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aofe11

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http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_11026.aspx

Province Outlines New Traffic Highways & Improvements
Tuesday May 15, 2007

It may not end gridlock, but it could make your drive a bit easier. The province has confirmed it's shelling out more than one billion dollars to improve and expand highways in Ontario - and several of those projects will have a direct inroad on the GTA. Among the lane changes on the way: a major expansion of existing highways with more 100 kilometres of new lanes and more than 500 kilometres of repairs, including 124 bridges.

The projects include: widening the QEW from four to six lanes from Highway 406 to the Garden City Skyway in St. Catharines, doing the same thing on the 401 from Westney Road to Salem, adding space to the 404 HOV lanes from Sheppard to Beaver Creek and paving out a new four lane highway on the 410 from Bovaird to Highway 10.

Transportation Minister Donna Cansfield made the announcement at the construction site at Hoggs Hollow Tuesday, during the official launch of this year's construction season. She knows all those projects will be like medicine to drivers - they won't taste good going down, but they'll be better off once the dosage is complete. "There's another way of looking at construction other than just from the driver's perspective," she suggests. "Construction creates jobs. It spurs the economy and it gives us the best road to travel on and the best bridges to travel over."

In exchange for your patience, the province promises to do as many of the projects as possible at night and to stagger them so there won't be any traffic bottlenecks.

See the list of all the GTA projects here. (.pdf file)
 
How about the 401 west from the 410? The bottleneck from the collector and express lanes merging into just 3 lanes is horrible.
 
I agree completely. Both of those projects are absolutely essential, and should be priorities far above some of these highways we're seeing. Fixing 401/427 is much more important for the region than extending the 407 to the east, for example.
 
They did fix it two years ago from 6 to 8 lanes through the 427 itself, but I still can't understand why the collector/express system is incomplete there.

Further west, the incredible amount of weaving to get from westbound 401 to northbound 410 makes that an incredibly dangerous manouvre. The 403, on the other hand, allows for access from the "express" and "collector" lanes through that stretch.

Yeah, I'm still at a loss why the 401 goes to 3 lanes each way from Highway 10 (it is 4 from 410 to 10). I know the Mavis Road bridge was built to allow a wider cross section, and the Highway 10 bridge is ancient and looks like it is about to fall apart (and a bottleneck there at Hurontario is constricted to 4 lanes from 6 only across the 401). Why does this always get pushed back? It will only become more of a disaster to replace that bridge with the increasing traffic on both highways.
 
The project is on the books and I believe they've committed funding to it, but surely they could build it before they go on extending the 410 up to Caledon.
 
Actually, my guess is it has nothing to do with politics. For countless reasons, the 401 project would seem the more politically obvious. It goes through far more ridings, all of them government-held including that of the local minister. By contrast, the 410 extension serves the Tory leader's former parachude riding. Moreover, Hazel McCallion is far more powerful than the mayor of Caledon. My guess is that MTO simply is taking its time to prepare the project, possibly including the designs and EA. I do wish they could work a little faster. I'm sure somebody could calculate an economic cost in the many millions caused by congestion in that area.
 
btw, i noticed last year after mentioning that the province wanted to widen the 401 west of Hurontario, stakes painted orange were placed on the land along side the 401 on both sides. Im guessing they mark out the expansion since they are within the ROW. Looks like a possible 2 lane extension.
 
I'm pretty sure that the 401 widening west of Hurontario is the middle of the EA. I know one snag they hit (according the Mississauga News) is that part of where they wanted to widden goes next to a heavily wooded area and that any expansion would require a large number of trees to be cut. I can't think for the lord of me where this is, but according to MN, environmentalists where all up in arms (my guess it was Barber)
 
Before any widening is done, maybe they should complete the 401/410 interchange first, which has been held back forever.
 
Only a couple more ramps are required to complete the 401/410 interchange, and as they address the west side of the interchange, no rebuilt 401 to the west of the interchange means no new ramps for now.

The area that will be tricky for widening the 401 is to the west of 2nd Line and over to Creditview through the Credit River Valley. The 401 cuts through a gorgeous woods there, and when I drive through I imagine ways of adding a couple of lanes without cutting down anymore trees. (Can't we just have some vertical concrete retaining walls put in for that short stretch instead of the generously banked cuts that this province seems to invariably use?

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interchange42 said:
Only a couple more ramps are required to complete the 401/410 interchange, and as they address the west side of the interchange, no rebuilt 401 to the west of the interchange means no new ramps for now.

The area that will be tricky for widening the 401 is to the west of 2nd Line and over to Creditview through the Credit River Valley. The 401 cuts through a gorgeous woods there, and when I drive through I imagine ways of adding a couple of lanes without cutting down anymore trees. (Can't we just have some vertical concrete retaining walls put in for that short stretch instead of the generously banked cuts that this province seems to invariably use?

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Click to expand...

My old house use to be right by there. I spent lots of time there with friends throughout grade school. Im guessing that some of it will be cut down to rebuild the second line W. bridge since there really is no where for construction crews and equipment now that houses take up the land around the bridge. Part of that forest was already chopped down for a mansion they built on the north-west side.


Some good news though, the path through the forest was cut along the ROW. The forest is on private property. If any trees have to be cut down, it will only be a few of the small ones which have grown in since the forest was first cut.
 
Tuscani, I am under the impression that the 2nd Line bridge will not be rebuilt - when the highway is widened, it's coming down and that's it.

McLaughlin Road's bridge will be rebuilt as will Hurontario Street's and Creditview Road's.

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