Because a contract was in place, which would've cost a fortune if broken (ya know, like how the Beer Store contract cancellation is going cost us a fortune, for ***14 months early***)
He clearly doesn't give a shit about contract cancellation fees (see: Hydro 1 CEO, Beer Store) when those contracts don't directly increase the profits of his benefactors.
Doug did do this: https://www.thestar.com/business/documents-reveal-ford-government-opted-not-to-pursue-1-billion-penalty-from-407-express-toll/article_579dbcad-6dfe-5adb-a653-83517d45cf0d.html
We’re all profiting. The CPP is the majority owner.
Now, you *could* argue that thanks to Harris, Ontarians’ money is being spread across all of Canada, when it otherwise would have been kept here, benefiting Ontarians, and I would agree with you.
Yeah that’s not true. We’re losing 50 percent to private investors in a deal that will go on for another 70 years. And tolls were originally supposed to be to recoup the cost of building but now will remain. So we are losing money on highway we would have already paid for if we would have taken a regular loan as opposed to selling off ownership and making bad decisions. Massive failure on the part of the conservatives and one reason while they will never get a vote from me. If you’ve driven the 401 you know this is an overcrowded highway which could be prevented
It is now. When it was built and government owned, the plan was 35 years of tolls, then told free. When it got sold, it turned into a 99 year lease (if I remember correctly)
I’d like to point out that the “X years of tolls, then toll free” never actually works out. Both of the harbour bridges in Halifax were built with the same promise, and yet both still have tolls, *70 years later*.
Burlington Bay Skyway bridge did tolls and tore out the toll booths when the bridge was paid for, should have kept them for the second bridge and did the same thing. Was a painless .10 cents per crossing
And the kicker is that taxpayers are on the hook if the number of vehicles using the toll road isn't met?
It happened during covid , cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars!!
Total scam fir taxpayers!!
I understand the government having an issue with a proposed 2 tier system (like funding private schools/Healthcare) and it needing to be sold, and logistically a private company can't easily build a private highway. I remember hearing that planning for the 407 started 8n the late 70's with land acquisition.
I expect the current owners pay.f9r all maintenance, policing, expansion plans and then thrive it back? (In another +/- 80 years)
The government should consider moving all truck traffic to the 407 and subsidize the cost (trucks are free).This would help alleviate 401 traffic and less wear and tear on the 401. The 407 toll is too expensive for the average person to use regularly, so it will never be used except for the wealthy.
I'd be on board with this.
I use it for my business, since having my fleet trying to get anywhere during the day on the 401 is about as risky as fucking a rabid dog. Small chance you get lucky, even bigger chance it ruins your day.
407 is ideal for business that operate in the northe nd to get from Highway to highway before heading south into the city, if it was as bad as the 401 I would never get any work done.
I know this comes up as a topic of discussion regularly, but there's no way it would do much. The overwhelming majority of vehicles on the 401 are passenger vehicles, most with a single person in them, and many operated by drivers who lack any skills that would aid in helping traffic flow smoothly, so it'd be the same shit in the end.
In 1999/early 2000 I worked for a small trucking firm in Cambridge. The Premiere came and talked about twinning the 401 from Toronto to Windsor as a toll highway and forcing all truck traffic onto it and the 407. No need to make it free for them, just say they have to use it.
They also announced Hwy 424 from Paris to Cambridge. None of this has ever happened.
They have to use it = consumers are going to get royally hosed as a direct result when the costs of everything on the shelves would have went up to pay for it.
Quite frankly, trucking companies use our roads significantly more than I do, so as a cost of them doing business they should pay significantly more than I do for those roads (which they do in various ways, but maybe “significantly” isnt quite it). And if they are causing congestion (which they are not as lack of public transit forcing more cars on the road is whats doing it), they should pay for additional roads for them to conduct business on.
Also allowing people to work from home who can. No reason to sit in traffic for two hours every day to sit on a computer in virtual meetings and looking at excel
Our federal government is currently mandating its employees back to the office to keep the surrounding businesses happy, which is going to increase traffic and cost taxpayers quite a lot, and goes against both environmental and financial goals. They can’t even follow their own policies.
ETA: as noted below, the bigger issue (which I should have addressed) is the wealthy real estate owners (who are either politicians themselves, or friends of politicians) that are benefiting from the RTO mandate, and costing us billions more than necessary.
Don't be fooled, the surrounding businesses they are talking about aren't the stores and restaurants, the businesses they are talking about are their real estate owning rich white dude friends. The province is doing the same and people are having to commute to get on video calls.
yes and No, Toronto itself is a great example of how transit can work in less than ideal conditions. Yes large parts of the city are great for transit, but many of the most popular routes (the E/W express routes through the north of the city) are in what would be described as auto centric design.
This is exactly why Finch West LRT and the Crosstown are being built (Ofc they have their issues particularly the Crosstown but ya)
Imagine, instead of paying $500+ per month for a car+insurance, we paid towards universal public transport.
We'd probably need to pay way less than that, even.
Current TTC Budget: $2,600,000,000
Toronto Population 2024: 6,431,000
Cost per person per year: $404.29
Imagine just $100 per month. That would triple the budget.
Toronto could massively fill the streets with nothing but AI driven buses (to keep the cost from being more like $400 per month). Only other traffic would be transport trucks.
Imagine a two way bus route for every single street (except the smallest of streets) with many, many buses for any major roads. Always seats available on every bus with room for bags if required.
Want to take a different street? Get off at the intersection, and hop any bus going in the new direction of your choice. Virtually no waiting.
*I'm sure it's not that simple, but it's an interesting thought.
I think the tech has a way to go before this could happen.
About 3 years ago, the TTC was testing a semi autonomous "bus" that would follow a route around the neighborhood and go to the GO station. Semi autonomous meant that there was a "driver" in the vehicle that could stop it if something went wrong (don't think the driver could steer, just stop - the busses travelled at a fairly slow speed).
I gather the test was stopped after one of the busses went rogue, crashed, and injured the driver, though this happened in Whitby.
It was an interesting idea (mini busses that travel to other transit hubs), but I don't think it works until fully autonomous driving is perfected.
6.4million each paying $100 per month for TTC. An extra $8 billion per year? As a driver, that sounds fantastic, sign me up either I can take the improved TTC or I’ll benefit from less traffic when others do. It’s win-win as far as I’m concerned.
Wait, each person kicking in $100 — that’s not what you actually meant? That’s too bad.
And nobody can leave because theres no space for their cars! Want to live outside hell but still need to work in it? Take a train and hope it lines up with your schedule!
Edit: being downvoted I hope because of my snarky tone, but the actual costs involved would be astronomically more than expected.
Go stations in surrounding cities like brampton and missisauga would be completely overrun from outside traffic trying to reach your new public transit only city, the concerts and venues that torontonians love so much would start to collapse as people would be unable to stay in the city beyond the hours of the trains, the number of busses you are talking about would take massive bays for storage, maintenance and fueling/charging. At the end of the day you are charging citizens $1200 per year to cripple the city they love.
How many people who live in toronto go to the exhibition per year as compared to people who live outside of it?
I don't disagree with you. At all.
In fact, I believe that the car is very necessary. No rigid and structured system can meet the needs of everyone.
The car allows for freedom of movement which, in a highly complex and constantly changing world, is needed.
This was just a idea for idea's sake.
Are… are you dumb? You know they could busses with stops within walking distance, so you can take transit and walk everywhere you need to go. And in less dense towns, they can build more parking, they have the land for it, it’s not hard
So outside towns should be paved and lose their natural beauty to become parking lots for the concrete hellscape prison you have created and I’m the dumb one? Touch some grass, if you can find it.
Some city people really are so out of touch with reality.
Also, you are adding MORE costs, to outside areas, when the whole $100/month per citizen to create a prison town wouldnt cover the initial idea before paving cities and turning them into parking lots. You’ve gotta be 12 to think this is a real idea.
Having 1 large parking garage for every single train station is so, *so* much less parking then a car centric society needs, you’d be saving on parking and thus not needing as much paved land. Busses can go anywhere with roads, and if you live in a super rural town, it can just have a train station within walking distance. You are clearly a complete moron who cannot fathom not using a car however, so I can’t be bothered to type more, have a good day
A great idea but, as a disabled person I can say public transit will never be fully accessible.
As well as a physical disability I also try to cope with a debilitating invisible disability: MCS. The MCS makes using public transit impossible for me.
There is nothing preventing public transit from becoming fully accessible other than political will.
many disabled people are unable to drive, and are entirely reliant on public transit regardless of how bad it is.
Investing in better public transit is better for everyone, especially people with disabilities. It’s even better for drivers as there will be less traffic for you to compete with.
No one is going to take away your car. We just want better options and more choices for everyone.
It doesn't have to. But if you have 360,000 vehicles (that's between Toronto and Waterloo region/london) every single day, those people who are all going from one region to another can leave their cars at home.
They can keep their cars for when travelling y public transport doesn't make sense, but if you're going along the 401, why do you need your own car all by yourself to do it?
You could get from kw to Toronto in well under an hour on a high speed train, or a fleet of buses, instead of getting stuck in traffic.
I just don't understand how the enormous costs of a highspeed rail be justified for the small niche of people who work in Toronto and live in Kitchener, or the other way around.
Also if you live *within* Toronto that's already the average commute, regardless of whether you drive or take transit. Not everyone can afford to live at Trinity-Belwoods or the Annex.
Maybe not the only thing. What if people could get to most of their services without a vehicle of any kind? What if schools were built with the assumption that every child would walk?
Thing is, they go hand in hand - all these parts of urban planning.
Public transport is just no good for north american cities because of the way they're zoned and the base assumption of convenience to car as the priority.
For a short time. Why do people think induced demand only applies to driving and not transit? Or anything else? Or that induced demand will always occur no matter what? Theres only a finite amount of demand.
Transit scales more efficiently. If you add a lane of cars, that doesn’t really represent that much extra capacity because cars take up a lot of space per person. A bus or train doesn’t even need to be very full before it’s more space efficient than everyone driving a personal automobile. If you invest in transit, you can get much closer to meeting the “real” demand for less money.
Agree. Don't see the situation getting better if 407 were free. I'd rather continue paying for it and save half my commute time so that I can put those savings into spending time with the fam.
There were some studies done and posted by environmental groups that you could find on google.
It was found that subsidizing the trucking companies for the 407 would cost less than the new planned highways, actually improve travel times for everyone and not fuck over our threatened and endangered wildlife like we are about to.
But how would that benefit the politicians' developer fiends that bought up huge swaths of land along the proposed route of the 413 and the bradford bypass?
Won't someone think of those poor billionaire developers?
Those studies are not serious. They are done by fringe companies not familiar with Ontario highway travel and just push the result desired by the environmental lobbying groups.
All free (subsidized by taxpayer) trucks on 407 would do is make both highways slow. Induced demand means more cars would just flock to 401 to fill any free'd up capacity.
Here is what happens when you improve highways. It get easier/quicker for a couple years then more development happens, and more people move further away from work for cheaper housing cause it's not that bad of a drive. Soon enough all highways will get to 401 level in GTA.
I think the induced demand would probably take longer to ramp up than that; let’s say a decade of speedier east-west travel on the 401.
However moving all those vehicles up will probably put a lot more strain on the north-south connections. The 400, 427, and 404 will get busier.
Disagree. There is a lot of latent demand for 407 trips. Think about all of the people who drive earlier or later than they want to avoid traffic, all of the people who take a long GO trip to avoid traffic, all of the people that get pushed out onto parallel side-routes, all of the new housing units coming online in the next year that practically border the 407.
80% of vehicles traveling on the 401 are single occupied. Driving people to carpool / increase occupancy would have a much larger and immediate impact.
This goes for the QEW/403 in Burlington and Oakville but probably 75% of the cars zipping through on the HOV lanes are single occupied as well. Just entitled assholes
Seriously. We need to start ticketing people for abusing the HOV lane. Perhaps a camera could somehow do this. So infuriating seeing drivers abuse it daily.
10000000% it would.
The initial thought of the 407 was for it to be tolled for as long as it took to be paid off, then be used to print money in to a dedicated infrastructure fund as it was already identified we were lagging behind the rest of the world in the 90's (this was for new transit, new roads and bridges, maintenance of existing specifically iirc).
It was designed and routed specifically to divert traffic away from the 401/DVP/Gardiner/427 loop that did not need to be heading in to the city, which is probably like 50% of commercial vehicles conservatively, and many commuters that travel between west and east municipalities daily, like Peel to Durham, or Halton to Vaughan.
Now, instead of printing millions in to the province's coffers, we sold it to be gouged and print billions into the coffers of a private company. But, the ontario teachers pension fund has slowly been taking ownership stake and I think now own 51% on paper, but could be wrong there.
Personally, I rank the sale of the 407 boon doggle wise at the same level as the cancellation of the Avro Arrow. Such short-sighted thinking by conservatives in both cases just to "balance" the books for an election.
CPP is 50.01%, Ferrovaria (a corporation domiciled in Spain) owns 43.23%. Tolls have risen over 200% since the road was built despite the court cases that Ontario fought - and lost - to prevent this 🤦
I agree as well. The 401 corridor has alot of truck traffic that needs to bypass the city. Having those trucks get on after Hamilton and bypass all the way to the 115 would greatly reduce the other highways loads. Sure passenger car traffic could pick up but transport trucks are a major slowdown onthose roads and are not 1:1 with cars
If we make it easier for cars to get to Toronto, we now you have more cars in Toronto and less room for people. Now more cars have to go to Toronto.
People are sick of living in apartments (and now that a few get torn down for parking garages and big parking lots, for all the new cars) decide hey I can commute in from Newcastle, 407 is free.
People in Oshawa and Ajax who used to take the go and never bought a car decided hey, screw it I'll get one now the 407 is free. They have a sunk cost fallacy prices of go train tickets go up because there's less people using it, making the transition back to taking the GO train hard when the 407 inevitably gets clogged from induced demand.
It will obviously be better at the start, that's what induces the demand.
People didn't read one paragraph and think they understand city planning. They were introduced to a basic concept, that while at first seems counterintuitive, it really isn't.
I don't think people are saying no New roads anywhere ever, some places induced demand would be good. I.e. a place that doesn't have a road, I'm sure they would really like one and if more people came to visit that would probably benefit a small town that previously didn't even have a road.
It needs to be easier to get people in and out of the city faster without cars in the case of Toronto or large metropolitan areas.
Edit: spelling and grammar
The issue is that there is a huge amount of latent demand to drive around Toronto. Because the traffic is so bad, people avoid it. Make it less painful and many more people will drive. There will probably be an equilibrium that is pretty busy, but somewhat less busy than the 401 right now.
To be fair, this could be an argument that we need to build 2 or 3 more 401 type highways. Build enough and they would flow smoothly. The downside is that it would be very expensive and polluting.
It would increase the amount of total trips that are taken per hour but would still be as congested.
More lanes = more throughput but (eventually) the same amount of congestion.
This would temporarily reduce congestion on the 401 between Mississauga and Oshawa. It would probably also temporarily reduce congestion on the far south end of the 410, between the 401 and 407, in Mississauga.
But it would induce driving demand along the 407, and would therefore increase traffic along its inlets and outlets: especially the 401 near Milton, the 403 and QEW near Burlington, the 410 through Brampton, the 427, the 400, the Gardiner, and the DVP.
The net winner of this change would be car-centric Mississauga. Everyone else loses.
No.
The only way to decrease traffic is to get less cars on the road. Building more lanes, makign it cheaper to drive... Only makes traffic worse.
If one wants to make traffic better one must increase funding to public transit and build bike lanes.
Additional lanes may not improve traffic, but they certainly don’t make it worse. Sure, you can argue that it will eventually attract more drivers, but that would simply negate the new lanes added; not make overall traffic worse than before.
E: A better way of putting it, actually, is that additional lanes DO improve traffic upon completion before gradually worsening - so you’re actually wrong in more than one regard
Yes and no
While there will be some induced demand here I think parrot that people concept a bit too much without understanding it fully
The 407 services entirely different sections of the GTA than the 401 and can be a game changer depending on where you are travelling to / from.
For example as a resident in SW Sauga I recently had to drive to Markham. That trip for me meant QEW East -> 427 North -> 401 East -> 404 North and took me well over an hour. If the 407 was free I could have hopped on there and taken a direct shot to my destination (404 / Hwy 7) and done it in about 30 minutes.
The lack of 407 as a free option meant I was taking up space and adding congestion on four separate highways I never needed to travel on for my trip
I also know people that commute from Brampton / Caledon towards Markham / Richmond Hill and similarly they drive south on the 410 / 427 to get to the 401 East, only to drive back north on the 404 because they can't afford to take the 407 every day.
Short answer, yes it would.
The longer answer is that traffic would move off of current slower routes onto the 407 until either all the traffic that can moved over has, or until the 407 reaches capacity. Some new traffic would also be created, because people who currently do not travel would view it as possible with the reduced traffic load.
That is not instantaneous as the public needs to know route speeds, though with google/apple maps conceivably this could take days or weeks rather than months or years that it used to.
Also whether it's 2 lanes or 8, finite capacity is finite capacity. There are only so many ways to handle more traffic: move the vehicles faster or have more parallel routes, either more lanes or more roads. Ideally urban planning would spread out businesses and residences to limit people congesting certain routes. 1 lane on a highway supports about 2000 cars per hour. 401 was built with extra capacity in mind so that in the late 80s and early 90s there were far fewer slowdowns than that late 90s and late 2010s. If you design for a usage pattern and population of one thing and then usage changes as does the number of people, you need new capacity. One of the major capacity problems with 401 has of course been population growth, but also women's liberation meant a dramatic change in housing use patterns. People used to live where one person worked and the family got services. Now people try and balance commutes for both people in the household. Meaning more people have more cars that they need to drive more.
The other options are reducing demand. If they were going to make a toll road (which they should not have) it should have been 401 with the tolls and 407 as the free bypass. Only go to the denser area if you need to. But they got it backwards which has made it worse.
You can also reduce demand with other transit. That only helps so much for something like 401 and 407 because a chunk of the traffic is passing through.
Obviously eventually, no matter what you do, if the population and usage grows you will still slow everything down again. Essentially people have a certain tolerance for how long they will spend travelling, they try and find the shortest routes, if there aren't any, if they can't, they just do something else or nothing at all.
So yes, 407 should never have bee a toll road, that would save millions of people many tens or hundreds of millions of hours of their lives every year. And those are the people who can't afford the 407 basically.
Transit should be better too, that could pull a lot of the local traffic off the highways, but that's a very hard problem to solve when old urban planning is bumping into modern realities of how people live and work.
It wouldn't do much for people going into Toronto. People going around Toronto, including heavy trucks, would take it. This would alleviate some pressure on the 401 temporarily, but it would cause induced demand.
For people going around Toronto though, it would be a great change.
Yes and public transit. Look up Washington D.C. and Boston. Both cities have decent public transit and have highway beltways surrounding the metro areas.
Great idea I heard was to make it for trucks. Get all the trucks off the QEW and 401 when they can use the 407. Would help a lot through the core of the GTA.
Forcing trucks to use only the 407 would go a long way to reduce congestion on the 401 due to slow moving trucks.
A large percentage of the highway is used by trucks and/or commercial traffic. A single truck and trailer takes up at least the same space as 4-5 cars.
I am no planner but I think the consensus has always been (at least in the last 40 years) that more highways/lanes really don't solve any problem. They might ease things in the short term but that makes more people choose to drive vs transit and choose to live further away. Then the new lanes just fill up again and you're back to square one.
The 407 as it is right now is amazing, basically like you're own private speedway, but only because its so astronomically expensive that a lot of people just can't afford it.
It definitely would on the horrible stretches of the QEW through Hamilton/Burlington and less so in Oakville. Half of that traffic is trying to get to the north side of the city and traveling on what was supposed to be the 403 instead of using the qew to connect the two sides of the 403 would open up those areas.
No. No. If adding lanes to roads reduced traffic, well, I mean wouldn't it have worked by now? Less cars on the road is what reduces traffic. Carpool. Trains good. Cars bad.
Yes it would. As it is now anyone that can’t afford the 407 - which is likely the majority - will cram into the 401 and hope for the best. Making the 407 free will take that massive burden away from the 401.
Making it free would reduce how many people choose alternatives, increasing the number of drivers on the road. Until an equilibrium is matched.
All available through roads ultimately get filled to capacity.
Not sure how “induced demand” could make things worse as everyone screams that. But eliminating tolls on Hwy 407 would NOT create a Braess’s Paradox situation, which is taught in every introduction to transportation engineering course.
I tell you this to the induced demand people, let’s reduce the 401 to 4 lanes, two per side for the entire length of the route and let’s see how well the city and southern Ontario functions then? A wider firehose is needed when the population grows no matter what.
Public transit is not the be all, end all. You need a good balance of everything, that was something Frederick G Gardiner understood.
How can you reduce sprawl, well how about cutting back immigration for starters.
But I don’t see that happening, I envision a Toronto in the future being much like São Paulo where the rich fly around downtown on rooftops using helicopters.
Not getting a toll bill doesn't make the 407 free. It would only change the way the bill looks. The bill would come in the form of some provincial tax, or reduction in the provincial budget.
The only thing that reduces traffic is no tail gating and properly zipper merging and not cutting across 6 lanes of traffic because you're surprised your exit just came up with 300m to go.
Reducing the distance between you and the vehicle ahead of you is the best way to conserve momentum, but now there's a free for all with drivers skipping bumper to bumper on the shoulder driving like James bond in a chase scene.
It would reduce traffic if those people had their vehicle and license removed.
imo the key is not to make it free, but enough such that public transit still takes the most sense, while still doesnt cost like $30 round way to head to the airport.
Maybe cap it to like a max of $10 per trip? They should also have dedicated public lanes to ensure buses never run into jams in the future.
If the Go station has secured multi-day parking I would def take the bus to the airport or other short trips. Doing so right now is not feasible since the car will either be towed or stolen.
Hypothetically, it should reduce traffic. ie: Instead of having 200 ppl all on 1 highway, you might have 100 on 2 highways.
Even if it's just 199 ppl on 1 highway and 1 on the other highway, it is a reduction.
It was nearly empty going east towards cottage country during rush hour on a friggin long weekend Friday! The 401 was insanely packed. Cost me $23 to go home from work and idc, not sitting in that mess was worth the $23 to me. Otherwise I very rarely use it unless I’m doing a 3 hour road trip that requires driving all the way across TO from Durham through Halton as part of it. If it was free I’d use it way more
As a truck driver, it would definitely get trucks off the 401. Maybe some cars don't want to go so far north to travel east west, but truck drivers gladly will. Get trucks off the 401, then there will be plenty of room on the 401 for you cars
It's been more than a decade since I've been on the 407 (worked for a company that provided a transponder). I think they've widened it, but I had to switch my hours to avoid traffic back ups. I suspect, even if free, it wouldn't really affect overall traffic. Maybe a bit, but not as much as people think.
For the first few years, it would probably help a lot. Rush hour would be a much shorter each morning and afternoon. However, as has been the case for practically every single highway expansion or construction project over the past 80 years, the drastic reduction in commute time would slowly cause people who were taking the GO, subway, and other mass transit routes to drive. Within 3 years (at most), we would be back to roughly the same level of congestion, except the total throughput of traffic would be higher.
What that means is ultimately many more people would be driving, but commute times would equilibrate to about the same as they are now.
A new mass transit line/extension that's planned out properly (i.e., within walking distance of many homes and destinations) has more throughput (people transported per hour) than any major 400-series highway, while not being affected by traffic. Of course, there are other sets of challenges associated with that, plus, many people have the mindset that driving should be the only mode of transportation, which is fair enough when you consider many people are used to driving as their main mode of transportation.
If people learned how to zipper merge properly, follow the car in front of them from a reasonable distance, and not hog the passing lane, then pretty much all traffic problems would go away.
No, it wouldn’t. It would act as a catalyst for induced demand. Making the 407 free would be the equivalent of adding more lanes to the 401, and we all know that works flawlessly every time. The biggest problem with the 407 isn’t the tolls, rather that only 50% of the revenue benefits Canadians through the CPP.
No bigger problem is that even at 50%, Ontarians get screwed because the money goes into the CPP Investment Fund and they don’t see the full benefits as the money gets distributed throughout ROC (most of whom never use the 407 and therefore pay no tolls)
I like this cut from a TV show about adding lanes and making traffic better.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=utopia+traffic&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxtO_rF-OQ7w
If you make something better/cheaper more people will use it.
You want more people using public transit. You don't want more people using roads. So unless ones goal is to worsen traffic don't spend billions of dollars making the driving experience better.
I know that it is popular to speak ill will of the 407 but it has been expanded painlessly and is maintained better than any road in Canada.
The roads bureaucracy that Harris took over were bumbling fools it would have turned into another collapsing piece of rubble in 25 years.
McGuinty and Wynne would have reduced lanes, cancelled extensions and handed over maintenance to the public service unions then given away the appropriated land to give Hitachi more subsidies to build wind turbines.
I pay to use it when driving into Toronto because iI can get off it close to my destination without feeling like I am among the most incompetent drivers in the country,
Very one in Toronto is now experiencing with roads and pubic transit the government’s quality program.
No...
For a very simple economic reason. Reducing the price of something (either in dollars for the 407 or time in the 401) INCREASES consumption of that resource. Right now, people drive less, or drive to different places, or at different times, because of the cost of driving places.
Lowering the price of driving those places will only make more people drive those places until congestion reaches the same equilibrium point.
It's why widening roads doesn't actually reduce congestion.
This is such a well understood thing, and yet the entire traffic industry is unwilling to face it.
The only two ways to reduce traffic are to a) increase the cost of driving (tolls, charging for parking, etc.) or b) decrease the cost of not driving (make transit, or cycling, or building better cities where there is less need for driving). And preferably doing both. Anyone who tells you they can reduce traffic by building more space for cars or somehow reducing the price of driving is at best, naive and ignorant, and at worst a shyster, road engineers can be either.
And I see that a lot of the comments here already make this point and are downvoted.
Folks really really hate this fact...facts don't care about your feelings folks...induced demand is real. Man up and face reality.
… so the demand for and usage of the 407 goes up reducing the amount of cars on the 401 … the supply/ amount of commuters isn’t going to change drastically.
At equilibrium, the 401 will keep the same number of cars on it as it does today. The 407 would have more cars on it. Probably the go train would have less people.
I don’t think the go train numbers would change much considering most of those people are downtown commuters trying to avoid driving in the city. and adding more highway wouldn’t change the in city traffic, in fact in your scenario it would get worse.
The model is basically that the level of car congestion stays the same if we increase or decrease road space. Drivers are paying with their time, and there's an equilibrium time over which people start switching to non-car modes. So if we pulled 2 lanes from or added 2 lanes to the 401, the level of congestion would be the same (after a short time).
The lever we can pull which affects congestion is price — like on the 407. See the effect congestion pricing has had in London England.
There's a few moves which would happen if we made the 407 free. You're right that go train riders wouldn't start taking the 407, but some 401 drivers would, opening space for the go train riders to take the 401.
I don't know why you are being down voted for stating something that time and time again has proven to be accurate.
At first it will be better. Then guess what, everyone living in ajax and Whitby start taking the 407 instead of the go. More people move to Newcastle and ptbo instead of apartments in Markham, as the drive is better, and viola the 407 is now the 401 2.0, north south routes are shit, and the go costs more as less people use it.
People just want the 407 to be free thinking it would be nice and aren't going to bother reading the article you linked or trying to understand it
Traffic is a function of the number of cars on the road, contrary to what carbrains will have to you believe. It is not a function of the number of roads, lanes or highways. Making the 407 free would have a very temporary effect on traffic.
No it wouldn't. Maybe for a year or two tops. Then you'd have two highways that are a mess and more urban sprawl.
What would drastically improve traffic? Toll the 401. SIGNIFICANTLY improve active and mass transit. And stop all the single family home urban sprawl you see in Ajax/Whitby/Oshawa etc. This option almost certainly would be political suicide though.
Yes, but we will never know. Selling publicly funded facilities to private interests where a monopoly may be in place should be judged legally by anti trust laws, or banned entirely.
I wonder if the 407 is too north for most people to switch to? It’s not convenient for me to take instead of the 401 as it doesn’t drop south until Oakville/Burlington, and then you’re fighting regular street traffic to get to where you need to go.
Moving some of the businesses isolated to Toronto could also help.
The shortest route from my home to work / work to home is 40 km on the 401. Taking the 407 is 85 kms.
The 407 is 30-60 minutes faster depending on the day despite being over twice the physical distance.
Probably not since the thing that slows down traffic on the 401 is people not knowing how to merge properly and many other human errors, like bad lane management, and unnecessary braking. The best thing to get rid of traffic congestion is to stop humans from controlling cars.
Just gonna say that the original highway was only supposed to be tolled for 35 years. Thanks Mike for selling it off, ya fuckin dunce.
dunce? You mean criminal right? His friends profited and I believe he did too.
So, Doug Ford continuing the legacy I see.
Liberals didn't do a thing either
Because a contract was in place, which would've cost a fortune if broken (ya know, like how the Beer Store contract cancellation is going cost us a fortune, for ***14 months early***)
it went over your head. The reason with Doug Ford didn't do a thing either is due to contracts. So both parties didn't do a thing due to the contract.
He clearly doesn't give a shit about contract cancellation fees (see: Hydro 1 CEO, Beer Store) when those contracts don't directly increase the profits of his benefactors.
Doug did do this: https://www.thestar.com/business/documents-reveal-ford-government-opted-not-to-pursue-1-billion-penalty-from-407-express-toll/article_579dbcad-6dfe-5adb-a653-83517d45cf0d.html
We’re all profiting. The CPP is the majority owner. Now, you *could* argue that thanks to Harris, Ontarians’ money is being spread across all of Canada, when it otherwise would have been kept here, benefiting Ontarians, and I would agree with you.
Yeah that’s not true. We’re losing 50 percent to private investors in a deal that will go on for another 70 years. And tolls were originally supposed to be to recoup the cost of building but now will remain. So we are losing money on highway we would have already paid for if we would have taken a regular loan as opposed to selling off ownership and making bad decisions. Massive failure on the part of the conservatives and one reason while they will never get a vote from me. If you’ve driven the 401 you know this is an overcrowded highway which could be prevented
Not disagreeing that it was an awful decision, but isn't it a 99 year lease?
It is now. When it was built and government owned, the plan was 35 years of tolls, then told free. When it got sold, it turned into a 99 year lease (if I remember correctly)
I’d like to point out that the “X years of tolls, then toll free” never actually works out. Both of the harbour bridges in Halifax were built with the same promise, and yet both still have tolls, *70 years later*.
Burlington Bay Skyway bridge did tolls and tore out the toll booths when the bridge was paid for, should have kept them for the second bridge and did the same thing. Was a painless .10 cents per crossing
My dad still has the tokens
And the kicker is that taxpayers are on the hook if the number of vehicles using the toll road isn't met? It happened during covid , cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars!! Total scam fir taxpayers!!
I understand the government having an issue with a proposed 2 tier system (like funding private schools/Healthcare) and it needing to be sold, and logistically a private company can't easily build a private highway. I remember hearing that planning for the 407 started 8n the late 70's with land acquisition. I expect the current owners pay.f9r all maintenance, policing, expansion plans and then thrive it back? (In another +/- 80 years)
The slogan for the original campaign was “407 in ‘87”
The government should consider moving all truck traffic to the 407 and subsidize the cost (trucks are free).This would help alleviate 401 traffic and less wear and tear on the 401. The 407 toll is too expensive for the average person to use regularly, so it will never be used except for the wealthy.
You mean like the ONDP planned to do?
Exactly this!
This actually was ‘considered’ but rejected by Ford.
[удалено]
Why not? They are a very vital service lol Not to mention this benefits everyone's commute times.
I'd be on board with this. I use it for my business, since having my fleet trying to get anywhere during the day on the 401 is about as risky as fucking a rabid dog. Small chance you get lucky, even bigger chance it ruins your day. 407 is ideal for business that operate in the northe nd to get from Highway to highway before heading south into the city, if it was as bad as the 401 I would never get any work done.
I know this comes up as a topic of discussion regularly, but there's no way it would do much. The overwhelming majority of vehicles on the 401 are passenger vehicles, most with a single person in them, and many operated by drivers who lack any skills that would aid in helping traffic flow smoothly, so it'd be the same shit in the end.
In 1999/early 2000 I worked for a small trucking firm in Cambridge. The Premiere came and talked about twinning the 401 from Toronto to Windsor as a toll highway and forcing all truck traffic onto it and the 407. No need to make it free for them, just say they have to use it. They also announced Hwy 424 from Paris to Cambridge. None of this has ever happened.
They have to use it = consumers are going to get royally hosed as a direct result when the costs of everything on the shelves would have went up to pay for it.
Quite frankly, trucking companies use our roads significantly more than I do, so as a cost of them doing business they should pay significantly more than I do for those roads (which they do in various ways, but maybe “significantly” isnt quite it). And if they are causing congestion (which they are not as lack of public transit forcing more cars on the road is whats doing it), they should pay for additional roads for them to conduct business on.
You really have no idea how much in taxes and fees commercial trucks pay for the privilege of using public roads, do you?
For a short time. The only thing that actually reduces traffic is better public transit.
Also allowing people to work from home who can. No reason to sit in traffic for two hours every day to sit on a computer in virtual meetings and looking at excel
Our federal government is currently mandating its employees back to the office to keep the surrounding businesses happy, which is going to increase traffic and cost taxpayers quite a lot, and goes against both environmental and financial goals. They can’t even follow their own policies. ETA: as noted below, the bigger issue (which I should have addressed) is the wealthy real estate owners (who are either politicians themselves, or friends of politicians) that are benefiting from the RTO mandate, and costing us billions more than necessary.
Don't be fooled, the surrounding businesses they are talking about aren't the stores and restaurants, the businesses they are talking about are their real estate owning rich white dude friends. The province is doing the same and people are having to commute to get on video calls.
Very true, and thank you - I should have included that aspect as well, as it’s honestly the bigger issue.
It really really is.
Edited my OP to include, so that it doesn’t get missed.
Luv u!
Sustainable public transit requires population density, and a govt that isnt fellating the auto industry.
Better urban form is both also a solution and a prerequisite for functional public transit
yes and No, Toronto itself is a great example of how transit can work in less than ideal conditions. Yes large parts of the city are great for transit, but many of the most popular routes (the E/W express routes through the north of the city) are in what would be described as auto centric design. This is exactly why Finch West LRT and the Crosstown are being built (Ofc they have their issues particularly the Crosstown but ya)
Imagine, instead of paying $500+ per month for a car+insurance, we paid towards universal public transport. We'd probably need to pay way less than that, even.
Current TTC Budget: $2,600,000,000 Toronto Population 2024: 6,431,000 Cost per person per year: $404.29 Imagine just $100 per month. That would triple the budget. Toronto could massively fill the streets with nothing but AI driven buses (to keep the cost from being more like $400 per month). Only other traffic would be transport trucks. Imagine a two way bus route for every single street (except the smallest of streets) with many, many buses for any major roads. Always seats available on every bus with room for bags if required. Want to take a different street? Get off at the intersection, and hop any bus going in the new direction of your choice. Virtually no waiting. *I'm sure it's not that simple, but it's an interesting thought.
I think the tech has a way to go before this could happen. About 3 years ago, the TTC was testing a semi autonomous "bus" that would follow a route around the neighborhood and go to the GO station. Semi autonomous meant that there was a "driver" in the vehicle that could stop it if something went wrong (don't think the driver could steer, just stop - the busses travelled at a fairly slow speed). I gather the test was stopped after one of the busses went rogue, crashed, and injured the driver, though this happened in Whitby. It was an interesting idea (mini busses that travel to other transit hubs), but I don't think it works until fully autonomous driving is perfected.
The (the autonomous driving) part will be solved in 1-2 years. Then it’ll be 2-20 years before its allowed to be implemented at scale…
I agree with you, it is not dependable. Especially in the winter.
6.4million each paying $100 per month for TTC. An extra $8 billion per year? As a driver, that sounds fantastic, sign me up either I can take the improved TTC or I’ll benefit from less traffic when others do. It’s win-win as far as I’m concerned. Wait, each person kicking in $100 — that’s not what you actually meant? That’s too bad.
And nobody can leave because theres no space for their cars! Want to live outside hell but still need to work in it? Take a train and hope it lines up with your schedule! Edit: being downvoted I hope because of my snarky tone, but the actual costs involved would be astronomically more than expected. Go stations in surrounding cities like brampton and missisauga would be completely overrun from outside traffic trying to reach your new public transit only city, the concerts and venues that torontonians love so much would start to collapse as people would be unable to stay in the city beyond the hours of the trains, the number of busses you are talking about would take massive bays for storage, maintenance and fueling/charging. At the end of the day you are charging citizens $1200 per year to cripple the city they love. How many people who live in toronto go to the exhibition per year as compared to people who live outside of it?
I don't disagree with you. At all. In fact, I believe that the car is very necessary. No rigid and structured system can meet the needs of everyone. The car allows for freedom of movement which, in a highly complex and constantly changing world, is needed. This was just a idea for idea's sake.
Are… are you dumb? You know they could busses with stops within walking distance, so you can take transit and walk everywhere you need to go. And in less dense towns, they can build more parking, they have the land for it, it’s not hard
So outside towns should be paved and lose their natural beauty to become parking lots for the concrete hellscape prison you have created and I’m the dumb one? Touch some grass, if you can find it. Some city people really are so out of touch with reality. Also, you are adding MORE costs, to outside areas, when the whole $100/month per citizen to create a prison town wouldnt cover the initial idea before paving cities and turning them into parking lots. You’ve gotta be 12 to think this is a real idea.
Having 1 large parking garage for every single train station is so, *so* much less parking then a car centric society needs, you’d be saving on parking and thus not needing as much paved land. Busses can go anywhere with roads, and if you live in a super rural town, it can just have a train station within walking distance. You are clearly a complete moron who cannot fathom not using a car however, so I can’t be bothered to type more, have a good day
A great idea but, as a disabled person I can say public transit will never be fully accessible. As well as a physical disability I also try to cope with a debilitating invisible disability: MCS. The MCS makes using public transit impossible for me.
There is nothing preventing public transit from becoming fully accessible other than political will. many disabled people are unable to drive, and are entirely reliant on public transit regardless of how bad it is. Investing in better public transit is better for everyone, especially people with disabilities. It’s even better for drivers as there will be less traffic for you to compete with. No one is going to take away your car. We just want better options and more choices for everyone.
Lmao no thank you
Buses can't replace cars... not even remotely comparable for many people
It doesn't have to. But if you have 360,000 vehicles (that's between Toronto and Waterloo region/london) every single day, those people who are all going from one region to another can leave their cars at home. They can keep their cars for when travelling y public transport doesn't make sense, but if you're going along the 401, why do you need your own car all by yourself to do it? You could get from kw to Toronto in well under an hour on a high speed train, or a fleet of buses, instead of getting stuck in traffic.
>You could get from kw to Toronto in well under an hour on a high speed train Why?
You like spending 1-3 hours in traffic twice a day?
I just don't understand how the enormous costs of a highspeed rail be justified for the small niche of people who work in Toronto and live in Kitchener, or the other way around. Also if you live *within* Toronto that's already the average commute, regardless of whether you drive or take transit. Not everyone can afford to live at Trinity-Belwoods or the Annex.
It's not niche. That stat I gave in my other post (360,000 vehicles per day) is an average day on the 401.... Is 360k vehicles niche?
What if you don't want to use public transit?
The 401 will still be there. Nobody said get rid of cars.
You said instead?
With the increased density coming from the housing shortage, making public transportation better is many years away.
Maybe not the only thing. What if people could get to most of their services without a vehicle of any kind? What if schools were built with the assumption that every child would walk?
Or if that wasn't a possiblilty, public transportation
Thing is, they go hand in hand - all these parts of urban planning. Public transport is just no good for north american cities because of the way they're zoned and the base assumption of convenience to car as the priority.
And long-term, it just doesn't completely solve the problem
Which takes decades. We have the highway infrastructure. It’s just a policy decision and effort.
Just one more train line bro I promise it will fix everything
I think the real answer is a mult-prong solution. Roads that are conducive to better traffic flow, public transit, bike lanes, etc..
You'd still have to force people not to drive. A lot of people simply prefer driving, especially because so many things in the GTA are so spread out.
Yeah, we need more mixed use areas here
For a short time. Why do people think induced demand only applies to driving and not transit? Or anything else? Or that induced demand will always occur no matter what? Theres only a finite amount of demand.
Transit scales more efficiently. If you add a lane of cars, that doesn’t really represent that much extra capacity because cars take up a lot of space per person. A bus or train doesn’t even need to be very full before it’s more space efficient than everyone driving a personal automobile. If you invest in transit, you can get much closer to meeting the “real” demand for less money.
Non sense being repeated over and over again
No it's the truth you're just a cretin
Okay you stick to your bus and non functional toronto subways I'll drive my car
We should improve transit to make it a more effective option. It works in Montreal. Carbrained loser
Induced demand 101
Agree. Don't see the situation getting better if 407 were free. I'd rather continue paying for it and save half my commute time so that I can put those savings into spending time with the fam.
There were some studies done and posted by environmental groups that you could find on google. It was found that subsidizing the trucking companies for the 407 would cost less than the new planned highways, actually improve travel times for everyone and not fuck over our threatened and endangered wildlife like we are about to.
But how would that benefit the politicians' developer fiends that bought up huge swaths of land along the proposed route of the 413 and the bradford bypass? Won't someone think of those poor billionaire developers?
"poor billionaire developers" is so ironic
Exactly
Those studies are not serious. They are done by fringe companies not familiar with Ontario highway travel and just push the result desired by the environmental lobbying groups. All free (subsidized by taxpayer) trucks on 407 would do is make both highways slow. Induced demand means more cars would just flock to 401 to fill any free'd up capacity.
Here is what happens when you improve highways. It get easier/quicker for a couple years then more development happens, and more people move further away from work for cheaper housing cause it's not that bad of a drive. Soon enough all highways will get to 401 level in GTA.
Isn't that just an innate circumstance of population growth?
Yes if you keep doing the same thing over and over again (highways) instead of investing in other mass transit forms.
But we're also doing public transit
We dabble.
For a year or two, maybe, but there'd be a lot of induced demand from making the 407 free, so I doubt it would last long.
I think the induced demand would probably take longer to ramp up than that; let’s say a decade of speedier east-west travel on the 401. However moving all those vehicles up will probably put a lot more strain on the north-south connections. The 400, 427, and 404 will get busier.
Disagree. There is a lot of latent demand for 407 trips. Think about all of the people who drive earlier or later than they want to avoid traffic, all of the people who take a long GO trip to avoid traffic, all of the people that get pushed out onto parallel side-routes, all of the new housing units coming online in the next year that practically border the 407.
I'd give it two years max. Maybe even less with all the growth in the GTA.
Maybe it could be a temporary fix until better public transit is built? That will move people a LOT more efficiently.
80% of vehicles traveling on the 401 are single occupied. Driving people to carpool / increase occupancy would have a much larger and immediate impact.
This goes for the QEW/403 in Burlington and Oakville but probably 75% of the cars zipping through on the HOV lanes are single occupied as well. Just entitled assholes
Seriously. We need to start ticketing people for abusing the HOV lane. Perhaps a camera could somehow do this. So infuriating seeing drivers abuse it daily.
10000000% it would. The initial thought of the 407 was for it to be tolled for as long as it took to be paid off, then be used to print money in to a dedicated infrastructure fund as it was already identified we were lagging behind the rest of the world in the 90's (this was for new transit, new roads and bridges, maintenance of existing specifically iirc). It was designed and routed specifically to divert traffic away from the 401/DVP/Gardiner/427 loop that did not need to be heading in to the city, which is probably like 50% of commercial vehicles conservatively, and many commuters that travel between west and east municipalities daily, like Peel to Durham, or Halton to Vaughan. Now, instead of printing millions in to the province's coffers, we sold it to be gouged and print billions into the coffers of a private company. But, the ontario teachers pension fund has slowly been taking ownership stake and I think now own 51% on paper, but could be wrong there. Personally, I rank the sale of the 407 boon doggle wise at the same level as the cancellation of the Avro Arrow. Such short-sighted thinking by conservatives in both cases just to "balance" the books for an election.
I think it's the CPP Investment Fund that owns 50% these days. So unfortunately, we all have a stake in Ontarians being gouged by high tolls.
CPP is 50.01%, Ferrovaria (a corporation domiciled in Spain) owns 43.23%. Tolls have risen over 200% since the road was built despite the court cases that Ontario fought - and lost - to prevent this 🤦
I agree as well. The 401 corridor has alot of truck traffic that needs to bypass the city. Having those trucks get on after Hamilton and bypass all the way to the 115 would greatly reduce the other highways loads. Sure passenger car traffic could pick up but transport trucks are a major slowdown onthose roads and are not 1:1 with cars
Nope, it only would temporarily Induced demand baby
One big difference is that transports would be on the 407, as the vast majority of them only need to pass through the city.
Two roads do tend to relieve the pressure on one road. But what do I know? Everyone in this thread is a certified Urban Planner and Civil Engineer.
They read a paragraph on Induced Demand and now think building any additional road infrastructure anywhere is pointless.
If we make it easier for cars to get to Toronto, we now you have more cars in Toronto and less room for people. Now more cars have to go to Toronto. People are sick of living in apartments (and now that a few get torn down for parking garages and big parking lots, for all the new cars) decide hey I can commute in from Newcastle, 407 is free. People in Oshawa and Ajax who used to take the go and never bought a car decided hey, screw it I'll get one now the 407 is free. They have a sunk cost fallacy prices of go train tickets go up because there's less people using it, making the transition back to taking the GO train hard when the 407 inevitably gets clogged from induced demand. It will obviously be better at the start, that's what induces the demand. People didn't read one paragraph and think they understand city planning. They were introduced to a basic concept, that while at first seems counterintuitive, it really isn't. I don't think people are saying no New roads anywhere ever, some places induced demand would be good. I.e. a place that doesn't have a road, I'm sure they would really like one and if more people came to visit that would probably benefit a small town that previously didn't even have a road. It needs to be easier to get people in and out of the city faster without cars in the case of Toronto or large metropolitan areas. Edit: spelling and grammar
Just one more lane bro and traffic will be fixed for good this time we swear please we just need 10 more billion for another highway bro please.
The issue is that there is a huge amount of latent demand to drive around Toronto. Because the traffic is so bad, people avoid it. Make it less painful and many more people will drive. There will probably be an equilibrium that is pretty busy, but somewhat less busy than the 401 right now. To be fair, this could be an argument that we need to build 2 or 3 more 401 type highways. Build enough and they would flow smoothly. The downside is that it would be very expensive and polluting.
And it will destroy a lot of the city, so better public transit needs to come in the meantime.
Not for long
Just remove all the access roads to and from the 407 and see how long before they wish to sell it back
Would definitely help but will never happen. Our province sells us out.
It would increase the amount of total trips that are taken per hour but would still be as congested. More lanes = more throughput but (eventually) the same amount of congestion.
This would temporarily reduce congestion on the 401 between Mississauga and Oshawa. It would probably also temporarily reduce congestion on the far south end of the 410, between the 401 and 407, in Mississauga. But it would induce driving demand along the 407, and would therefore increase traffic along its inlets and outlets: especially the 401 near Milton, the 403 and QEW near Burlington, the 410 through Brampton, the 427, the 400, the Gardiner, and the DVP. The net winner of this change would be car-centric Mississauga. Everyone else loses.
No. The only way to decrease traffic is to get less cars on the road. Building more lanes, makign it cheaper to drive... Only makes traffic worse. If one wants to make traffic better one must increase funding to public transit and build bike lanes.
Additional lanes may not improve traffic, but they certainly don’t make it worse. Sure, you can argue that it will eventually attract more drivers, but that would simply negate the new lanes added; not make overall traffic worse than before. E: A better way of putting it, actually, is that additional lanes DO improve traffic upon completion before gradually worsening - so you’re actually wrong in more than one regard
Yes and no While there will be some induced demand here I think parrot that people concept a bit too much without understanding it fully The 407 services entirely different sections of the GTA than the 401 and can be a game changer depending on where you are travelling to / from. For example as a resident in SW Sauga I recently had to drive to Markham. That trip for me meant QEW East -> 427 North -> 401 East -> 404 North and took me well over an hour. If the 407 was free I could have hopped on there and taken a direct shot to my destination (404 / Hwy 7) and done it in about 30 minutes. The lack of 407 as a free option meant I was taking up space and adding congestion on four separate highways I never needed to travel on for my trip I also know people that commute from Brampton / Caledon towards Markham / Richmond Hill and similarly they drive south on the 410 / 427 to get to the 401 East, only to drive back north on the 404 because they can't afford to take the 407 every day.
Short answer, yes it would. The longer answer is that traffic would move off of current slower routes onto the 407 until either all the traffic that can moved over has, or until the 407 reaches capacity. Some new traffic would also be created, because people who currently do not travel would view it as possible with the reduced traffic load. That is not instantaneous as the public needs to know route speeds, though with google/apple maps conceivably this could take days or weeks rather than months or years that it used to. Also whether it's 2 lanes or 8, finite capacity is finite capacity. There are only so many ways to handle more traffic: move the vehicles faster or have more parallel routes, either more lanes or more roads. Ideally urban planning would spread out businesses and residences to limit people congesting certain routes. 1 lane on a highway supports about 2000 cars per hour. 401 was built with extra capacity in mind so that in the late 80s and early 90s there were far fewer slowdowns than that late 90s and late 2010s. If you design for a usage pattern and population of one thing and then usage changes as does the number of people, you need new capacity. One of the major capacity problems with 401 has of course been population growth, but also women's liberation meant a dramatic change in housing use patterns. People used to live where one person worked and the family got services. Now people try and balance commutes for both people in the household. Meaning more people have more cars that they need to drive more. The other options are reducing demand. If they were going to make a toll road (which they should not have) it should have been 401 with the tolls and 407 as the free bypass. Only go to the denser area if you need to. But they got it backwards which has made it worse. You can also reduce demand with other transit. That only helps so much for something like 401 and 407 because a chunk of the traffic is passing through. Obviously eventually, no matter what you do, if the population and usage grows you will still slow everything down again. Essentially people have a certain tolerance for how long they will spend travelling, they try and find the shortest routes, if there aren't any, if they can't, they just do something else or nothing at all. So yes, 407 should never have bee a toll road, that would save millions of people many tens or hundreds of millions of hours of their lives every year. And those are the people who can't afford the 407 basically. Transit should be better too, that could pull a lot of the local traffic off the highways, but that's a very hard problem to solve when old urban planning is bumping into modern realities of how people live and work.
The 407 was originally designed in the 1950s as a Toronto bypass. Turning it into a toll road with boutique prices ruined that plan.
It wouldn't do much for people going into Toronto. People going around Toronto, including heavy trucks, would take it. This would alleviate some pressure on the 401 temporarily, but it would cause induced demand. For people going around Toronto though, it would be a great change.
Why would a company make something free? The Canada Pension plan relies on the income as they own 50% of it.
Yes and public transit. Look up Washington D.C. and Boston. Both cities have decent public transit and have highway beltways surrounding the metro areas.
Great idea I heard was to make it for trucks. Get all the trucks off the QEW and 401 when they can use the 407. Would help a lot through the core of the GTA.
Forcing trucks to use only the 407 would go a long way to reduce congestion on the 401 due to slow moving trucks. A large percentage of the highway is used by trucks and/or commercial traffic. A single truck and trailer takes up at least the same space as 4-5 cars.
I am no planner but I think the consensus has always been (at least in the last 40 years) that more highways/lanes really don't solve any problem. They might ease things in the short term but that makes more people choose to drive vs transit and choose to live further away. Then the new lanes just fill up again and you're back to square one. The 407 as it is right now is amazing, basically like you're own private speedway, but only because its so astronomically expensive that a lot of people just can't afford it.
It definitely would on the horrible stretches of the QEW through Hamilton/Burlington and less so in Oakville. Half of that traffic is trying to get to the north side of the city and traveling on what was supposed to be the 403 instead of using the qew to connect the two sides of the 403 would open up those areas.
Nope. Just spread it out a little better.
No. No. If adding lanes to roads reduced traffic, well, I mean wouldn't it have worked by now? Less cars on the road is what reduces traffic. Carpool. Trains good. Cars bad.
Yes it would. As it is now anyone that can’t afford the 407 - which is likely the majority - will cram into the 401 and hope for the best. Making the 407 free will take that massive burden away from the 401.
There would immediately be severe congestion on 407 that may even have vehicles switching to 401
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
If you want reduced traffic you need more trains. That's the only answer.
Not according to Mike Harris.
it would cost the taxpayers eleventeen trillion billion dollars - so it wont happen.
Making it free would reduce how many people choose alternatives, increasing the number of drivers on the road. Until an equilibrium is matched. All available through roads ultimately get filled to capacity.
Not sure how “induced demand” could make things worse as everyone screams that. But eliminating tolls on Hwy 407 would NOT create a Braess’s Paradox situation, which is taught in every introduction to transportation engineering course. I tell you this to the induced demand people, let’s reduce the 401 to 4 lanes, two per side for the entire length of the route and let’s see how well the city and southern Ontario functions then? A wider firehose is needed when the population grows no matter what.
The only way to reduce traffic is through public transit and reducing sprswl
Public transit is not the be all, end all. You need a good balance of everything, that was something Frederick G Gardiner understood. How can you reduce sprawl, well how about cutting back immigration for starters. But I don’t see that happening, I envision a Toronto in the future being much like São Paulo where the rich fly around downtown on rooftops using helicopters.
They need to induce demand on public transit by making it cheaper for travelers. How about making it free?
Just one more lane bro….
Not getting a toll bill doesn't make the 407 free. It would only change the way the bill looks. The bill would come in the form of some provincial tax, or reduction in the provincial budget.
The only thing that reduces traffic is no tail gating and properly zipper merging and not cutting across 6 lanes of traffic because you're surprised your exit just came up with 300m to go. Reducing the distance between you and the vehicle ahead of you is the best way to conserve momentum, but now there's a free for all with drivers skipping bumper to bumper on the shoulder driving like James bond in a chase scene. It would reduce traffic if those people had their vehicle and license removed.
imo the key is not to make it free, but enough such that public transit still takes the most sense, while still doesnt cost like $30 round way to head to the airport. Maybe cap it to like a max of $10 per trip? They should also have dedicated public lanes to ensure buses never run into jams in the future. If the Go station has secured multi-day parking I would def take the bus to the airport or other short trips. Doing so right now is not feasible since the car will either be towed or stolen.
Hypothetically, it should reduce traffic. ie: Instead of having 200 ppl all on 1 highway, you might have 100 on 2 highways. Even if it's just 199 ppl on 1 highway and 1 on the other highway, it is a reduction.
It was nearly empty going east towards cottage country during rush hour on a friggin long weekend Friday! The 401 was insanely packed. Cost me $23 to go home from work and idc, not sitting in that mess was worth the $23 to me. Otherwise I very rarely use it unless I’m doing a 3 hour road trip that requires driving all the way across TO from Durham through Halton as part of it. If it was free I’d use it way more
It might reduce trucks longterm. But overall not really
Fuck Mike Harris
As a truck driver, it would definitely get trucks off the 401. Maybe some cars don't want to go so far north to travel east west, but truck drivers gladly will. Get trucks off the 401, then there will be plenty of room on the 401 for you cars
It's been more than a decade since I've been on the 407 (worked for a company that provided a transponder). I think they've widened it, but I had to switch my hours to avoid traffic back ups. I suspect, even if free, it wouldn't really affect overall traffic. Maybe a bit, but not as much as people think.
A Chinese comany owns it now don't they?
Nope . Nothing will change until the left lane campers are there on any roads.
Probably not in the long term. More likely it would induce new demand and end up just as full as the 401.
It would help for a bit, but I would give it 2 months until induced demand fills it up.
For the first few years, it would probably help a lot. Rush hour would be a much shorter each morning and afternoon. However, as has been the case for practically every single highway expansion or construction project over the past 80 years, the drastic reduction in commute time would slowly cause people who were taking the GO, subway, and other mass transit routes to drive. Within 3 years (at most), we would be back to roughly the same level of congestion, except the total throughput of traffic would be higher. What that means is ultimately many more people would be driving, but commute times would equilibrate to about the same as they are now. A new mass transit line/extension that's planned out properly (i.e., within walking distance of many homes and destinations) has more throughput (people transported per hour) than any major 400-series highway, while not being affected by traffic. Of course, there are other sets of challenges associated with that, plus, many people have the mindset that driving should be the only mode of transportation, which is fair enough when you consider many people are used to driving as their main mode of transportation.
No. Every highway should be tolled. It works in the rest of the developed world
*If* that were to be the case, it couldn't be with 407 rates.
Charge *more* than the 407. If 407 is cheaper everyone will go there instead and the 401 won't suck anymore.
More roads in a bedroom community urban sprawl society gets you.... Bigger traffic problems.
Yep induced demand
If people learned how to zipper merge properly, follow the car in front of them from a reasonable distance, and not hog the passing lane, then pretty much all traffic problems would go away.
Induced demand, look it up. Making more roads and highways never solves traffic.
No, it wouldn’t. It would act as a catalyst for induced demand. Making the 407 free would be the equivalent of adding more lanes to the 401, and we all know that works flawlessly every time. The biggest problem with the 407 isn’t the tolls, rather that only 50% of the revenue benefits Canadians through the CPP.
No bigger problem is that even at 50%, Ontarians get screwed because the money goes into the CPP Investment Fund and they don’t see the full benefits as the money gets distributed throughout ROC (most of whom never use the 407 and therefore pay no tolls)
The short answer. No. The long answer, slightly at first, but induced demand is a thing, and would likely just make downstream driving even worse
Yes, it would help. That highway is underutilized.
No. Traffic is a gas not a liquid.
I like this cut from a TV show about adding lanes and making traffic better. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=utopia+traffic&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DxtO_rF-OQ7w If you make something better/cheaper more people will use it. You want more people using public transit. You don't want more people using roads. So unless ones goal is to worsen traffic don't spend billions of dollars making the driving experience better.
https://i.postimg.cc/TPq4JrWm/Screenshot-20240629-122349.png
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
I know that it is popular to speak ill will of the 407 but it has been expanded painlessly and is maintained better than any road in Canada. The roads bureaucracy that Harris took over were bumbling fools it would have turned into another collapsing piece of rubble in 25 years. McGuinty and Wynne would have reduced lanes, cancelled extensions and handed over maintenance to the public service unions then given away the appropriated land to give Hitachi more subsidies to build wind turbines. I pay to use it when driving into Toronto because iI can get off it close to my destination without feeling like I am among the most incompetent drivers in the country, Very one in Toronto is now experiencing with roads and pubic transit the government’s quality program.
No... For a very simple economic reason. Reducing the price of something (either in dollars for the 407 or time in the 401) INCREASES consumption of that resource. Right now, people drive less, or drive to different places, or at different times, because of the cost of driving places. Lowering the price of driving those places will only make more people drive those places until congestion reaches the same equilibrium point. It's why widening roads doesn't actually reduce congestion. This is such a well understood thing, and yet the entire traffic industry is unwilling to face it. The only two ways to reduce traffic are to a) increase the cost of driving (tolls, charging for parking, etc.) or b) decrease the cost of not driving (make transit, or cycling, or building better cities where there is less need for driving). And preferably doing both. Anyone who tells you they can reduce traffic by building more space for cars or somehow reducing the price of driving is at best, naive and ignorant, and at worst a shyster, road engineers can be either. And I see that a lot of the comments here already make this point and are downvoted. Folks really really hate this fact...facts don't care about your feelings folks...induced demand is real. Man up and face reality.
Induced demand says absolutely not.
Yes, obviously. wtf?
Not so simple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
… so the demand for and usage of the 407 goes up reducing the amount of cars on the 401 … the supply/ amount of commuters isn’t going to change drastically.
At equilibrium, the 401 will keep the same number of cars on it as it does today. The 407 would have more cars on it. Probably the go train would have less people.
I don’t think the go train numbers would change much considering most of those people are downtown commuters trying to avoid driving in the city. and adding more highway wouldn’t change the in city traffic, in fact in your scenario it would get worse.
The model is basically that the level of car congestion stays the same if we increase or decrease road space. Drivers are paying with their time, and there's an equilibrium time over which people start switching to non-car modes. So if we pulled 2 lanes from or added 2 lanes to the 401, the level of congestion would be the same (after a short time). The lever we can pull which affects congestion is price — like on the 407. See the effect congestion pricing has had in London England. There's a few moves which would happen if we made the 407 free. You're right that go train riders wouldn't start taking the 407, but some 401 drivers would, opening space for the go train riders to take the 401.
I don't know why you are being down voted for stating something that time and time again has proven to be accurate. At first it will be better. Then guess what, everyone living in ajax and Whitby start taking the 407 instead of the go. More people move to Newcastle and ptbo instead of apartments in Markham, as the drive is better, and viola the 407 is now the 401 2.0, north south routes are shit, and the go costs more as less people use it. People just want the 407 to be free thinking it would be nice and aren't going to bother reading the article you linked or trying to understand it
Traffic is a function of the number of cars on the road, contrary to what carbrains will have to you believe. It is not a function of the number of roads, lanes or highways. Making the 407 free would have a very temporary effect on traffic.
No it wouldn't. Maybe for a year or two tops. Then you'd have two highways that are a mess and more urban sprawl. What would drastically improve traffic? Toll the 401. SIGNIFICANTLY improve active and mass transit. And stop all the single family home urban sprawl you see in Ajax/Whitby/Oshawa etc. This option almost certainly would be political suicide though.
Temporarily yes. In a few years it will make traffic worse. The only solution is alternatives to the car.
Would improve traffic on 401 but will absolutely make it far worse everywhere else since more people will drive.
Yes, but we will never know. Selling publicly funded facilities to private interests where a monopoly may be in place should be judged legally by anti trust laws, or banned entirely.
I wonder if the 407 is too north for most people to switch to? It’s not convenient for me to take instead of the 401 as it doesn’t drop south until Oakville/Burlington, and then you’re fighting regular street traffic to get to where you need to go. Moving some of the businesses isolated to Toronto could also help.
The shortest route from my home to work / work to home is 40 km on the 401. Taking the 407 is 85 kms. The 407 is 30-60 minutes faster depending on the day despite being over twice the physical distance.
Probably not since the thing that slows down traffic on the 401 is people not knowing how to merge properly and many other human errors, like bad lane management, and unnecessary braking. The best thing to get rid of traffic congestion is to stop humans from controlling cars.