I remember when I was in public school and I was out picking strawberries on a farm that was in the path of Ontario’s planned highway 400. It was many years before that highway became a reality. The point is that these highways take years of planning, design and approvals before the actual construction. And Ontario premier Doug Ford is out selling them like labels to be printed at his father’s printing plant.
And highway 413 should never happen. The reason is that the more you study highway 413, the less logic it makes. It parallels a lightly used portion of the 407 toll-road. If they stopped the tolls, the traffic would take that route. And there is absolutely no logic behind a highway from Milton on the west at highway 401 running 60 kilometres east to Vaughan and highway 400. This is just spreading urban sprawl across good Ontario farmland and critically needed wetlands.
But Doug Ford wants to look like a pro-active premier. He wants his government to run for re-election next year as a party that gets things done. He needs those votes in the urban developments around Toronto. And if you are foolish enough to buy that, you can forget the highway building until the next election cycle.
Which would be a shame. The problem is that we do need the Bradford by-pass. This is a 16.2 kilometre four-lane highway connecting highways 400 and 404 just north of the Town of Bradford. What is happening now is that the traffic that needs this piece of highway is streaming through the Town of Newmarket on three different routes including highway 9.
The province already has most of the new overpasses built, or well past the planning stage, to take the increased traffic around Lake Simcoe.
What Doug Ford’s conservatives are missing on are the plans for the electrification of the GO Trains in Ontario. This plan will speed up the commuter systems, handle more trains and get commuters to and from the major cities much faster than before. Without this better commuter system, our highways will stay clogged.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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