Premier Doug Ford of Ontario thinks our federal environment minister is an extremist. Last month he was ranting and raving about federal politicians who seemed negative towards his proposed Highway 413. It does seem unfair that after the Greenbelt fiasco, that some of his best friends are going to also lose their investments in land around the unneeded Highway 413.
Mr. Ford’s problem might be that he does not seem to be superstitious. He might never have noticed that there is no Highway 13 in Ontario. The 400 series of highways are always named after the former two or four-lane highway they supplement or replace. The only nearby highways to which Highway 413 would compete with for traffic are Highway 407, the toll road which is under utilized because of its high tolls, and further south again, Highway 401, which is heavily used because truckers cannot afford the Highway 407 tolls.
But when you consider that Highway 407 was initially designed as the Toronto bypass to take pressure off Highway 401, you realize how stupid it was for the former Harris conservative government in Ontario to sell off the highway for a toll road. Instead of taking the trucks off the Toronto section of Highway 401, it is now forcing trucks to use the 401.
The proposed new highway, now called Highway 413, was originally suggested as the GTA West Project and was only in case of a major increase in development in the Georgetown and Halton Hills area of the province. It might have a use if it did not run from a very high traffic location on Highway 400 on the East, just 52 kilometres west to another traffic problem where Hwy 407 joins Hwy 401 traffic, and where the volume of traffic could produce traffic jams of monumental proportions.
Doug Ford complains that the federal environment minister is deliberately trying to delay his Highway 413. He might be right. While the Supreme Court has ruled that the federal government had “overstepped” its constitutional authority in demanding an impact assessment of the highway project, the federal government is studying how to make the study acceptable to the court.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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