Toronto congestion

[Aardvark154]

This past week I was in Toronto for the first time in six and a half years. I honestly think that the 401, DVP, Gardiner Expressway, and the Mississauga -Hamilton section of the QEW now have the worst traffic in eastern North America. I believe that most Toronto area highways could easily stand
two or three additional lanes each direction and that's excluding any
further growth. What is the feeling of you Metropolitan Toronto
residents? Is sprawl in the Toronto area out of control?

 

[A-ROD]

It is way out of control...
I read somewhere recently that the section of the 401 between Dixon and 404 is now the busiest highway in North America.

But I don't believe they have the room to expand most of the highways.


http://www.answers.com/topic/highway-401-ontario

 

[wrong hole]

Toronto is not that well planned

 

[JohnC]

Toronto is not that well planned

There's the understatement of the year so far!!

 

[newbler]

its a joke that we have to pay to use the 407 with how bad the congestion is on other 400 series highways

 

[tboy]

Here we go again, sheesh... has anyone ever travelled into or out of mahattan at rush hour? T.O. doesn't compare to that....one time I was on a shuttle bus from the airport and it just made it over the bridge and hit a standstill. After waiting for 20 minutes and not moving I got out with my bags and walked to my hotel. It took me about 20 minutes to get there.

I checked in, and was walking towards the elevator when others that were on the shuttle were just coming through the door. BTW my hotel was the first stop for the shuttle.

Yes, toronto is poorly planned highwaywise. Yes most drivers that are on the road don't know wtf they are doing. Yes, we have fucked up highways like the entrance to the gardiner westbound at jameson. (who needs three entrances in 100 meters? eastbound at the cne).

The only way the congestion is going to not get worse is to expand public transit (ain't gonna happen) or people stop travelling so far to get to work. I know I was lambasted in another thread for suggesting this but travelling for 1 to 2 hrs each way to your place of employment is just plain idiocy yet our government does nothing about it.

Another way to reduce the rush hour congestion is to make it so advantageous for companies to move out of the core that they can't say no.

It will only get worse folks so get used to it....

 

[A-ROD]

The governments way to slow down congestion will be to put tolls on all the major highways leading into and out of the city.

I believe that within 5 to 10 years you will see tolls on the 401, DVP, 427, 400 and the Gardiner.

 

[red]

The governments way to slow down congestion will be to put tolls on all the major highways leading into and out of the city.

I believe that within 5 to 10 years you will see tolls on the 401, DVP, 427, 400 and the Gardiner.

I love toll house cookies

 

[massman]

I agree with the comments about the 407. This Highway is empty most of the time the 401 is jammed (thats because the 401 is jammed all the time, often even at 2AM). The cost of the tolls on the 407 are outrageous. I'd bet (though I have absolutely no evidence to back this up) that if the tolls were halved, the users of the 407 would more than double.

London England has a "congestion charge" if you want to drive your car within the city. It has dramatically reduced traffic in the city. Lots of other UK cities are contemplating it. You can bet our governments are considering it. The only question is if automobile mad Canadians could tolerate it.

 

[Hard Idle]

I can't believe he said it!!

I believe that most Toronto area highways could easily stand two or three additional lanes each direction and that's excluding any
further growth. :

Additional lanes? OH MY GOD! Do you know how many squirrels, ants & worms would be made homeless by highway expansion??

You better get out of town before some city councilors have you charged with enciting genocide and get after you with their army of EnviroNazis and pigeon feeding widows.

You are obviously not from around here, LOL!

(hey didn;t there used to be another aardvark on TERB back in the early years?)

 

[raydeon]

You choose where you live, don't blame the world for your problems.

Live close to where you work.
This has been the norm for centuries all over the world.

The people you see going East on the 401 bumper to bumper are the same people you see in the evening going in the other direction. Do all the people who commute everyday to Scarborough have to live in Mississauga?.....and all the people who commute West have to live in Scarborough?

Let's use common sense. If only half of the drivers on the road would follow this principle, the saving in time, energy, gas, pollution and stress would be tremendous.

 

[james t kirk]

You choose where you live, don't blame the world for your problems.

Live close to where you work.
This has been the norm for centuries all over the world.

The people you see going East on the 401 bumper to bumper are the same people you see in the evening going in the other direction. Do all the people who commute everyday to Scarborough have to live in Mississauga?.....and all the people who commute West have to live in Scarborough?

Let's use common sense. If only half of the drivers on the road would follow this principle, the saving in time, energy, gas, pollution and stress would be tremendous.

The first post to make any sense.

 

[james t kirk]

I have read all the "Toronto is poorly planned" posts.

The 401 is a masterpiece of Engineering.

Do you people have ANY clue of what you are talking about?

Exactly WHY do you feel that Toronto is poorly planned? Cities are not supposed to be built around the automobile. That's a classic 1950's mentality that destroyed so many American cities. "People will work in the city, then at 5:00, they will all jump in their cars and drive home on a series of expressways that will wisk them home for dinner by 5:30 in the suburbs with Muffy and the kids" (where it's nice and white and safe and everyone lives on a half acre lot, complete with sewers and watermains.)

The problem is quite simple - too many cars commuting. Most cars you see have 1 person in them. Look at the pollution in the last week. It's so thick, you could cut it with a knife.

The GTA is closing in on 6 million people. Building more lanes, or more highways will not solve the problem. Hell, it might make it worse.

You need to discourage automobile use, not encourage it. (Starting with banning drive throughs!!)

What the GTA and Toronto needs is better mass transit. You need to get the cars off the roads. We have a PATHETIC subway system to start. Not that they don't do their job, they do. And quite well at that. No, there is simply not enough of them.

The subway needs to be expanded to:

Queen Street from Vic Park to Sherway Gardens
Bloor needs to go to Sherway Gardens
Yonge needs to run north to the 407
Eglinton from the Airport eastwards
Spadina needs to run north west to the 407
Bloor needs to go east to Pickering
We need a line to the airport cutting on a diagonal
We need a line running north from Sherway Gardens to Vaughan
We need perhaps two lines running into Mississauga.

etc. etc.

GO Transit needs to run to more outlying locations. The track corridors are there. We just need to build the track (and come to an agreement with CNR and CPR)

Our whole "Auto Centric" line of thinking has to end. Sooner or later something is going to give.

 

[james t kirk]

The governments way to slow down congestion will be to put tolls on all the major highways leading into and out of the city.

I believe that within 5 to 10 years you will see tolls on the 401, DVP, 427, 400 and the Gardiner.

Good, not soon enough as far as I am concerned.

Especially the Gardiner and the DVP. Built and paid for by Toronto taxpayers to support the 905 commuter.

How sweet of deal is that.

They should put tolls on the Gardiner and DVP right now in order to finance the construction of new subways. Big tolls at that.

20 bucks per trip, doesn't matter where you get on, or where you get off.

 

[red]

I agree with the comments about the 407. This Highway is empty most of the time the 401 is jammed (thats because the 401 is jammed all the time, often even at 2AM). The cost of the tolls on the 407 are outrageous. I'd bet (though I have absolutely no evidence to back this up) that if the tolls were halved, the users of the 407 would more than double.

London England has a "congestion charge" if you want to drive your car within the city. It has dramatically reduced traffic in the city. Lots of other UK cities are contemplating it. You can bet our governments are considering it. The only question is if automobile mad Canadians could tolerate it.

given the incredibly bad deal the gov't got in selling the 407 - i won't drive on it.

 

[james t kirk]

given the incredibly bad deal the gov't got in selling the 407 - i won't drive on it.

Well, yes and no.

The 407 as it is, err, was supposed to be was brought out by Bob Rae and his roving band of socialists. At the time, it made sense.

You want a highway quick? Fine, you have to pay for it.

It was supposed to be Design, Build, Finance, Operate. The successful bidder was to run the highway for 25 years, then it was to revert to the province whereupon the tolls would come off.

Great idea.

The contract was issued and bids were taken. The successful bidder was Canadian Highways International Corporation, or CHIC for short. Essentially it was Dufferin and Armbro Construction.

But here's the funny part, the finance part got dropped by the wayside and the government had to underwrite the loans. They set up something called "Transportation Capital" so that the money would not appear as a government expenditure and would not be part of the debt. (Sort of like what the Americans are doing in Iraq.)

Anyway, they built the damn highway and they ran it, but the government owned it.

Then along comes Mike Harris.

And he and his cronies decide, we need some quick cash to finance those tax cuts we promised, so were are going to sell the 407 to the highest bidder. The hitch was that the successful bidder had to extend the 407 in the East to Pickering and in the west to Burlington.

Now here's the bitch. Instead of reverting to the province in 25 years, the Conservatives under Harris switched gears and put it up for sale for 100 years.

Yep, 100 years. To make matters even more funny, the corridor which had sat empty for 30 years that was supposed to be Higway 403 was suddenly rebadged 407. Now how the fuck they managed that, I have no idea.

There were 3 or 4 bidders I believe.

The successful bidder was a consortium lead by SNC Lavalin but the real power behind it all was Ferrovival from Spain. A company that owned toll roads all over the world. Lavalin was just a minority partner along for the Canadian content ride.

So, bottom line, the Spaniards offered the government of Ontario the best deal of anyone, so they got to own the damn thing.

 

[tboy]

Yup, 407 turned into another governemet clusterfuck......

As for congestion, and expanding the public transit service, sure, all those routes would be great and they don't have to go to the expense of digging miles upon miles of tunnels. There are alternatives...

There was talk years ago of putting a monorail along eglinton but that died I think because the home and business owners didn't like the idea of an el in front of their buildings.

Chicago has similar weather as toronto and their els work fine so the weather/snow excuse is just bullshit.

As chicago has done, running a shuttle line to the airport would piss off all the airport limo drivers and the airport consortium would loose all that revenue the cabbies have to pay.

And while streetcars are quaint, how's bright idea was it to put a moving roadblock along some of the major east/west routes into the city?

Again, and I stand firm on this, make it advantageous to live within x miles of your place of employment and make it disadvantageous to live far from your place of employment.

Another thing is to make driving a priveldge not a given. MY attitude for years has been if your vehicle breaks down during rush hour, and the cause is found to be the result of poor maintenance, your driving licence is revoked for 1 yr and you are fined $10,000.00 for the 1st occurance, 50K for the second etc. Does anyone realize the cost of blocking just ONE lane of traffic during rush hour periods?

Start using alternatives to traffic lights. England uses roundabouts and the beauty of them is that the traffic never stops moving. I equate traffic to water flowing through a pipe. The most efficient way of moving it is continuously, not stop and go stop and go....I tell you, I was out at rush hour a couple of weeks ago and it took me 20 minutes to get through (westbound) the intersection at bayview and york mills. That's friggen crazy then to top it off, there was a truck picking up a construction bin at the top of the hill. Of course it took him 10 minutes to get aligned right so he could pick it up.

Another thing: make road work a night job and penalize companies working on the projects for delays and reward them for finishing early. One saturday I wanted to go up to concord (live downtown) and the DVP was closed. Did you know EVERY major North/South route had some form of construction going on that restricted lanes? I was freaking livid. Didn't matter what route I took, everything east of yonge had at least one lane blocked. WTF ever happened to planning?

 

[james t kirk]

So...........I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you work at .......... Sherway Gardens.

Geez, who'd guess that the centre of the world was a suburban shopping mall in Etobicoke of all places.

Nope, I work by the airport.

Sherway is a natural terminal cause it's got lots of parking, the mall mgt. would be thrilled to have a subway, it's on the western boundry of etobicoke, it's on the Queensway, and it's close to Kipling Station as it is.

Same as Yorkdale is a station.

 

[james t kirk]

Another thing: make road work a night job and penalize companies working on the projects for delays and reward them for finishing early. One saturday I wanted to go up to concord (live downtown) and the DVP was closed. Did you know EVERY major North/South route had some form of construction going on that restricted lanes? I was freaking livid. Didn't matter what route I took, everything east of yonge had at least one lane blocked. WTF ever happened to planning?

Night work is extremely dangerous to the construction workers. Not only do they have to contend with working in unnatural light, but they often get hit and killed by drivers who are not taking them into consideration.

For the sake of a 15 minute delay, it's not worth it.

I can assure you that a great deal of thought, no, a huge amount of thought goes into any DVP or Gardiner closure.

 

[Svend]

I agree with moving closer to work, it's insane the time people spend commuting every day.
It isn't the solution for everyone, I realize that your spouse might work a long distance in the opposite direction, that you don't want to uproot your kids, or that your job location may be unstable.
But in general, it's possible for most people to live closer to their job and to take transit, walk or ride your bike for many errands.