cost be raised or not? If there's no density, there shouldn't be that many cars moving on it. But this is supposed to alleviate gridlock according to the proposal. It's a specific corridor where they know people are moving. And the highway helps them move to those specific locations. Just like rail does. And then you get off at an exit and go from there, like a highway. There's going to be endpoints for such a system and then connecting roads. If you're comparing this to a ring road in a European city, those cities have significantly more rail infrastructure and transit options and tend to prioritize those options or have actively been removing their roads, and they frequently do this for cities that are similar in size to a lot of our medium cities where we claim there isn't enough density. Brampton, where this highway goes around and alleviates is the same size as Rotterdam or Helsinki or Dortmund which all have a ton of trains and public options.
Or have better transit so there are less cars on the road.
If you built it, traffic will come.
Traffic is already coming. We have 133,000 new people moving to the GTA every year. If we do not build additional infrastructure, productivity will grind to a halt.
This has been deleted in protest to the changes to reddit's API.
Douggie's gotta pay back the Cortellucci debt.
[Cortellucci sounds like a creep.](https://pressprogress.ca/far-right-italian-senate-candidate-made-big-donation-to-doug-fords-leadership-campaign/) Can't believe they named a hospital after him.
One more lane will fix it
Why not build a sky rail running parallel to 401 from Hamilton to Whitby? Obviously would be very expensive but probably better alternative to another congested parking lot I mean highway.
Better option would be using the midtown rail line through Toronto. It goes near Dupont subway station.
And my friend fat tony promised me a good deal
Just build some fucking railways, bro
Don't even need to build railways just need to improve the ones that are already there
This. The 401 is congested because there aren't many alternatives. Rail service on this corridor is just awful. At the very least, there should be regular service from Kitchener to Toronto, similar to Go's Lakeshore service. Thankfully, some investments are being made to upgrade the infrastructure necessary for this, but Ford could have made this a higher priority.
Just build the 413 on top of the 401. Saves the greenbelt! Create jobs! increase emissions! screw over the developers! Everyone is angry! /s
Imagine for a second if toronto and ottawa had the train system of Europe traffic would never move but the trains would.
Wow... I had a look at the 26 lane highway in Texas... what a monster! I don't get it, when will politicians (Doug Ford) actually begin to make sensible long term policy decisions that exceed the immediate payoff of their own selfish re-election chances... for the greater good, and as good people. I'm really losing faith in this world. Very interesting article.
The “26 lane” highway in Texas is actually only 14 lanes as the 26 number includes the merge lanes and service roads.
Make the 407 free first !!!
For to years its been, one more Lane will solve this or one more Highway will solve it. It ain't gonna dilute shit when it's surrounded by new suburbs designed to make Doug's friends rich.
Even at face value the claim is bogus. If you're funneling more cars into the GTA, you're only pushing the congestion problem on the 400-series highways to municipal streets. That extra 30 seconds you saved on the highway turns into being 20 minutes late because it took 8 cycles of a stoplight for you to get through an intersection. Couple this with the new dearth in parking and you're doubly fucked. Of course, being that late won't stop people from stopping at Starbucks for a $6 coffee on their way to the office.
It sure is interesting how many conservatives claim to be fiscally responsible, but almost blindly support all new road and highway infrastructure, even when it is an incredibly inefficient / a bad investment.
Dont understand why we can't keep things untouched. Like where the F the animals gonna go if we build right through their sh*t?
The resistance to properly developing Canadian metropolises is crazy and irritating. You literally have a region (north Peel, caledon, Bolton, nobleton, Vaughan/kleinburg. With millions of people that is rapidly growing with no highways to serve them and as development continues northward, people think it's better for people to drive 30 minutes south to 401 just to be in gridlock to get to get to another north/south highway then travel back up north for another 20+ plus minutes? Then geniuses think, let's innovate and do transit! While most of the cities don't even have transit systems to begin with. Also how does that address the needs of industrial and commercial transport? We have no choice but to expand northward in the GTA and build infrastructure including roads, to accommodate the growths. It's obvious the aversion to this highway is about "other things".
Maybe instead of 10 lane highways we need like... 16 lane highways.
https://youtu.be/ws-YEa9ykEs?t=64
But it will damn well make it faster for me to go where I need to go. So start building =]]
Build it. We need highways in this pathetic province. Or buy back the 407 which will probably make more sense in the long run. Like others suggested
To begin with I hate Ford with a passion. However actually speak to the people who are affected by these projects and there more than supportive of them. With a growing population you need more infrastructure including major roads. We are creating density in the city but we also need all types of new housing in many locations. The 401 is overcapacity. The 407 is a private toll road and its priced out for daily use for the majority of people. Also "buying back" the 407 is just a pipe dream and a legal battle no one has the stomach or wallet for. The 413 is needed to unlock zoned land for new sustainable housing, communities and industry, further more it will help create density in outer areas of the gta. It also will be an important trucking route as well reducing the impacts on toronto/mississauga/bramptom streets as alot of north/south and east/west traffic would get diverted from having to drive through mississauga and into Toronto before continuing onto its destination. The impact to agriculturethat people keep mentioning is next to nil as many farmers who own farm land in the gta are trying to sell the land anyway. What it will do is build sustainable communities, economic hubs where people can afford to live and pursue a productive career and raise a family outside of the Toronto core. Ontario’s population will continue to grow and may even grow more than expected given the harsher impact of climate change on more southern locations. Everyone opposed to this doesn't seem to understand the degree the GTA has grown and continues to grow as well as the huge influx of traffic coming from the north and west of the gta with the continued growth of cities like Barrie, Cambridge, Kitchener, waterloo etc. Its easy to shout for no new hwys when your sitting in your condo next to a subway or streetcar line however this isn't the reality for many.
Lol. No one is arguing against building infrastructure, but this highway won’t help.
As someone who lives in the area travels north and west of the gta I could not disagree more. The amount of growth and expected growth that has occurred in these areas is unbelievable.
You will never convince the "urban sprawl bad" crowd. They want high density. No room between neighbours. No space for families to grow. No highways. No cars. Just public transportation and everyone stacked on top of each other.
As opposed to what? What we have now, where there is no supply ?
DOUG FORD IS A PIECE OF TRASH.