High Speed Rail: London - Kitchener-Waterloo - Pearson Airport - Toronto

[vegeta_skyline]

Doesn't really matter, research has shown that as soon as a new lanes of traffic are opened it's quickly filled to capacity due to the induced demand phenomenon, notwithstanding the relatively high population growth of cities like Milton anyways.
I doubt the 401 will ever flow freely again during rush hour.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Not how highways work exactly. It will fill up, but not for 15 years or so after opening, and every induced car trip is one less trip on HSR. Doubling the 401s width doubles through capacity and means that twice as many people can drive on that road.

 

[ehlow]

Still though, even with expanding the highway up to Milton, there would still be congestion in Mississauga & Toronto I would think.

My trip is just one trip of course and it's anecdotal, but the issue is that when anything happens, an accident, construction, the whole thing slows to a crawl in both directions. These incidents are getting more and more common it seems. It's not reliable. Also during bad weather the highway becomes useless or dangerous.

I still think a regular train service would be attractive & competitive, especially as traffic in general gets worse in the future.

 

[TOareaFan]

48 minute HSR ride, 1:05 car ride presuming no traffic, and there is ALWAYS traffic. Its pretty competitive for kitchener, and I can see it being very popular.

When is the car trip from Union to Kitchener ever 1:05? It is not a trip that I make but I do make the trip to Brampton with great regularity and only on the rarest of days (at the weirdest of hours) is that, much shorter, trip made in 1:05 or less.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Oh absolutely, most of those new car trips will be coming from Milton anyway. And of course once you get to the 403/410 the trip will be as bad as it always has been, but car trips will be more reliable and a bit quicker by the time HSR opens.

All day GO and HSR would reduce the need to widen it from Milton to Kitchener as well, which MTO is planning to do sometime in the 2020s from my understanding.

 

[ehlow]

When is the car trip from Union to Kitchener ever 1:05? It is not a trip that I make but I do make the trip to Brampton with great regularity and only on the rarest of days (at the weirdest of hours) is that, much shorter, trip made in 1:05 or less.

It is possible to be close to that, say 1:15-1:30, in ideal conditions: no traffic at all.

It happened to me once this summer, on a weekday afternoon.

On weekends though, I doubt it.

 

[innsertnamehere]

1:05 is the trio time with "no traffic" according to google maps, which likely means 2 am on a Sunday, but as I said, there is almost never no traffic.

 

[LNahid2000]

1:05 is the trio time with "no traffic" according to google maps, which likely means 2 am on a Sunday, but as I said, there is almost never no traffic.

I just looked at Google's trip time with current traffic and it's 2:21. That's ridiculous, and it's not even rush hour!

 

[TOareaFan]

I just looked at Google's trip time with current traffic and it's 2:21. That's ridiculous, and it's not even rush hour!

might be influenced by the fact that a major accident has closed all WB lanes of the Gardiner "expressway" at Jameson.

 

[vegeta_skyline]

Not how highways work exactly. It will fill up, but not for 15 years or so after opening, and every induced car trip is one less trip on HSR. Doubling the 401s width doubles through capacity and means that twice as many people can drive on that road.

The population bases of the communities the 401 serves in that area will experience significant growth by the mid 2020's. Milton alone is projected to more than double, increasing by 221%/107,000 from 2011 to 2026 and 258%/140,000 by 2031 (http://www.halton.ca/cms/One.aspx?portalId=8310&pageId=59345 http://guelph.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012CommunityProfile.pdf). Halton Hills & Georgetown are expected to add another 56,000/55% to that by 2031. Add to that Waterloo Region which is expected to grow by 183,000/33% by 2031. Obviously not every new trip generated by that population growth is going to take the 401, certainly not while the highway is already near its limit. Problem is the 401 is already over capacity for a 6-lane freeway(120,000) just past Trafalgar road with an AAVT of 129,300 in 2006 and 138,900 in 2011 and those who travel this section can attest to the serve congestion seen there. MTO's own projections expect that same section to be at 212,200 AAVT by 2031 and 235,800 SAVT which is near MTO's the freeway capacity for a 12-lane highway(240,000) http://www.niagara-gta.com/pdf/NGTA Travel Demand Backgrounder-v1.pdf. And that projection was made in 2006 when expected population growths across the region were slightly lower. Basically within 5-6 years of expanding to 12 lanes according to MTO's own methodology the highway will be near capacity. Additionally it's been well known for a long time that added capacity on a roadway does induce more people to take trips by car, as seen here for example; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/digest/traffic4.htm where projected 2010 traffic levels were reached by 1999.. As soon as the new lanes open there will be a huge shift towards using the freeway as long as it flows freely. Which will result in the highway mode usage increasing faster then expected until it reaches congestion levels and there is no further benefit to people switching travel patterns.

 

[nfitz]

1:05 is the trio time with "no traffic" according to google maps, which likely means 2 am on a Sunday, but as I said, there is almost never no traffic.

Oh, it's not that bad. Leaving at 6 AM on a weekday from Bay and Lakeshore, you'll get to King/Victoria in Kitchener by 7 AM - assuming you don't slow to 100 km/hr on the 401. I didn't have much problem doing it in that leaving at 7 AM either ... though the construction has changed that.

Certainly can't do it in the heart of rush hour though.

 

[innsertnamehere]

Vegata, I'm a second year urban planning student, I'm well aware of the fact that it quickly fills up and how highway design and demand management works. It doesntnchange the fact that there is still 2x the amount of trips on that road. Sure, its congested just as before (240,000 is also the point at which a highway requires upgrading to a 12 lane setup, not the maximum, which is over 400,000), but it is also carrying twice as many people which means there's less people for the trains to take as a lot of trips can be served by the highway in a better fashion. Without the widening the congestion would require the HSR to be a more viable option.

 

[ehlow]

Vegata, I'm a second year urban planning student, I'm well aware of the fact that it quickly fills up and how highway design and demand management works. It doesntnchange the fact that there is still 2x the amount of trips on that road. Sure, its congested just as before (240,000 is also the point at which a highway requires upgrading to a 12 lane setup, not the maximum, which is over 400,000), but it is also carrying twice as many people which means there's less people for the trains to take as a lot of trips can be served by the highway in a better fashion. Without the widening the congestion would require the HSR to be a more viable option.

Are they planning or considering bus lanes on the new widened section?

 

[innsertnamehere]

HOV lanes, yes.

 

[MrsNesbitt]

HOV lanes, yes.

HOV will be useless. 400-series highways that carry busy GO bus routes need a GO bus-only lane in each direction. That alone would be enough to vastly speed up a lot of inter-city travel until more rail service gets implemented.

Insert, I respect you very much for going into planning in school - given a different life and circumstances it's something that I would've likely chosen for myself too. But that notwithstanding, you place a very high degree of confidence in the efficacy of widening our 400-series highways. It's no secret that we suffer from an incredible amount of latent demand for road capacity in the GTHA, and that a lot of people will only push through the longer travel times and crowding of our transit network because they feel that it's their only option - they would drive, if only traffic were not so bad. Given that the MTO still gleefully spends large sums of money widening our roads, all we're ending up doing is encouraging those people to get off of transit and into their cars instead. And we don't want or need that. Let's focus on getting more drivers who have the choice between driving and transit out of their cars, so that those who live / work further afield and don't have the transit option have it a bit easier on our roads, and so that we lessen the environmental impact of our auto-dependent culture.

Sometimes you need to break something to fix it - or maybe just let it go to ruin before anyone will become willing to fix it. Proper GO RER between Toronto and KW, or the HSR proposal for Toronto-London via KW, are real fixes to a real problem. Widening the 401 is just a band-aid to a much larger issue.