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Bradford Bypass (MTO, Hwy 400 - Hwy 404)

I will vote for 419 simply cause it's after 418.

I don't know they did it but they somehow have determine everything before 418 is not useable so East Durham Link became 418?

408 was for mid peninsula highway
411 for 11
413 for GTA west
414 ???
415 for possibly highway 15 expansion???

This Bradford bypass existed in planning stages since the 90s. Maybe it could be 414 and hence it couldn't be used for the EDL?
 
.. if the route goes back to the 90s .. wouldnt this be 488 .. using the former highway that would of been closest to this ?
 
The original purpose of the by-pass when first proposed long ago was to extend highway 89 to highway 12, so obviously this is going to be the 489 :). The grand future of course is that to the west this would roughly parallel highway 89, 23, and 4 connection to 402 west of London near Strathroy, and to the east parallel highway 7 east of highway 12 connecting to highway 115 and also to 401 near Coburg... so the entire GTA can be bypassed. Obviously!! 🤪
 
Article in The Star suggests the province is looking at 8-laning the Bypass, possibly from the get-go, or in any event by 2041.

The gist of the article is that the province has been peddling this project as a less intrusive 4-lane highway (2 lanes per direction); and that they have been misleading the public.

There is also a suggestion this may reopen the issue of a Federal EA, due to misrepresentation of the project.

Not sure I'm buying on the latter.

Its well known that I oppose this project, in part, because I, as many others, knew full well it would ultimately be bigger.

Is there some chance that casual observers may feel mislead? Perhaps. I oppose it regardless. But I'm not sure this is material misrepresentation; then again, governments of all stripes will soft peddle things they think might generate pushback.

https://www.thestar.com/news/invest...bigger-for-the-controversial-new-highway.html (currently behind paywall)

From the above:

1671132170502.png


1671132195049.png


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1671132266703.png


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This bit may be of greater consequence:

1671132311498.png


Cost Inflation of 150% - 400% is rather substantial. Cost is also supposed to be a factor in Evaluating alternatives in an EA.
 
Yeah, there's a 0% chance this thing would end up costing $800 million irrespective of whether this is a 4-Lane or 8-Lane highway.

But surprise surprise, the Provincial Conservatives misleading the public as they do on a daily basis. By the time they're done, they will make all the previous Liberal governments scandals look like chump change.
 
The only way we get a good guess is going by how wider the corridor rights MTO has acquired. Once MTO has the corridor they can do whatever they want and however quickly to build it out.
 
Article in The Star suggests the province is looking at 8-laning the Bypass, possibly from the get-go, or in any event by 2041.

The gist of the article is that the province has been peddling this project as a less intrusive 4-lane highway (2 lanes per direction); and that they have been misleading the public.

There is also a suggestion this may reopen the issue of a Federal EA, due to misrepresentation of the project.

Not sure I'm buying on the latter.

Its well known that I oppose this project, in part, because I, as many others, knew full well it would ultimately be bigger.

Is there some chance that casual observers may feel mislead? Perhaps. I oppose it regardless. But I'm not sure this is material misrepresentation; then again, governments of all stripes will soft peddle things they think might generate pushback.

https://www.thestar.com/news/invest...bigger-for-the-controversial-new-highway.html (currently behind paywall)

From the above:

View attachment 445455

View attachment 445456

***

View attachment 445457

****

This bit may be of greater consequence:

View attachment 445458

Cost Inflation of 150% - 400% is rather substantial. Cost is also supposed to be a factor in Evaluating alternatives in an EA.

8-lanes is the ultimate design capacity of the highway, i.e. what it can eventually be widened out to.

The 407 East was built for 6 lanes, but has an ultimate 10-lane capacity, for example. The original 407 was similarly initially built as 6-lanes and slowly widened out to 10 lanes over 3 decades across most of it's length.

The Bypass is intended to be built as a 4-lane highway, with an ultimate design width of 8 lanes. This will allow MTO to add lanes as required at a later date for minimal additional cost, as all overpasses will have been designed to accomodate the additional lanes. It's future-proofing, basically.

It would make no sense to build the Bypass as an 8-lane facility off the bat as it would connect to the 404 which is only 4 lanes adjacent to it.

MTO's standard is to design highways to be able to widened to 10 lanes eventually, 8-lanes makes it a smaller facility than normal actually. Likely due to it's short length, MTO figures there will likely never be demand for a 10-lane facility.

Further, this isn't new information. MTO intends to build this as a 4-lane facility and it has always been designed to eventually accommodate 8 lanes, even back to the original EA in the late 1990's.
 
Yeah, there's a 0% chance this thing would end up costing $800 million irrespective of whether this is a 4-Lane or 8-Lane highway.

But surprise surprise, the Provincial Conservatives misleading the public as they do on a daily basis. By the time they're done, they will make all the previous Liberal governments scandals look like chump change.
MTO built the 407 East for $4 billion for about 65km of new urban highway, including 5 new freeway-freeway interchanges. The Bradford Bypass costing $800 million for 16km of 4-lane freeway and two freeway-freeway interchanges actually sounds about right comparatively, as it has no 6-lane portion and does not require an expensive realignment of the 401.

This doesn't include land costs however, nor does it account for the rapid cost inflation which has occurred in construction lately. Much like the Ontario Line, I suspect it will go over the initial budget by a bit, but not multiple magnitudes. Maybe closer to $1 billion or so of actual capital construction costs.
 
8-lanes is the ultimate design capacity of the highway, i.e. what it can eventually be widened out to.

The 407 East was built for 6 lanes, but has an ultimate 10-lane capacity, for example. The original 407 was similarly initially built as 6-lanes and slowly widened out to 10 lanes over 3 decades across most of it's length.

The Bypass is intended to be built as a 4-lane highway, with an ultimate design width of 8 lanes. This will allow MTO to add lanes as required at a later date for minimal additional cost, as all overpasses will have been designed to accomodate the additional lanes. It's future-proofing, basically.

It would make no sense to build the Bypass as an 8-lane facility off the bat as it would connect to the 404 which is only 4 lanes adjacent to it.

MTO's standard is to design highways to be able to widened to 10 lanes eventually, 8-lanes makes it a smaller facility than normal actually. Likely due to it's short length, MTO figures there will likely never be demand for a 10-lane facility.

Further, this isn't new information. MTO intends to build this as a 4-lane facility and it has always been designed to eventually accommodate 8 lanes, even back to the original EA in the late 1990's.

Its not clear to me in the AG's report where they get their number from. While I will take it as more likely to be true than anything the MTO says; I would also freely acknowledge that figure may be arrived at with lifecycle costing or otherwise using different metrics.

That said..........I found the graphic with the A-Gs number from their November Report. I find it worth reposting, mostly because of footnote number 2; look where the money to advance Bradford works this year came from......

1671139277079.png

From: https://www.auditor.on.ca/en/content/annualreports/arreports/en22/AR_ProvHighways_en22.pdf

Some other interesting stuff in the report, which I will post over in the General Highways thread later.
 
I'm not sure why this is being sold as misrepresentation. As mentioned, the ultimate configuration has been planned to be 3 general purpose lanes + 1 HOV lane per direction since the original study in the 90s. Plus presenting it openly in the PIC doesn't exactly fit the "misleading the public" narrative.

The eight lane cross section isn't any more intrusive than the four lane, considering lane expansions would be done within the median. The actual corridor right-of-way won't change.

It's also worth noting that the goal with projects like these isn't to "fix" traffic but rather to accommodate growth and provide a more efficient redistribution of traffic from local roads to highways. The no build scenario shows significant overcapacity conditions throughout the local road network, which isn't preferable in any way. If we can accommodate another 20 years of population growth and the movement of goods and services without any deterioration to service levels (i.e., traffic conditions stay the same), that's a win. With careful planning, additional road infrastructure actually leads to less vehicle-kilometres travelled across the network even accounting for potential mode shift and induced demand.
 
I'm not sure why this is being sold as misrepresentation. As mentioned, the ultimate configuration has been planned to be 3 general purpose lanes + 1 HOV lane per direction since the original study in the 90s. Plus presenting it openly in the PIC doesn't exactly fit the "misleading the public" narrative.

The eight lane cross section isn't any more intrusive than the four lane, considering lane expansions would be done within the median. The actual corridor right-of-way won't change.

It's also worth noting that the goal with projects like these isn't to "fix" traffic but rather to accommodate growth and provide a more efficient redistribution of traffic from local roads to highways. The no build scenario shows significant overcapacity conditions throughout the local road network, which isn't preferable in any way. If we can accommodate another 20 years of population growth and the movement of goods and services without any deterioration to service levels (i.e., traffic conditions stay the same), that's a win. With careful planning, additional road infrastructure actually leads to less vehicle-kilometres travelled across the network even accounting for potential mode shift and induced demand.

Between this project; and the associated knock-on projects to widen local roads, and widen/extend 404, you're talking about destruction into the thousands of acres of Class 1 farmland, along with further fragmenting the few remaining wild spaces here and adversely impacting provincially significant wetlands.

That's assuming that all this sprawl related infrastructure doesn't result in thousands of acres of more sprawl which seems more likely than not.

This is not a space for traffic or for more people, its for some of the best farmland on the planet and nature. Which is why I oppose this project in its entirety at any width.

We need to curtail population growth in the GTA, not facilitate it.

To the extent we grow (and we will, irrespective of my preferences) it needs to be entirely on already developed lands, for which this highway will produce little or no benefit.

The money would be better spent on a new ROW for the Barrie GO line that shaved 25km off the route with a straighter alignment, making for a more competitive travel time; consideration could be given to an E-W ROW for rail that linked the Bala and Newmarket subs south of Lake Simcoe, with a much lower damage profile.
 
The money would be better spent on a new ROW for the Barrie GO line that shaved 25km off the route with a straighter alignment, making for a more competitive travel time; consideration could be given to an E-W ROW for rail that linked the Bala and Newmarket subs south of Lake Simcoe, with a much lower damage profile.
For my type of work, the GO train is never useful as I need to carry tools/ladders so I require a vehicle, and thus ultimately require highways to move around faster. But I 100% agree with what you said here, INVESTING IN NEW RAILWAY CORRIDORS, but sadly no political party pitches the idea.
 
I have still yet to be convinced that a parkway a la William Halton Parkway in Oakville wouldn't be enough. We don't need to be funnelling local commuters onto here, we really shouldn't be thinking about an eight-lane cross-section or multiple park-and-rides. Maybe use the savings to grade-separate Green Lane from Barrie GO, and put the rest back into Niagara.
 

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