kamira51
Active Member
So is it confirmed that once all of 69 is fully grade separated, mto will renumber 69 to 400?
And what about highway 11, will it ever be renumbered to a 400 number?
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- Thread starter EnviroTO
- Start date
And what about highway 11, will it ever be renumbered to a 400 number?
lenaitch
Senior Member
Re: Hwy 11, I doubt it, certainly not with the current alignment. It's not built to 400-series standards. Between Crown Hill and Gravenhurst there are all sorts of at-grade intersections and private/commercial entrances. Even the relatively new divided stretch north of Hunstville still has a number of at-grade intersections.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
The idea is that 69 will be renamed to 400 from my understanding, yes. Once the entire highway is complete up to the 17 Sudbury Bypass, 69 will entirely disappear.
It's unlikely 11 will receive a 400 series designation any time soon, though my understanding is that MTO is reserving the 411 number for it. There are simply too many grade crossings remaining for it, MTO would have to entirely upgrade the highway between Gravenhurst and Barrie then remove all the at grade crossings north of that.
MTO has high level plans to rebuild the RIRO portion of 11, but they aren't really planning on doing anything with them any time soon I don't think. 11 south of Orillia is getting quite busy and may need upgrades in a decade or two, but north to Gravenhurst has lots of Capacity still so I don't see it getting upgraded for decades.
Haljackey
Active Member
It wouldn't take too much effort to make Hwy 11 up to 400 series standard between Huntsville and North Bay. You could slap a 411 shield on that stretch if you wanted to, and then continue to extend that route south working towards Orillia and eventually Barrie.
Also what's going to happen when the 400 gets 10-laned (8+2HOV) all the way up the Hwy 11 junction? Will the rightmost 2 exit to continue the 400, with the 3 leftmost lanes exiting to 11? That would make the exiting highway have more than the mainline... strange. I guess you could have the HOV terminate here or become a 3rd general lane, as by the time this widening is done perhaps 11 will need to be 6 laned and bypass the RIRO stretch between Gilchrist and Guthrie. 6 lanes could perhaps continue one day to the Highway 12 interchange in Orillia super long term.
Also what's going to happen when the 400 gets 10-laned (8+2HOV) all the way up the Hwy 11 junction? Will the rightmost 2 exit to continue the 400, with the 3 leftmost lanes exiting to 11? That would make the exiting highway have more than the mainline... strange. I guess you could have the HOV terminate here or become a 3rd general lane, as by the time this widening is done perhaps 11 will need to be 6 laned and bypass the RIRO stretch between Gilchrist and Guthrie. 6 lanes could perhaps continue one day to the Highway 12 interchange in Orillia super long term.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
The highway will drop to 8 GP lanes at the Duckworth Interchange, with 2 lanes each splitting off at 11 and 400.
Longer term MTO does plan to widen 11 to 6 lanes south of Gravenhurst, but that's a multi-decade plan which they are mostly just protecting land for at this point.
lenaitch
Senior Member
Yes, I saw images on here not that long again (posted by you perhaps?). It will mostly require a complete re-alignment.
I'm not sure I get the urge to upgrade the Nipissing/Almaguin section of Hwy 11, along with some of the other fantasies we've seen on here, to 400-series grade. I'm not convinced Hwy 69 north warranted it either, but at least with lower enroute population the number of access points is lower. Every million dollars spent on interchanges and access roads is a million dollars not spent where it would be really needed. The traffic volumes certainly don't justify it. It seems some people have 'Interstate envy' or something.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
The one thing I know is that converting Sultan Road into a publicly owned paved highway will make that route the shortest route across Canada. If that happens all traffic using a GPS, Google Maps, etc will direct people to take that route. As soon as all the traffic that currently runs across the top of Ontario heading to western Canada and eastward to Quebec on Highway 11, and all the traffic that heads past Sault Ste Marie heading to western Canada or into southern Ontario on highway 17 change their travel patterns to travel on Highway 144 and Sultan Road instead, the volumes will be significant. Not only that, but many trips that have people drive past Chicago to western Canada would change to suggest northern Ontario as the faster route. All this would make a Chelmsford By-Pass less of a fantasy and more of a necessity. I often think that the only reason Sultan Road isn't a public highway is that they are purposely trying to have drivers cover longer distance to bring traffic and business to small towns along the existing highways.
ShonTron
Moderator
The section within Orillia is already built to 400-series standard, complete with a 100 km/h speed limit. Long term, I’d argue that only the section south of Gravenhurst is worthwhile upgrading.
I’ve mentioned this before in another thread, but at one point, the ministry intended on bypassing Orillia altogether with the 400 Extension continuing northeast from Coldwater (where the 400 extension originally ended) to Gravenhurst on a new alignment. I appreciate that this was not done, and that the 400 was routed towards Parry Sound instead.
lenaitch
Senior Member
(Isn't there a fantasy thread somewhere?)
Do you own a business on Hwy 101 or 144 or something?
You numbers are correct, but not rather significant in the great scheme. Thunder Bay to Toronto via Hwy 11 is about 1430km; via Hwy 17 is about 1365km. According to the Northern Ontario Municipalities Association (NOMA), the Sultan route would remove about 100km from the Hwy 17 route, so 1265, a net gain of about 165km over Hwy 11. In order to achieve that, you would need a greenfield OW for the Sultan Rd. (I've driven it - the alignment is hardly highway standards), upgrading of Hwy 667, a Wawa bypass and improvements to Hwy 144.
I can't argue the differences between a Chicago route and any Ontario route - I don't know the numbers.
Any traffic that is heading to or from northern Quebec will not divert from Hwy 11. A lot of commercial traffic uses or seasonally diverts to Hwy to avoid weather related problems on Hwy 17. A Sultan route would miss some, but not all of it. It would also not divert traffic that crosses at the Soo, particularly commercial traffic that is bound for s/w Ontario.
I know NOMA is big on it. I also know Sault Ste Marie is not, for obvious reasons, and would assume municipalities like Kap, Cochrane and Blind River would not be either. You say that resistance based on wanting traffic and business to small towns like it's a bad thing.
Haljackey
Active Member
EnviroTO
Senior Member
Longer distances = greater energy consumption = greater cost = greater environmental impacts. Creating a highway to Sultan from Highway 144 makes sense if the goal of roads is transportation. If the goal is a slow tour of small towns then I will defer to your judgement.
lenaitch
Senior Member
I wasn't passing judgement on the goals of road transportation but on the merits of the municipal resistance. Local governments are elected to look after and promote local interests. Sometimes, the goals of different municipalities conflict.
To put the cost that this would entail into perspective, let's consider the traffic volume involved. According to MTO 2016 data, where Hwy 11 and 17 run concurrently between TBay and Nipigon - all E-W long haul traffic must use this route - the Average Annual Daily Traffic (AADT) count is about 3900 vehicles per day (2900 in the winter). Their count data doesn't separate out long haul vs local traffic but there is obviously a fair bit of local traffic. In comparison, that's less than a third of the volume of Hwy 7A at Port Perry (13,400) or about 1/6th of Hwy 11 at Gravenhurst (24,300).
If environmental impact is the main driver, why is a truckload of anything moving between eastern and western Canada when rail is much more energy efficient.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
I agree but unfortunately short sighted people were allowed to abandon rail connections all over the country through the second half of the last century to the place where we are now where most shipments need to switch modes at each end of the line, and there isn't enough spare capacity on the lines that remain to entertain figuring out how to work with ground shippers to make it worthwhile to get their trucks off the road. Without fail if I order something from Vancouver with a volume of less than a TEU then I get to watch it drive across the country. There should be a way for CN and CP to make it worthwhile and flexible enough for ground shippers such that they wouldn't consider driving across Canada, but clearly they are happy shipping 20ft and 40ft containers from port to trans-modal facility and back, and aren't hungry enough to figure out how to make city to city shipping prices and timings irresistible.
EnviroTO
Senior Member
The difference for driving Toronto to Vancouver via Chicago is a 4,382 km vs 4,302 km on Sultan Road. Again not a significant difference in distance, but significant enough to route traffic in the digital age. The fastest and shortest way to drive between major cities across Canada should be the Trans-Canada highway otherwise what is the purpose? I don't think the original goal of the Trans-Canada highway was to create a scenic route, but in Ontario we haven't been too good at making revisions to its routing to keep up with the times.
It used to be that the fastest way to drive to Halifax from Toronto was through Maine. With some investments in highways between Rivière-du-Loup and Edmundston that has changed and now the fastest route to Halifax stays in Canada. A proper highway to replace Sultan Road would do the same thing headed west.
It used to be that the fastest way to drive to Halifax from Toronto was through Maine. With some investments in highways between Rivière-du-Loup and Edmundston that has changed and now the fastest route to Halifax stays in Canada. A proper highway to replace Sultan Road would do the same thing headed west.
lenaitch
Senior Member
I've never quite been certain what the "original goal" of the TCH was. Nation building? A guise to move some federal money to provinces? Other than probably some connecting links, I'm not sure if any highway was actually constructed; it followed existing provincial routes. I don't know about the other provinces but the new routing through New Brunswick was only possible through a big pile of federal money. That's the same reason the final stretch through Quebec has been so long coming. Successive governments have argued it benefits the ROC more than Quebecers so the feds should pay for most of it. In Ontario, it doesn't even pass through Toronto although I'm sure that matters.
I will argue that the "fastest" route to the Maritimes was through the US; certainly since the 1960s when Quebec 20 was built. We used to visit relatives near Shelburne NS and I have been down east several times on vacation - both ways. A US route might be shorter, they are certainly not faster.
I will argue that the "fastest" route to the Maritimes was through the US; certainly since the 1960s when Quebec 20 was built. We used to visit relatives near Shelburne NS and I have been down east several times on vacation - both ways. A US route might be shorter, they are certainly not faster.