Leaving Highway 401 to die
There will be close to a million more people living in Toronto 30 years from now. Long before that, Highway 401 in the core of the GTA will become so packed with cars and trucks it will become almost unusable for much of the day. Competition for highway space will be brutal.
Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government has no idea how to keep traffic moving on the highway. Nor, it seems, do the Liberal, NDP or Green parties running in this Ontario 2022 general election about “affordability,” even though traffic gridlock is a huge affordability problem for the economy and ordinary people. Ontario cannot afford to let the 401 grind to a halt.
The PC government has committed to a major increase in the motor vehicle capacity of Highway 401 between highways 427 and 404 — an impossible 23kilometre dream that would require double-decking the highway, adding dozens of on- and off-ramps, and buying up uncountable private properties along the highway. It’s a 1950s-era non-solution that will make congestion worse by adding to the crush of cars on city streets. It’s a waste of money.
Unfortunately, the soon-to-be-opened Eglinton Crosstown LRT (light rail transit) won’t rescue the 401; it’s too far south to help much. The Finch West LRT will be too far from major destinations. There is a plan to extend the 5.5-kilometre Sheppard subway line by seven kilometres, but travel demand stretches across more than 70 kilometres.
Nothing will rescue Highway 401 until there is a rapid transit solution that meets the magnitude of the problem. It will cost billions, but there’s no way around it — there must be a relief line for the 401.
Here it is: a single 60-kilometre, east-west crossboundary rapid transit line through the northern half of Toronto, most of it in the Highway 401 corridor. Because tunnelling would be too expensive, this “401RT” rapid transit line and its stations can be built affordably above the highway, with diversions to key off-highway destinations such as Pearson airport and its massive employment area, Yorkdale subway station, Scarborough City Centre and Pickering Town Centre, and tunnelled to and from the nearby Sheppard subway.
The connections to other transit services would be unparalleled — the Line 1 subway at Yonge and at Yorkdale, the Scarborough subway, up to four GO Rail stations along the way, the Eglinton West LRT, the Mississauga Transitway, and more than 25 intersecting bus routes. It would also connect to an Ontario Line extended to at least Sheppard Avenue, and which will be elevated above parts of Don Mills Road.
The 401RT would not lack for ridership; 1,300,000 people live in northern Toronto and more than 300,000 jobs are near the highway, and those numbers will grow. The (pre-pandemic) 1,700,000 people in non-commercial vehicles who use the 401 between Hurontario Street and Pickering Town Centre every day include many who are fed up with the frustration and expenses of driving, and would welcome a transit alternative that would be fast and comfortable.
The decongesting effect of the 401RT would be enormous, and felt across the whole of Toronto — highways, city streets, almost everywhere. Congestion costs, counted in billions of dollars per year, would drop dramatically.
There is no technical obstacle to prevent the 401RT from being built. Steel frameworks, simple station designs, changing elevations and directions. It’s basically a matter of money, and deciding to do it. It may cost $22 billon to build, with the federal government funding one-third of that. But that’s actually cheap — it may cost the average Toronto household just 32 cents per day for Ontario’s share, once the 401RT becomes fully operational years from now. It’s so affordable that it’s unaffordable not to do.
The bottom line is that without a 401RT, Highway 401 dies of strangulation in 15 or 20 years. Unfortunately, Ontario parties seem to be willing to let that happen. JOHN STILLICH IS A FORMER MINISTRY CORPORATE FINANCIAL ANALYST AT QUEEN’S PARK. HE CURRENTLY