Collision sparks conversation on safety

The conversation about safety on Highway 401 through Eastern Ontario has intensified following Monday’s tour bus crash near Prescott.

Truck and bus drivers who frequent the 401 said they’d welcome a lane addition in this and other areas of the highway, citing congestion issues.

Robert Perry, a transport truck driver whose main run is between Toronto and Montreal, said he agrees “110 per cent” with Prescott Mayor Brett Todd’s call for a third lane on the 401 in both directions between the Highway 416 and Brockville junctions, as there is in Kingston and Belleville.

Todd reiterated his concerns about the “dangerous corridor” after Monday ’s crash, which claimed the life of one passenger and injured dozens more, some critically.

Late last year, Prescott council endorsed a motion penned by four Progressive Conservative MPPs, urging the government to plan for the 401’s expansion to six lanes through Eastern Ontario. Brockville council followed suit in January. The motion pointed to a dozen fatal crashes on the stretch of highway between Cornwall and Trenton since May 2017.

Marc Laplante, owner of 417 Bus Line, and Edward Mayhew, owner of M E Trucking, both said they don’t consider the Brockville to the 416 section more dangerous than the rest of the 401, based on their experience driving it. They agreed the amount of traffic on the road means an expansion to three lanes would be a welcome addition in the area, but it’s not an isolated problem.

“With the amount of vehicles out here … it does need to be widened” — all the way from Quebec to Windsor, Mayhew said. He’s spent more than 40 years driving his truck along the 401. “But like most governments, they’re sitting on their hands. They should have seen it coming.”

“Less volume per lane, less accidents,” Laplante said.

SERIOUS ACCIDENTS

This section of the highway has seen a number of serious incidents recently. Last month, two transport trucks and a tanker collided, killing one driver. Two people were killed and four injured in a multivehicle November crash.

On Monday, a busload of Chinese tourists travelling westbound from Ottawa to Toronto veered off the 401 and into a rock cut for reasons currently unknown.

But Ata Khan, a transportation engineering professor at Carleton University, said he believes this most recent incident was not attributable to traffic issues, and utilizing it to justify a call for additional highway lanes in the area would likely be a spurious conflation.

“This particular accident, it could happen anywhere,” he said of Monday’s bus crash. “Two lanes in one direction, three lanes in one direction, it’s immaterial because the bus was driving and it left the road, hit the rocks.

“I don’t see how the question of traffic might be a factor.”

That’s not to say this area of the 401 isn’t struggling to safely manage traffic volumes at its current capacity, Khan said. On the contrary, he thinks it’s worth a closer look by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario, which he said has the ability to analyze the circumstances that make lane expansion a good idea.

But evidence-based decisionmaking is critical, in Khan’s eyes. “I think feasibility is something that is important, because money is limited and maybe there are other places where one can improve the road and get better results in terms of benefits and costs.”

In Eastern Ontario, there are

approximately 330 kilometres of four-lane 401, according to MTO spokeswoman Brandy Duhaime.

“For the section from Belleville to the Quebec border, bridges are being replaced as required to accommodate a six-lane configuration in the future,” she wrote in an email Wednesday.

Duhaime said traffic volumes are heaviest near Port Hope and Kingston, and decrease significantly east of the 416.