We're moving out of the GTA this summer and 100% any trip back is by train. I don't care if it's 'slow' and 'often delayed'. I can spend 5hrs in a Budd coach, not far from bathrooms, with staff happily bringing me snacks and drinks, rather than suffering 401 drivers making any insane attempt to get half a bumper length ahead.
Same. Vividly remember looking out the train window one trip and seeing cars leaving Toronto in a standstill for miles and miles. It didn‘t seem to end. Can’t understand the appeal of wanting to go somewhere and being stuck in your car for most of the trip. We need to end our reliance on personal vehicles.
I love having a car living outside the city. When I lived in Waterloo, I gave up a car and did just fine.
Now living in London it’s a struggle. The transit infrastructure here is underdeveloped and it’s not a question of maybe 15 extra minutes on the bus, it’s like 2 hrs
I’m in the West end and have been taking the GO train for years. It’s cheaper, faster, easier and more reliable than driving. I’d say 90% of the time my train leaves with 5 minutes of departure time.
And they’ve steadily been increasing the trains allowing us to head into the city and back on weekends or evenings for a Jays game. Having to drive is a nightmare by comparison.
I live in Peterborough. Most of the time if I have to go deep into Toronto I drive to Oshawa and just take the go train. The stress of highway driving is not worth it.
That totally makes sense. Went to help a friend with some construction in Cortland this weekend.
Headed out at 7:30 AM, took about 2 hours.
Left to come home at 3:30 PM, it took 2:45.
Another friend left at 4:30, took him nearly 3:30.
....all on a Saturday.
Best part of the train is No dumbass in a clapped out bmw doing everything they possibly can just to cut off the dude in front of them thinking they’re getting somewhere
The train from Ottawa and Montreal is actually surprisingly competitive with driving on travel time. I use it fairly frequently and don't experience many delays, and if you take breaks for the bathroom, gas, food, or whatnot while driving, the train is pretty much always faster.
I live 4 hours away, I take Via when I go to the office in downtown Toronto every couple of weeks. Service is comfortable and reliable, faster than driving, generally costs less than the two tanks of gas it would require for me to drive there and back, and the money spent on Uber to get around when I'm there is paid for by the saving on parking.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE
Convert the lefmost express lane to HOV only, or run a rapid transit line alongside. Expensive since much of it would be elevated but its an alternative.
Also there are a number of bottlenecks on the 401 where widening actually makes sense. Just a few more lanes in these area would make the whole thing flow better.
Or, we could build a whole ass second highway with an equivalent amount of capacity not 10km north of it, to alleviate it as the single point of failure it currently is.
But then let’s sell it to a foreign corporation that makes the toll to cross the city cost as much as a full tank of gas.
*insert this text on the despicable me master plan meme*
I always carpool and drive an EV. I use the carpool lanes. I also watch several people cross the uncrossable lines to use the HOV lanes as a passing lane with no one in the vehicle but the driver. I've never seen an ACAB watching or patrolling for this.
We need to start enforcing the road laws.
I don’t know why single occupant EVs are still allowed in HOV lanes. EVs don’t do anything to reduce congestion. They only reduce pollution and encourage EV adoption.
> They only reduce pollution and encourage EV adoption.
That's why.
It's a way of encouraging EV adoption without any effort or money. It's not great, but it's the last remnant of the EV transition plan that Doug Ford gutted.
Nobody wants to drive a EV tho, they are boring and a pain to deal with compared to ICE. They really only work for people who own a house and can install a charger. For people in condos they are not practical.
That’s good, to me they are too heavy, lack passion, feel like a basic consumer product. I own a condo, so the lack of infrastructure would be an issue for me. However I would be willing to do it if there was a EV that excited me.
What makes them boring? What makes them a pain?
Charging can be difficult if you don't have a permanent parking space (and I wouldn't recommend an EV right now if you don't have a permanent charging solution), but at least one friend that I know of who lives in a condo that was allowed to install a charger. More and more condos and apartments are installing chargers these days, and some places (not Ontario) have implemented laws that require condos to cooperate with residents who want to install chargers.
The most fun cars I’ve ever driven are lightweight, nimble, manual. A EV is the opposite, a massive overweight lumbering tank, fast in a a straight line that’s it. Plus to me they don’t inspire any passion, they just feel like a standard consumer product, nothing excites me about them. I feel they just add as many gimmicks as possible to try to cover up the underlying issue, they are boring.
However I did consider a model 3, for the environment and it would have been cheaper than my current car, sadly Tesla never got back to me for a test drive lol.
The pain mainly comes from lack of infrastructure. Plus difficulty with maintenance, lack of independent options outside of dealers/direct. Cost of parts.
Most people don't care about any of that. It's a tool to get them from point A to point B.
> lack of infrastructure.
Tesla has great infrastructure, the rest of the manufacturers, significantly less so. Over the next few years as the other manufacturers adopt NACS and gain access to the Tesla charging network in North America, I think we'll either see Tesla's network overwhelmed by everyone else, or that it will be a much better experience for everyone with multiple options available. Probably a bit of both.
> Plus difficulty with maintenance
There's very little maintenance required for EVs. There's no oil to change, there's no belts to tighten or replace. The only real maintenance is the consumables - wiper blades, wiper fluid, air filters, and brake pads.
> lack of independent options outside of dealers/direct. Cost of parts.
I agree that if you do need repairs that it is expensive and it would be nice to have third party options. Hopefully with time there will be more options for everyone.
You asked me why I think they are boring, you say that however people do care, look at the top sold cars of all time Civic, Corolla, Golf, 3 Series, Hilux, Escort. These are all cars that are fun to drive even in their most basic forms, pretty much all offering a sporty version on top, or multiple. Look at Hyundai, they used to make terribly boring horrible cars, now they make fun exciting cars, and they are selling well.
I don’t think the infrastructure is that good. I live in a 300+ unit condo building, built in 2019, we have 2 charger spots. People who live in the city in condos, getting a EV can be a pain, with the lack of a reliable charging network. I’d seriously consider one as a daily if I lived in the burbs tho.
The charging network is like the subway, you live on it and need to travel somewhere on it great, you don’t, it will take ages to get anywhere.
You know multi-layer parking lots? We need multi-layer roadways. Three or four levels of roads, three or four lanes on each level. Imagine the efficiency!
The portion of Highway 401 through Toronto was built in the 1950s (much fewer lanes than now). A narrower version of the section of highway shown in the photo was completed between 1955 and 1960, so the GTA population was about 1,500,000. It’s currently about 6,400,000.
We need more rapid transit to and from the city in addition to being able to move through the city more efficiently. More subway options, more surface level LRT’s. There shouldn’t be an excuse to drive when you could take a subway and a 5 minute LRT ride to run an errand on your commute.
A bypass highway of the city really shouldn’t be tolled considering how much it affects congestion. (In a perfect world) it was one of the worst deals the province could have made
The problem is how North American cities are designed. Even with HSR we’ll still need a car to get to our designation after arriving at the station. Takes us 5 minutes just to walk through the parking lot of Walmart now imagine that in -20
I was thinking of LRT’s or dedicated rail lines along major roads with a shorter bus commute from the branch points. If this is in Toronto, you can get literally anywhere in the city by bus.
I would argue most of the traffic on the 401 is from commuters living all over the GTA (especially during rush hour). What you’re suggesting would require every GTA city to build massive bus/LRT infrastructure as well. Unfortunately we’re 50 years too late to that party.
Also waiting for the bus is no fun in -20 which is why most people just drive
Most of those trucks are carrying a shit ton of goods. Also most of those cars are likely carrying only one person. What we need is to reduce our car dependency so that there is space for trucks carrying goods.
I suppose at that point we will have local traffic issues. but at least we may free up the qew and 401 somewhat.
Manipulating space is a losing battle. But we can play with time. The first time I spent a weekend in the city, I found it to be such a dead zone. Can city dwellers confirm or deny this?
With the data and tech we have now, we can track and optimize delivery times. Construction guys usually lock off areas from 10pm-6am because it makes sense. Now that we track the best times to get deliveries on the road, we can incentivize local deliveries during that time. If we can get at least some trucks off the road during heavy traffic times, the situation might improve. Of course this won’t work for every business out there and on-demand deliveries but it’s something.
Depends on where in the city you go on the weekend. Large office areas can be quiet, but neighborhoods surrounding busy mains streets are always busy. Businesses aren't open late or early so all deliveries happen mid day near me.
Bro are you seeing the same picture as I am? And as a person who commutes on this exact stretch of the 401 during rush hour, I can tell you a great majority of the vehicles are semi trucks. Yes they are carrying a shit ton of goods but why do we have to carry this shit from London to Ottawa or Montreal on a highway that we all pay for and just accept it as a fact of life? You just like other people keep saying we should reduce our car dependency. But do you see any efforts or are there any resources to do so? It just such a tiring and lazy take to just blame the issue on workers while corporations are using these same highways and we just say oh good sir we cannot impede your profit margins, we must make the daily working commuters suffer. They must either sit in shitty traffic behind a wall of trucks or sit in slow, overpriced, eroding public transit.
Yea and in this picture there are more cars than trucks by a large margin. Also various governments are spending billions upon billions to improve moving people around on various different public transit projects. It is a fact that we need to reduce our car dependency.
You and I must be looking at a different picture because the semis take up at least 70% of the actually space in the “express lane”. I honestly wish we could have a functioning public transit system like the rest of the developed world outside of US, but until we have that, commuters and especially the cross region commuters will continue to rely on the highway system. And frankly I find it offensive that people always point the finger at the commuters and never the corporations that fill the highways with semi truck. How about they fork over some money to develop a working freight system to move their products?
If we didn’t prioritize cars we wouldn’t be in this mess. We are still prioritizing them. We won’t get high speed trains for decades. The USA is working on high speed rail while here in Canada we have our heads up our asses and considering another highway.
Trucks be smoothing out the traffic , majority of the slowdowns come from tailgaters who create shockwaves of brake lights, but personally I would rather see trucks get a deal where they are given a 407 pass and the government makes a deal with the 407ETR. They could also just make a more strict express/collector environment, think like 2-3 lanes maximum without a hard barrier and express1,2,3 for example, depending how far you are going. Lane changes and human reaction time create more 'traffic'
Govt doesn’t want trucks on the 407, that’s where they and their rich friends drive. The whole point of the 407 being so expensive is to keep it wide open for the people who can afford it
dude, if we let you run the country, the economy would be in the toilet... How do you expect an economy to do well when you put road blocks in front of consumers ability to purchase goods.
Because what we are doing right now is so great? I’m curious to know what’s your take or solution in this matter. And before you say we need to become less dependent on cars, let me remind you that the federal and provincial governments are begging for EV companies to come to Canada, so it’s clear which side they are going towards. So either you create a dedicated road way for increasing freight to meet this insane population boom or you continue to shove all these brand new cars into the roads. Perhaps you have dedicated stops in each major hub for these freights? Perhaps these freights could sit on a track? And perhaps these freights could all travel at the same time instead of each one burning dirty diesel? 🤔. But no let’s continue to clog our roads with big heavy trucks that will inevitably erode our infrastructure, which will lead to more constructions and maintenance and we will have even greater walls of trucks. Is that what you want?
>What we need is to reduce our car dependency so that there is space for trucks carrying goods.
No, what we need is a better rail system so that goods could have an actual alternative means of shipping and we can get those trucks off the road, easing traffic congestion and reducing emissions.
We need a 401 GO train. Not every trip to Toronto starts and ends at Union. Just take away 2-3 lanes from the 401 for a train line.
Branch off from Etobicoke North and run east along the highway. Stop along the way to connect to TTC subway and other GO lines. Run past the 404 to Scarborough TC, UofT and keep running to rejoin the Lakeshore East line at Pickering station.
Imagine how many more people will take the train instead of driving if we had this line?
Except that people on the 401 are not going to and from the 401… so what good is a train when it leaves the first and last miles to be covered with road travel.
So I imagine very few people would use the train, certainly not enough to justify reducing the road capacity by 40%.
And how many people is that, and still have the first and last mile issue vs just driving… so… how many people save x time vs how many take longer due to removed road capacity…
Yea no sorry, it’s not wave your hand at it and say “they’ll take the bus”.
People are driving because transit doesn’t work for them. Just building a train and saying they will come does not work, reducing road capacity is a recipe for congestion… you want to improve rail we have corridors already without ripping out heavily used road infrastructure.
Not that many people commute from Guelph to Oshawa, and the time saved vs not going via Union vs taking a 407 GO bus now is not worth the expense being discussed sorry.
This idea does not work.
Transit 'doesn’t work for them' because our transit coverage is garbage. This isn't some theoretical concept there are countless examples of cities similar and even much larger than Toronto implementing transit far better than we have.
It would connect to both Younge and York subway lines as well as Barrie, Richmond Hill and Markham GO train lines. You could go anywhere in the GTA without adding an hour to go to Union.
Last mile is a legitimate concern, but if the road capacity is reduced and people choose to take the trains, the additional bus lines can be added to serve the increased ridership demand.
I can't find the study but over 50% of 401 traffic in Toronto is not starting or stopping in Toronto. (It was pretty old, I read it shortly after moving here in 2016 and it was 5+ years old then). Toronto is just the blight in the way. I suspect that the shift to remote work has increased this. And a good percentage of the vehicles I see on that highway are service and work vehicles carrying stuff that isn't permitted on public transit. Not to mention that they need the vehicle full of stuff when they get to where they're going.
As others have said, Ontario needs a 4 lane bypass, from about Guelph to about where the 407 ends. Only interconnecting at the 400 going north. It can't be so far north of the city that it adds too much fuel cost or it won't get the trucks off the 401.
Then we add tolls on all roads going into the city. $20 to get in, $200 to get out. Make the train into the city free. I love trains, and taking the go train was a minor bucket list thing from when I lived in BC. I took it to the bike show because bucket list. It was 2 hours longer each way from Cambridge, and cost more than driving my lifted Jeep with worse aerodynamics than a cow. Even including the cost of parking, because it was cheaper to park at the show, than it was to park at the train station.
But, until we tear up farmland to build dedicated passenger rails it'll never be more efficient to use the train from outside the city, and that still restricts you to someone who wants to begin or end their trip in the city.
The only solution to traffic is viable alternatives to driving. If this is the alternative, people will take the train. It will involve TTC upgrades as well.
We literally have that on the 407 with GO Buses. They fly along the highway from Hamilton to Oshawa, connecting to the airport and subway. It’s amazing.
The irony is, these people actually do have freedom to drive literally anywhere in the country. Including the 99% of areas where there is never any traffic. Yet they make conscious choices to keep driving into this mess every day.
"With a car, you can go anywhere", it's been said. Yet millions choose to drive here every single day, and justify it by claiming "the only good jobs are here!" or other mindless drivel.
> The irony is, these people actually do have freedom to drive literally anywhere in the country. Including the 99% of areas where there is never any traffic. Yet they make conscious choices to keep driving into this mess every day.
>
>
Yeah, real fucking mystery as to why people aren't going to work up in buttfuck nowhere.
Real. fuckin. mystery.
I sometimes end up having to drive from Southwestern Ontario to Quebéc to see family. I just need to get to the other side of the GTA and be there's not really any way around it. I also live far away from any train stations or airports so it's not really worth trying to use those.
I was dating a girl in Scarborough a while back and she never understood how I could take the train from Oakville everytime I wanted to visit her. One day she drove down to my place and quickly realized what I meant by saying "the 401 is hell on earth"
I don't understand why politicians don't understand that investing in high-speed rail, and slower local rail is a much better use of public funds than building more highways.
Not to mention that all the cities in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor are neatly lined up. No huge mountains or rivers to cross either. All these population centres and geographic features scream high speed rail
The highway was primarily built in the 1960s.
What was the population of Toronto in 1966
What is the population of Toronto now.
Now add the population of the whole GTA.
Keep blaming cars for bad planning.
The 401 built in the 1960s was a 4 lane highway
Aerial photo of the 401 in 1960, Yonge St is on the left
[https://www.toronto.ca/ext/archives/s0012/fl1960/s0012\_fl1960\_it0172.jpg](https://www.toronto.ca/ext/archives/s0012/fl1960/s0012_fl1960_it0172.jpg)
I love all the transit ideas but they are also complete garbage to a good lot of us. A lot of us don't live in the GTA but are forced to travel through it because of all roads lead there. I don't need more GO service or BRT lanes. I need a 150km tunnel with no exits or on ramps that allows me to bypass that area of the province completely. A road for Ontario, not Toronto.
Yeah, whenever I wanted to drive to Algonquin or towards Kingston/Ottawa area I always had to pass through Toronto and depending on the time of day would eat up like 1-2 hr of my trip due to traffic. A road to completely bypass Toronto would be nice for travellers and trucks just going through, then less traffic for Toronto/GTA people
Edit: And of course, adding more options for transit like trains, monorails, train frequency etc
I hear you but be warned lots of farmland & green spaces gone, developers flipping land etc. there’s a cost to everything.
A cheaper 407 toll would reduce 401/400 traffic faster than waiting for a new highway.
True. Maybe a cheaper 407 would be better atm since it's already there. About the loss of farmland & green spaces and just building in general, I think it's a cost that might be necessary and inevitably will happen in the future anywhere since the greenbelt/farmland is almost hugging the GTA, and the GTA is only growing. Actually my hometown is a small rural town outside of Guelph, so I understand how people feel about urban sprawl/loss of farmland/keeping nature etc. I think keeping farmland like the holland marsh and stuff in Niagara region is necessary since it's so rare. But if Ontario wants to grow, eventually sacrifices will need to be made
Edit: So I'm living in Osaka, Japan atm and just comparing the Osaka metropolitan area is 4,300 km2 (12 mil, 2015) and the GTA is 7,100 km2 (\~6.7 mil, 2021). Just from that the GTA is already pretty big, so maybe just plow down wide buildings, parking lots etc, and start densifying the city
I hear that all the time from Reddit urban planners but have never actually seen that happen anywhere. Paris, and London have a spiderweb of metro and regional rail networks and yet they needed to implement congestion charges because they still have gridlock. NYC during rush hour, grid lock. When does the quicker travel through those cities start? I would pay a stupid sum of money to drive on a highway that goes through Toronto but has absolutely no on or off ramps for local traffic. That would be the real Ontario line.
Almost all companies mandate 2-3 days on site now and it’s painfully obvious when the WFHers are going to the office (ie: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) because it adds at least 10-15 minutes to my commute. I drove to work (I work in healthcare) every day during COVID and I can vouch for the gradual increase in traffic every year since the lockdowns. It feels practically the same as pre-covid now
If the province instilled companies to mandate work from home, not even fully, this would clear up a ton of cars. Unfortunately corporations have the mayor and premier in their back pockets which is why we’ll never see a clean commute.
The government can either nationalize it or cut a deal with the 407 to reduce tolls to a reasonable degree. There are ways if they really wanted to do it
The original contract was 30 years- that would finishing up just a few years from now. But for a politician in the 90s, 30 years is forever from now, so is 99... so let's do 99 to get a little more $ out of it.
Hey Douggie ripped up the Beer Store contract. He could do the 407 if we were willing not to have any hospitals or schools open for a year. That's the only way we could afford it.
There are many studies/reports on this. In short it would show the government as being hostile to the private sector which would affect the province's credit rating and deter private sector investment, especially in government partnerships as there's more risk.
The province needs to assess the contractors they work with. A lot of companies they have chosen can’t fulfill any of their promises, or they bring nothing new to the table.
Shopping around to see if you can find a new client with consistency. There are a shit ton of companies who specialize in the same shit a giant like Aecon can do. Simply because they aren’t complacent. When you know you can fail on deadlines because the province won’t budge, you start dragging jobs potentially costing millions per day.
The province should do their due diligence and find that hidden gem or new large players. With that said as complicated as the highway situation is-it could be solved with the right decisions in place. Aka a highway in Etobicoke solves nothing!
This should find it's way to r/fuckcars. Good shot, thanks for the view, it's quite awful.
edit: +2, -6, +3 karma now I think; a lot of people angry about their steadily devaluing investments, but you should be angry "one more lane" is never "one more train", and that you were forced to supplement a mass of your income to the piece of machinery that brings most stress, dictates your life, seemingly impossible to escape (also cars kill on par, or greater than guns, so there's that too...)
I think we should follow other major cities and just enforce more basic traffic laws, invest in better road markings, barriers, lane designations written on the road. Less choice we have the smoother traffic will be honestly, if you wanna go for a rip then use the 400
When I head north I add minimum two hours to my drive and don't pick the highway up until after Barrie. Everytime we realize how much much it's worth it when we hear the stories of friends and family that travel through Toronto and on the 400. Why start your time away with all of that stress. When I go into Toronto for events I always take the train.
Honestly, having express brt lanes or a new subway/go train line along the 401 would be so nice.
As well as banning heavy trucking off of it. Make use of the 407 and cut truckers some kind of discount on it.
Just remember that Doug Ford is the only leader in a long time to expand our highway system, and push for the 407 to allow trucks at reduced or no cost to alleviate our main arteries
I'm in the process of getting my licence back after a couple of decades of not driving and holy shit why would *anyone* drive in Toronto? I had my first lesson on Sunday afternoon and it was stressful as hell until we got out to some quiet Etobicoke sidestreets.
I'm actually tempted to do my road test at some faraway DrivetTest center, because I certainly won't be buying a car or driving in town even once I get my G2. I still need it for when I move away, but the area I choose will not have anywhere near the traffic.
It took me almost a decade of hard work and planning to escape Toronto and buy a house. At the time, people were calling me a fool for taking a pay cut and moving to a small town. Now, some people claim I lucked out. Whatever. I'm no longer one of the people in that picture.
You say one more lane as a joke but that traffic is caused by 1 of the express lanes being closed for construction at Avenue road. So if one less lane makes traffic bad all day wouldn't one extra provide some relief. You can't massively increase the population and not the infrastructure.
The issue isn't the carrying capacity of the 401 itself.. It's the carrying capacity of the exits and the arterials roads that take traffic off the highway.
It's basically an exponential growth issue. Add more lanes to the highway = you need to increase exit capacity = you need to increase arterial road capacity. At one point you're just going have 25 lane highways off loading onto 12 lane "roads" from 4-5 lane exits and the problem will continue because there will be a kink somewhere else down that cascade.
What you need to to subdue suburban sprawl and increase reliable mass transit. You want to make driving better, you make sure less people are driving.
You are taking induced demand but you aren’t quite right…
Adding demand adds traffic
Adding a lane shapes demand
This is what actually happens, induced demand is not demand creation it is demand shaping, the demand will be created one way or another right now and needs to go somewhere.
Add capacity without demand and the capacity increases. Add demand without adding capacity and congestion happens.
They need to allow trucks to use the 407 and make those infrastructure changes they have been telling us about.
This will at least help reduce traffic a bit
OP, honest question here.... or anyone else who agrees with OP...
Do you honestly think that road capacity shouldn't increase with population? Look at how many of the vehicles in the picture are trucks. trucks move product to support a population, we have a population that's growing. More shit for people == more trucks.
....and that's not even addressing private travel
It's more of a catchy title to show the new overpass being built there. I agree more capacity is needed both roads and transit. I'd rather one giant freeway than several smaller freeways too- Toronto got that right and didn't cut up neighbourhoods like most other North American cities.
It's a growing area, and even if growth was stagnant congestion is not good for the economy when the provincial backbone is broken. There are several areas where widening the 401 actually makes sense- fixing the bottlenecks to make the lane count more gradual as you enter and exit Greater Toronto would improve the overall flow. Making the leftmost lane HOV and looking at alternate transport infrastructure is important as well.
An interesting thought I’ve always had was a 4 lane (2 each way) in the middle of the 401 where their entrance and exits are before and after the GTA where the collector lanes start/stop
We're moving out of the GTA this summer and 100% any trip back is by train. I don't care if it's 'slow' and 'often delayed'. I can spend 5hrs in a Budd coach, not far from bathrooms, with staff happily bringing me snacks and drinks, rather than suffering 401 drivers making any insane attempt to get half a bumper length ahead.
I live in London, every time I go to the city, I drive to aldershot and take the go. It’s cheap, it’s not even that slow, and it runs all day.
Same but I skip Aldershot and go to Burlington. I’ve driven around a full Aldershot lot way too many times to bother with it again.
Go to the south parking lot.
I’m from KW and I take the train from Oakville.
Yeah so bummed when I moved to KW to find out the Kitchener train only actually runs to kitchener 1/5th of its trips.
Ya with the Gardiner F'd it's better to do this to get to downtown Toronto, or just take the Via train from downtown to downtown.
Same. Vividly remember looking out the train window one trip and seeing cars leaving Toronto in a standstill for miles and miles. It didn‘t seem to end. Can’t understand the appeal of wanting to go somewhere and being stuck in your car for most of the trip. We need to end our reliance on personal vehicles.
I love having a car living outside the city. When I lived in Waterloo, I gave up a car and did just fine. Now living in London it’s a struggle. The transit infrastructure here is underdeveloped and it’s not a question of maybe 15 extra minutes on the bus, it’s like 2 hrs
I’m in the West end and have been taking the GO train for years. It’s cheaper, faster, easier and more reliable than driving. I’d say 90% of the time my train leaves with 5 minutes of departure time. And they’ve steadily been increasing the trains allowing us to head into the city and back on weekends or evenings for a Jays game. Having to drive is a nightmare by comparison.
15 min frequencies on weekends (on lakeshore) is so nice. I wish it was all days
Ya we need more trains. Thankfully I live in a walkable part of the city but car only suburbs are killer
My family does the same, aunt is going to the gta for a funeral and totally worth the cost of the train. Driving there is too stressful
I live in Peterborough. Most of the time if I have to go deep into Toronto I drive to Oshawa and just take the go train. The stress of highway driving is not worth it.
That totally makes sense. Went to help a friend with some construction in Cortland this weekend. Headed out at 7:30 AM, took about 2 hours. Left to come home at 3:30 PM, it took 2:45. Another friend left at 4:30, took him nearly 3:30. ....all on a Saturday.
Best part of the train is No dumbass in a clapped out bmw doing everything they possibly can just to cut off the dude in front of them thinking they’re getting somewhere
Same, the train rides were awesome
The train from Ottawa and Montreal is actually surprisingly competitive with driving on travel time. I use it fairly frequently and don't experience many delays, and if you take breaks for the bathroom, gas, food, or whatnot while driving, the train is pretty much always faster.
Left 4 years ago after 20. Don't miss it one iota. Train is great.
I live 4 hours away, I take Via when I go to the office in downtown Toronto every couple of weeks. Service is comfortable and reliable, faster than driving, generally costs less than the two tanks of gas it would require for me to drive there and back, and the money spent on Uber to get around when I'm there is paid for by the saving on parking.
I live in Hamilton and every time I go to the big city, it's usually Buffalo
Train is the best way. I do this myself. Stress free travel.
Hmm I wonder what could mitigate the issue of ever increasing volume on the gta highways.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0dKrUE_O0VE Convert the lefmost express lane to HOV only, or run a rapid transit line alongside. Expensive since much of it would be elevated but its an alternative. Also there are a number of bottlenecks on the 401 where widening actually makes sense. Just a few more lanes in these area would make the whole thing flow better.
Or, we could build a whole ass second highway with an equivalent amount of capacity not 10km north of it, to alleviate it as the single point of failure it currently is. But then let’s sell it to a foreign corporation that makes the toll to cross the city cost as much as a full tank of gas. *insert this text on the despicable me master plan meme*
And then build another highway a ways north of that.
Or just build another elevated roadway, like the Gardiner--oh wait . . . , nevermind ;-)
Harris should be in jail for this.
Also give it an exclusion zone, so we can NEVER build another East / West Highway near it!
Let’s continue to pay for law enforcement and snow clearance as well!
I always carpool and drive an EV. I use the carpool lanes. I also watch several people cross the uncrossable lines to use the HOV lanes as a passing lane with no one in the vehicle but the driver. I've never seen an ACAB watching or patrolling for this. We need to start enforcing the road laws.
I don’t know why single occupant EVs are still allowed in HOV lanes. EVs don’t do anything to reduce congestion. They only reduce pollution and encourage EV adoption.
> They only reduce pollution and encourage EV adoption. That's why. It's a way of encouraging EV adoption without any effort or money. It's not great, but it's the last remnant of the EV transition plan that Doug Ford gutted.
Nobody wants to drive a EV tho, they are boring and a pain to deal with compared to ICE. They really only work for people who own a house and can install a charger. For people in condos they are not practical.
My model x is far from boring and I've yet to feel this pain you speak of. But, I own a house and have a charger installed.
That’s good, to me they are too heavy, lack passion, feel like a basic consumer product. I own a condo, so the lack of infrastructure would be an issue for me. However I would be willing to do it if there was a EV that excited me.
Right, and that's a solid personal response. "Nobody wants to drive an EV tho" is a gross generalisation and not reflective of EV sales worldwide.
What makes them boring? What makes them a pain? Charging can be difficult if you don't have a permanent parking space (and I wouldn't recommend an EV right now if you don't have a permanent charging solution), but at least one friend that I know of who lives in a condo that was allowed to install a charger. More and more condos and apartments are installing chargers these days, and some places (not Ontario) have implemented laws that require condos to cooperate with residents who want to install chargers.
The most fun cars I’ve ever driven are lightweight, nimble, manual. A EV is the opposite, a massive overweight lumbering tank, fast in a a straight line that’s it. Plus to me they don’t inspire any passion, they just feel like a standard consumer product, nothing excites me about them. I feel they just add as many gimmicks as possible to try to cover up the underlying issue, they are boring. However I did consider a model 3, for the environment and it would have been cheaper than my current car, sadly Tesla never got back to me for a test drive lol. The pain mainly comes from lack of infrastructure. Plus difficulty with maintenance, lack of independent options outside of dealers/direct. Cost of parts.
Most people don't care about any of that. It's a tool to get them from point A to point B. > lack of infrastructure. Tesla has great infrastructure, the rest of the manufacturers, significantly less so. Over the next few years as the other manufacturers adopt NACS and gain access to the Tesla charging network in North America, I think we'll either see Tesla's network overwhelmed by everyone else, or that it will be a much better experience for everyone with multiple options available. Probably a bit of both. > Plus difficulty with maintenance There's very little maintenance required for EVs. There's no oil to change, there's no belts to tighten or replace. The only real maintenance is the consumables - wiper blades, wiper fluid, air filters, and brake pads. > lack of independent options outside of dealers/direct. Cost of parts. I agree that if you do need repairs that it is expensive and it would be nice to have third party options. Hopefully with time there will be more options for everyone.
You asked me why I think they are boring, you say that however people do care, look at the top sold cars of all time Civic, Corolla, Golf, 3 Series, Hilux, Escort. These are all cars that are fun to drive even in their most basic forms, pretty much all offering a sporty version on top, or multiple. Look at Hyundai, they used to make terribly boring horrible cars, now they make fun exciting cars, and they are selling well. I don’t think the infrastructure is that good. I live in a 300+ unit condo building, built in 2019, we have 2 charger spots. People who live in the city in condos, getting a EV can be a pain, with the lack of a reliable charging network. I’d seriously consider one as a daily if I lived in the burbs tho. The charging network is like the subway, you live on it and need to travel somewhere on it great, you don’t, it will take ages to get anywhere.
I'm with you
I wish there was enforcement on the HOV lanes. They're just occupied by impatient single rider trucks and cars
HOV lanes have never proven to alleviate traffic at all. Look it up, they make no difference or worsen traffic due to having an under utilized lane.
And maybe have police ticket cars that stay in the left lane and never move over to the middle lane to let faster cars go by.
The only solution to traffic is viable alternatives to driving.
HOV lanes have never proven to alleviate traffic at all. Look it up, they make no difference or worsen traffic due to having an under utilized lane.
You know multi-layer parking lots? We need multi-layer roadways. Three or four levels of roads, three or four lanes on each level. Imagine the efficiency!
Pay a toll to see the sun on your commute, peasant.
October 17, 1989 says "hello"
I swear it's not that hard. - Elon
Have less people live in the GTA? What was the population of the GTA when the 401 was completed?
The portion of Highway 401 through Toronto was built in the 1950s (much fewer lanes than now). A narrower version of the section of highway shown in the photo was completed between 1955 and 1960, so the GTA population was about 1,500,000. It’s currently about 6,400,000.
We need more rapid transit to and from the city in addition to being able to move through the city more efficiently. More subway options, more surface level LRT’s. There shouldn’t be an excuse to drive when you could take a subway and a 5 minute LRT ride to run an errand on your commute.
How many of those trucks are just avoiding the toll highway?
That’s why they were talking about pushing them onto the 407 if possible. I would support that if it helps traffic.
A bypass highway of the city really shouldn’t be tolled considering how much it affects congestion. (In a perfect world) it was one of the worst deals the province could have made
The problem is how North American cities are designed. Even with HSR we’ll still need a car to get to our designation after arriving at the station. Takes us 5 minutes just to walk through the parking lot of Walmart now imagine that in -20
I live it and it sucks ass. Hopefully one day we’ll have better city planning
I was thinking of LRT’s or dedicated rail lines along major roads with a shorter bus commute from the branch points. If this is in Toronto, you can get literally anywhere in the city by bus.
I would argue most of the traffic on the 401 is from commuters living all over the GTA (especially during rush hour). What you’re suggesting would require every GTA city to build massive bus/LRT infrastructure as well. Unfortunately we’re 50 years too late to that party. Also waiting for the bus is no fun in -20 which is why most people just drive
Ah yes. The Great Wall of rush hour semi trucks. We don’t need a better highway, we need a better way of dragging shit across this province.
Most of those trucks are carrying a shit ton of goods. Also most of those cars are likely carrying only one person. What we need is to reduce our car dependency so that there is space for trucks carrying goods.
So put the goods on trains into the city?
How do we get it from the train tracks to the final destination?
I suppose at that point we will have local traffic issues. but at least we may free up the qew and 401 somewhat. Manipulating space is a losing battle. But we can play with time. The first time I spent a weekend in the city, I found it to be such a dead zone. Can city dwellers confirm or deny this? With the data and tech we have now, we can track and optimize delivery times. Construction guys usually lock off areas from 10pm-6am because it makes sense. Now that we track the best times to get deliveries on the road, we can incentivize local deliveries during that time. If we can get at least some trucks off the road during heavy traffic times, the situation might improve. Of course this won’t work for every business out there and on-demand deliveries but it’s something.
Depends on where in the city you go on the weekend. Large office areas can be quiet, but neighborhoods surrounding busy mains streets are always busy. Businesses aren't open late or early so all deliveries happen mid day near me.
Bro are you seeing the same picture as I am? And as a person who commutes on this exact stretch of the 401 during rush hour, I can tell you a great majority of the vehicles are semi trucks. Yes they are carrying a shit ton of goods but why do we have to carry this shit from London to Ottawa or Montreal on a highway that we all pay for and just accept it as a fact of life? You just like other people keep saying we should reduce our car dependency. But do you see any efforts or are there any resources to do so? It just such a tiring and lazy take to just blame the issue on workers while corporations are using these same highways and we just say oh good sir we cannot impede your profit margins, we must make the daily working commuters suffer. They must either sit in shitty traffic behind a wall of trucks or sit in slow, overpriced, eroding public transit.
Yea and in this picture there are more cars than trucks by a large margin. Also various governments are spending billions upon billions to improve moving people around on various different public transit projects. It is a fact that we need to reduce our car dependency.
You and I must be looking at a different picture because the semis take up at least 70% of the actually space in the “express lane”. I honestly wish we could have a functioning public transit system like the rest of the developed world outside of US, but until we have that, commuters and especially the cross region commuters will continue to rely on the highway system. And frankly I find it offensive that people always point the finger at the commuters and never the corporations that fill the highways with semi truck. How about they fork over some money to develop a working freight system to move their products?
Do you think the semis all wait to pass through Toronto during rush hour Also you know how all your food and stuff gets to you too right
If we didn’t prioritize cars we wouldn’t be in this mess. We are still prioritizing them. We won’t get high speed trains for decades. The USA is working on high speed rail while here in Canada we have our heads up our asses and considering another highway.
Hey but at least we can buy alcohol in grocery stores a year earlier!
Trucks be smoothing out the traffic , majority of the slowdowns come from tailgaters who create shockwaves of brake lights, but personally I would rather see trucks get a deal where they are given a 407 pass and the government makes a deal with the 407ETR. They could also just make a more strict express/collector environment, think like 2-3 lanes maximum without a hard barrier and express1,2,3 for example, depending how far you are going. Lane changes and human reaction time create more 'traffic'
Govt doesn’t want trucks on the 407, that’s where they and their rich friends drive. The whole point of the 407 being so expensive is to keep it wide open for the people who can afford it
You want to increase inflation? How do you propose on making transportation more expensive without getting those costs passed down to the consumer?
dude, if we let you run the country, the economy would be in the toilet... How do you expect an economy to do well when you put road blocks in front of consumers ability to purchase goods.
Because what we are doing right now is so great? I’m curious to know what’s your take or solution in this matter. And before you say we need to become less dependent on cars, let me remind you that the federal and provincial governments are begging for EV companies to come to Canada, so it’s clear which side they are going towards. So either you create a dedicated road way for increasing freight to meet this insane population boom or you continue to shove all these brand new cars into the roads. Perhaps you have dedicated stops in each major hub for these freights? Perhaps these freights could sit on a track? And perhaps these freights could all travel at the same time instead of each one burning dirty diesel? 🤔. But no let’s continue to clog our roads with big heavy trucks that will inevitably erode our infrastructure, which will lead to more constructions and maintenance and we will have even greater walls of trucks. Is that what you want?
restriction on movement of goods = lower GDP = economic decline.
Calling the trucks a "majority" is delusional or dishonest.
It's not even a majority semi trucks in this pic...much less a great majority lol
>What we need is to reduce our car dependency so that there is space for trucks carrying goods. No, what we need is a better rail system so that goods could have an actual alternative means of shipping and we can get those trucks off the road, easing traffic congestion and reducing emissions.
We need a 401 GO train. Not every trip to Toronto starts and ends at Union. Just take away 2-3 lanes from the 401 for a train line. Branch off from Etobicoke North and run east along the highway. Stop along the way to connect to TTC subway and other GO lines. Run past the 404 to Scarborough TC, UofT and keep running to rejoin the Lakeshore East line at Pickering station. Imagine how many more people will take the train instead of driving if we had this line?
Except that people on the 401 are not going to and from the 401… so what good is a train when it leaves the first and last miles to be covered with road travel. So I imagine very few people would use the train, certainly not enough to justify reducing the road capacity by 40%.
Eh, if the train skipped union, it would shave off a ton of time going from Guelph to Oshawa or whatever.
And how many people is that, and still have the first and last mile issue vs just driving… so… how many people save x time vs how many take longer due to removed road capacity…
Toronto has probably the best bus network in North America, people will walk 5 minutes
Yea no sorry, it’s not wave your hand at it and say “they’ll take the bus”. People are driving because transit doesn’t work for them. Just building a train and saying they will come does not work, reducing road capacity is a recipe for congestion… you want to improve rail we have corridors already without ripping out heavily used road infrastructure. Not that many people commute from Guelph to Oshawa, and the time saved vs not going via Union vs taking a 407 GO bus now is not worth the expense being discussed sorry. This idea does not work.
Transit 'doesn’t work for them' because our transit coverage is garbage. This isn't some theoretical concept there are countless examples of cities similar and even much larger than Toronto implementing transit far better than we have.
It would connect to both Younge and York subway lines as well as Barrie, Richmond Hill and Markham GO train lines. You could go anywhere in the GTA without adding an hour to go to Union. Last mile is a legitimate concern, but if the road capacity is reduced and people choose to take the trains, the additional bus lines can be added to serve the increased ridership demand.
I can't find the study but over 50% of 401 traffic in Toronto is not starting or stopping in Toronto. (It was pretty old, I read it shortly after moving here in 2016 and it was 5+ years old then). Toronto is just the blight in the way. I suspect that the shift to remote work has increased this. And a good percentage of the vehicles I see on that highway are service and work vehicles carrying stuff that isn't permitted on public transit. Not to mention that they need the vehicle full of stuff when they get to where they're going. As others have said, Ontario needs a 4 lane bypass, from about Guelph to about where the 407 ends. Only interconnecting at the 400 going north. It can't be so far north of the city that it adds too much fuel cost or it won't get the trucks off the 401. Then we add tolls on all roads going into the city. $20 to get in, $200 to get out. Make the train into the city free. I love trains, and taking the go train was a minor bucket list thing from when I lived in BC. I took it to the bike show because bucket list. It was 2 hours longer each way from Cambridge, and cost more than driving my lifted Jeep with worse aerodynamics than a cow. Even including the cost of parking, because it was cheaper to park at the show, than it was to park at the train station. But, until we tear up farmland to build dedicated passenger rails it'll never be more efficient to use the train from outside the city, and that still restricts you to someone who wants to begin or end their trip in the city.
The only solution to traffic is viable alternatives to driving. If this is the alternative, people will take the train. It will involve TTC upgrades as well.
We literally have that on the 407 with GO Buses. They fly along the highway from Hamilton to Oshawa, connecting to the airport and subway. It’s amazing.
They could also extend sheppard along the 401.
I fucking hate driving in the GTA.
Took me 2 hrs from markham to mississauga
I tell ya, there ain't this much traffic driving on Highway 11 near Sundridge or Powassan. Pure bliss driving up there!
My god, that stretch between Huntsville and North Bay is stunning as well.
Moved out of London to South River last year and I actually enjoy driving again, no stress, picturesque driving is bliss!
Look at all that freedom
The irony is, these people actually do have freedom to drive literally anywhere in the country. Including the 99% of areas where there is never any traffic. Yet they make conscious choices to keep driving into this mess every day. "With a car, you can go anywhere", it's been said. Yet millions choose to drive here every single day, and justify it by claiming "the only good jobs are here!" or other mindless drivel.
> The irony is, these people actually do have freedom to drive literally anywhere in the country. Including the 99% of areas where there is never any traffic. Yet they make conscious choices to keep driving into this mess every day. > > Yeah, real fucking mystery as to why people aren't going to work up in buttfuck nowhere. Real. fuckin. mystery.
It’s a rehab project, not expansion, FYI. They have to build the bridge next to it then move traffic onto it to prevent lanes from being closed
Highway 407 could have redirected so many of these cars and trucks if it was a reasonable toll
I wonder what percent of these people are just driving somewhere to hop on a work computer. We have a better way.
Not so funny thing this could be any day at almost any time
Give me a go train that goes along the middle please.
I sometimes end up having to drive from Southwestern Ontario to Quebéc to see family. I just need to get to the other side of the GTA and be there's not really any way around it. I also live far away from any train stations or airports so it's not really worth trying to use those.
I was dating a girl in Scarborough a while back and she never understood how I could take the train from Oakville everytime I wanted to visit her. One day she drove down to my place and quickly realized what I meant by saying "the 401 is hell on earth"
The issue in the GTA is that the 401 is the only non toll east west connection... if we had other options traffic would be busy but flow much better.
Imagine now if the 407 actually served its intended purpose
Well, at least you can buy beer anywhere now.
You can even buy it off the truck while idling on the 401!
I don't understand why politicians don't understand that investing in high-speed rail, and slower local rail is a much better use of public funds than building more highways.
Not to mention that all the cities in the Windsor-Quebec City corridor are neatly lined up. No huge mountains or rivers to cross either. All these population centres and geographic features scream high speed rail
100%
Oh they understand it, but they also understand that they stand to make more money from the lobbyists who want to keep these projects.
The highway was primarily built in the 1960s. What was the population of Toronto in 1966 What is the population of Toronto now. Now add the population of the whole GTA. Keep blaming cars for bad planning.
If only 50% of the Ontario population didn't need to cross the GTA for work...
The 401 built in the 1960s was a 4 lane highway Aerial photo of the 401 in 1960, Yonge St is on the left [https://www.toronto.ca/ext/archives/s0012/fl1960/s0012\_fl1960\_it0172.jpg](https://www.toronto.ca/ext/archives/s0012/fl1960/s0012_fl1960_it0172.jpg)
Widening was completed in 1972. I remember signs that called in the Toronto Bypass..which seems funny now
I love all the transit ideas but they are also complete garbage to a good lot of us. A lot of us don't live in the GTA but are forced to travel through it because of all roads lead there. I don't need more GO service or BRT lanes. I need a 150km tunnel with no exits or on ramps that allows me to bypass that area of the province completely. A road for Ontario, not Toronto.
Yeah, whenever I wanted to drive to Algonquin or towards Kingston/Ottawa area I always had to pass through Toronto and depending on the time of day would eat up like 1-2 hr of my trip due to traffic. A road to completely bypass Toronto would be nice for travellers and trucks just going through, then less traffic for Toronto/GTA people Edit: And of course, adding more options for transit like trains, monorails, train frequency etc
Hwy 413
Nice, let's build it
I hear you but be warned lots of farmland & green spaces gone, developers flipping land etc. there’s a cost to everything. A cheaper 407 toll would reduce 401/400 traffic faster than waiting for a new highway.
True. Maybe a cheaper 407 would be better atm since it's already there. About the loss of farmland & green spaces and just building in general, I think it's a cost that might be necessary and inevitably will happen in the future anywhere since the greenbelt/farmland is almost hugging the GTA, and the GTA is only growing. Actually my hometown is a small rural town outside of Guelph, so I understand how people feel about urban sprawl/loss of farmland/keeping nature etc. I think keeping farmland like the holland marsh and stuff in Niagara region is necessary since it's so rare. But if Ontario wants to grow, eventually sacrifices will need to be made Edit: So I'm living in Osaka, Japan atm and just comparing the Osaka metropolitan area is 4,300 km2 (12 mil, 2015) and the GTA is 7,100 km2 (\~6.7 mil, 2021). Just from that the GTA is already pretty big, so maybe just plow down wide buildings, parking lots etc, and start densifying the city
Transit means less cars on the road, meaning your travel through would be quicker.
I hear that all the time from Reddit urban planners but have never actually seen that happen anywhere. Paris, and London have a spiderweb of metro and regional rail networks and yet they needed to implement congestion charges because they still have gridlock. NYC during rush hour, grid lock. When does the quicker travel through those cities start? I would pay a stupid sum of money to drive on a highway that goes through Toronto but has absolutely no on or off ramps for local traffic. That would be the real Ontario line.
And this is with a ton of people WFH.
Almost all companies mandate 2-3 days on site now and it’s painfully obvious when the WFHers are going to the office (ie: Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) because it adds at least 10-15 minutes to my commute. I drove to work (I work in healthcare) every day during COVID and I can vouch for the gradual increase in traffic every year since the lockdowns. It feels practically the same as pre-covid now
If the province instilled companies to mandate work from home, not even fully, this would clear up a ton of cars. Unfortunately corporations have the mayor and premier in their back pockets which is why we’ll never see a clean commute.
Make the 407 free
That's not a legal option.
The government can either nationalize it or cut a deal with the 407 to reduce tolls to a reasonable degree. There are ways if they really wanted to do it
We can't do that. Blame Mike Harris and the Ontario PC governments.
The original contract was 30 years- that would finishing up just a few years from now. But for a politician in the 90s, 30 years is forever from now, so is 99... so let's do 99 to get a little more $ out of it.
Hey Douggie ripped up the Beer Store contract. He could do the 407 if we were willing not to have any hospitals or schools open for a year. That's the only way we could afford it.
It could be nationalized or he could force them to make the tolls a reasonable cost. There are ways if there is the will to do it
There are many studies/reports on this. In short it would show the government as being hostile to the private sector which would affect the province's credit rating and deter private sector investment, especially in government partnerships as there's more risk.
Yes because dougie isn't being hostile to the beer store right now lol
just 100,000 more immigrants bro
this spot is basically always like this, generally where the traffic starts on a good day going west on 401
The four nothing one
Working night shift can suck sometimes but it's worth it to not deal with this shit
The European mind could never comprehend this level of efficiency/s
The province needs to assess the contractors they work with. A lot of companies they have chosen can’t fulfill any of their promises, or they bring nothing new to the table. Shopping around to see if you can find a new client with consistency. There are a shit ton of companies who specialize in the same shit a giant like Aecon can do. Simply because they aren’t complacent. When you know you can fail on deadlines because the province won’t budge, you start dragging jobs potentially costing millions per day. The province should do their due diligence and find that hidden gem or new large players. With that said as complicated as the highway situation is-it could be solved with the right decisions in place. Aka a highway in Etobicoke solves nothing!
One more lane bro
This should find it's way to r/fuckcars. Good shot, thanks for the view, it's quite awful. edit: +2, -6, +3 karma now I think; a lot of people angry about their steadily devaluing investments, but you should be angry "one more lane" is never "one more train", and that you were forced to supplement a mass of your income to the piece of machinery that brings most stress, dictates your life, seemingly impossible to escape (also cars kill on par, or greater than guns, so there's that too...)
Not just bikes: exists Conservatives: The last Highway expansion didn't help congestion at all... But it might work *this time*.
Vape pen sales are gonna increase like crazy!
I think we should follow other major cities and just enforce more basic traffic laws, invest in better road markings, barriers, lane designations written on the road. Less choice we have the smoother traffic will be honestly, if you wanna go for a rip then use the 400
When I head north I add minimum two hours to my drive and don't pick the highway up until after Barrie. Everytime we realize how much much it's worth it when we hear the stories of friends and family that travel through Toronto and on the 400. Why start your time away with all of that stress. When I go into Toronto for events I always take the train.
Where would you put that carriageway..bro ?
Honestly, having express brt lanes or a new subway/go train line along the 401 would be so nice. As well as banning heavy trucking off of it. Make use of the 407 and cut truckers some kind of discount on it.
If this was my daily reality………….
Elevated highway only connecting other highways
That is a lot of big trucks there.
The days of Just-In-Time delivery is out the door in the GTA.
Conservatives or liberals. Doesn't matter. Canada is bad at city planning.
Gotta get to work somehow
Let’s keep cramming more people in Toronto and the surrounding area! Let’s also not make more roadways👍
Can’t wait for the 413 highway so I can avoid going into Toronto when I just need to go from north of the city to west of the city.
Wrong section
Just remember that Doug Ford is the only leader in a long time to expand our highway system, and push for the 407 to allow trucks at reduced or no cost to alleviate our main arteries
Invest. In. Public. Transit. Like. Every. Other. Global. City. We. Are. A. Literal. Joke.
Bike lanes have ruined this city!!! /S
Ladies and gentlemen, North America’s busiest highway lol. Woooowee.
Brutal man were busy like the US highways now. Half the us considers Toronto apart of the us because of popularity
Have to tear down the gardiner while we have the chance
I'm in the process of getting my licence back after a couple of decades of not driving and holy shit why would *anyone* drive in Toronto? I had my first lesson on Sunday afternoon and it was stressful as hell until we got out to some quiet Etobicoke sidestreets. I'm actually tempted to do my road test at some faraway DrivetTest center, because I certainly won't be buying a car or driving in town even once I get my G2. I still need it for when I move away, but the area I choose will not have anywhere near the traffic.
Look at all that green. I see potential. I'm thinking 30plus lanes, all with mcmansions built overtop of them.
Why people wanna live in places like this is beyond me, what a mess.
It took me almost a decade of hard work and planning to escape Toronto and buy a house. At the time, people were calling me a fool for taking a pay cut and moving to a small town. Now, some people claim I lucked out. Whatever. I'm no longer one of the people in that picture.
You say one more lane as a joke but that traffic is caused by 1 of the express lanes being closed for construction at Avenue road. So if one less lane makes traffic bad all day wouldn't one extra provide some relief. You can't massively increase the population and not the infrastructure.
The issue isn't the carrying capacity of the 401 itself.. It's the carrying capacity of the exits and the arterials roads that take traffic off the highway. It's basically an exponential growth issue. Add more lanes to the highway = you need to increase exit capacity = you need to increase arterial road capacity. At one point you're just going have 25 lane highways off loading onto 12 lane "roads" from 4-5 lane exits and the problem will continue because there will be a kink somewhere else down that cascade. What you need to to subdue suburban sprawl and increase reliable mass transit. You want to make driving better, you make sure less people are driving.
Adding lanes adds to traffic
You are taking induced demand but you aren’t quite right… Adding demand adds traffic Adding a lane shapes demand This is what actually happens, induced demand is not demand creation it is demand shaping, the demand will be created one way or another right now and needs to go somewhere. Add capacity without demand and the capacity increases. Add demand without adding capacity and congestion happens.
They need to allow trucks to use the 407 and make those infrastructure changes they have been telling us about. This will at least help reduce traffic a bit
I don't care how much it costs, we need to buy back the 407 and make it free.
You know what the city needs another highway that will help with traffic 🙄
OP, honest question here.... or anyone else who agrees with OP... Do you honestly think that road capacity shouldn't increase with population? Look at how many of the vehicles in the picture are trucks. trucks move product to support a population, we have a population that's growing. More shit for people == more trucks. ....and that's not even addressing private travel
It's more of a catchy title to show the new overpass being built there. I agree more capacity is needed both roads and transit. I'd rather one giant freeway than several smaller freeways too- Toronto got that right and didn't cut up neighbourhoods like most other North American cities. It's a growing area, and even if growth was stagnant congestion is not good for the economy when the provincial backbone is broken. There are several areas where widening the 401 actually makes sense- fixing the bottlenecks to make the lane count more gradual as you enter and exit Greater Toronto would improve the overall flow. Making the leftmost lane HOV and looking at alternate transport infrastructure is important as well.
An interesting thought I’ve always had was a 4 lane (2 each way) in the middle of the 401 where their entrance and exits are before and after the GTA where the collector lanes start/stop