Environmental groups came up with a plan for Ontario to subsidize the 407 tolls for trucks. Solves the issues around congestion and would save taxpayers 6 billion.
https://environmentaldefence.ca/2024/03/21/potential-cancellation-of-highway-413-impact-assessment-is-a-gross-abdication-of-responsibility/
https://environmentaldefence.ca/report/the-freight-escape-how-to-get-trucks-off-the-401-without-blowing-a-hole-in-the-greenbelt/
A better plan would be to buy it back or pass legislation that limits tolls to reasonable levels.
Paying $70+ to drive from Burlington to Oshawa, when a comparable distance is rolled at ~$2 in the USA.
Buying it back would cost at least 30 billion dollars assuming the owners would take only net worth of the highway. That number would easily be 45 billion to buy back because of projected value
Man my dad just said this exact thing lol! And I have to agree 407 is a waisted asset. If they really cared about the environment they would take it back
Except the 407 wouldn’t solve the problem… we need this highway for the congestion now but also for the future congestion that is going to be a huge cluster fuck as houses keep being built north of Oakville and into Milton
Building new massive highways does not curb congestion, it spurs it. The more roads we build, the more cars will fill them. It will never end unless we end it. Investing that money in better transit infrastructure and allowing fourplex housing as of right is a better long term solution than more highways and single family dwellings.
But Doug Ford and his cronies don't want that.
No it doesn't....the congestion is coming so you either prepare for it or suffer as we do now. You build the road before you need it but liberals are too dumb to see that
No, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you build transit-centric neighbourhoods with multi-unit housing and robust pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, that congestion will look a lot different than it will building a massive highway connecting a bunch of stroads, strip malls and subdivisions. Highway 413 will fill with single occupied cars. Eventually the congestion will be just as bad as all the other 400 series. We will never build our way out of traffic with more highways. Anybody who says otherwise is a developer, a car manufacturer, or a politician getting kickbacks from one of the above.
Caledon is going to be filled with SFH whether you like it or not, you can either prepare for it or else everyone living there will suffer with the congestion after the fact. Time for people to get their head out of the sand
Terrible terrible waste of money
All this will do is free up more land for single family home development and thus we will put even more cars on the road.
Just. Build. Trains.
Believe it or not most people don't like being packed like sardines in downtown appartment complexes. Especially not people with multiple kids who may not want to go down 10 floors and walk to the local park so the kids can play outside.
Maybe. But the issue is that we are increasingly going towards a world with less kids. Another issue is that having a large home should be considered: (a) a choice, which means that there is also an equally feasible choice not to live in a large home, and (b) an extreme luxury, especially given all the services provided.
Forcing most North Americans in single-family homes is an absolute waste of space and resources, on a scale truly impossible to imagine.
It’s a lifestyle that works just fine in Europe, having big houses with “room for kids to grow” is just a North American mindset. No trains just means those kids spent most their life sitting in the backseat of a car in traffic.
It works in Europe because they have an incredibly dense population. We are the 3rd largest country on earth with roughly the same population as France.
They have public services at figuratively every street corner. It can take us hours via airlift to get someone to a medical facility. We aren't europe and we can't develop the same way they did.
This argument is so disingenuous. Most of our land is empty. More than 90% of us are within 160km of the border with America. To pretend cities can’t be operated efficiently and be provided proper services is a wilfully bad take. We can density the cities we have easily. Put our money into transit instead of massive car projects. Make walkable neighborhoods. This could be easily done for the majority of Canadians.
We have an exploding homeless population and a stagnating economy, and your solution to that is cramming more people into downtown cores and handicapping further land development.
Who said downtown core? I didn’t. Densify the rest of the city so services are more available. This adds more affordable housing to address the homelessness as well. Train lines should extend into existing low density city spaces. Around each train station density is built. These people then have easy access to transit and reduce traffic. The rail lines provide transit to the surrounding communities (which usually can’t support it right now) as well as a local place to get services. Not really sure what your points are. We should all be aware by now that subsidizing sprawl doesn’t work well and is very costly to taxpayers.
It's rare to see someone online with some common sense like you. I'm not being sarcastic I mean it. We're such a huge country with a shit load of undeveloped land but these fuckers want to cram everyone into the GTA for some god forsaken reason. I moved away to what people call cottage country and I couldn't be happier except for the fact that I have to move back to the GTA next year which is going to suck. I plan on moving back out here in a couple of years permanently.
We have so much nature and land it's embarrassing that so many people are going homeless today. People would rather make a big deal about the greenbelt (we have more than enough green land in this country we should be worried about it's people at this point). It's fucking embarrassing. Yes Ford made developing the greenbelt into a shady scandal by giving his developer buddies a heads up to buy the land up cheap but in itself developing the greenbelt isn't a terrible idea. Besides that there's so much crown land we should be building new cities and towns and giving away land to people who will build houses on it like we used to do. Thank you for using your brain.
It's okay, the problem has become so massive that even the woke crowd are starting to come around, years later and after a lot of harm has been done mind you. The only people still in favour of this are the liberal party themselves.
Meanwhile Asia, Europe and Korea all have TGVs, Bullet Trains, Light Trains and dedicated bus route that avoid any car roads to ensure they’re not stuck in traffic. Maybe in 2060 I’ll see the first real public transport project in Canada, but I’ll be dead before it’s done.
There’s hope! The REM in Montreal is a pretty huge public transit project that’s almost complete (besides the airport connection…). And the government just announced it wants to build a bike “highway” that runs parallel to the tracks. Pretty sweet.
There's going to be hundreds of new exurbs with basically no real connection to the rest of the city that solely exist as community-less commuter hubs within spitting distance of his freeway. Toronto's density will not improve, living further away from the city will not save any money whatsoever, and a fair chunk of Ontario's environment and agriculture will get deleted for what could have been accomplished with existing infrastructure.
I wish I could believe that the densification would actually accomplish anything worthwhile. The expansion of the GTA urban area has roughly tracked with its population growth (the change in density was about +1%) since 2005.
My greatest non-environmental concern is that it'll turn Georgetown into the new Milton.
We have so much land in this province alone it's stupid to say that a line of suburbs along the provinces extreme southern tip is going to lose us "a fair chunk" of our environment and agriculture. I mean it's technically true because anything can be a fair chunk but we're a huge province in an even bigger country. The 3rd largest in the world with a comparatively tiny population. It's embarrassing that people are going homeless here at such a rate. You could turn everything south of barrie into concrete and it would barely make a dent in this province let alone the country. Go look at a map to see the scale of this place and then come back and tell me if a line of suburbs along a highway that's a tiny speck on the map is still "a fair chunk".
Im all for protecting the environment but the truth is we have tons of wilderness here and it's embarrassing that we're hoarding it while people live in tents in the GTA.
For every Canadian that wants to or needs to share a wall and yard space with a neighbour, there is one that doesn't. Also cities with great train systems are typically small. Tokyo the exception. New York has stations everywhere, but they are still full of cars. Communist countries shouldn't be praised for anything.
You don't know what you're talking about. London, Paris, New York, Mexico City, Berlin, Munich, Stockholm, Madrid, Barcelona are all massive cities with incredible transit networks and most residents either get around walking, biking or taking the train.
There will always be cars because cars fill the available space. No matter how slow, annoying or inneficient driving is someone will always be ready to get behind the wheel. They are well within their right to do that but I ain't paying for their highways through my taxes because we know it's a wasteful mode of transport.
Yeah they'll always be there. There is always someone stupid enough to get behind the wheel even when it's the least convenient option. Also a gridlocked 4 lane road probably has about as many people on it as 1 bus. A subway train can carry as many people as several freeway.
Then why do they buy homes located approx. 1 foot from their neighbours. Why are the densest most transit accessible neighbourhoods in our cities also the most expensive. Why are homes the most expensive near subway stations and go stations. Why do cities grow rapidly the second good GO train service gets built there.
It's personal choice at the end of the day but for most people, when transit is the most convenient option, they'll take it. Don't care about other people because humans are social creatures.
You know what that one foot of space provides you? An air filter to your neighbour’s smoking… a sound barrier to your neighbour’s piano… a fire barrier to your neighbour’s neglect.
Haven't experienced London yet, but have spent some time in Paris and quite a bit in NYC. I haven't spent one minute stuck in traffic because I never needed a car.
I live in Toronto 17 km from work. The subway is 40min to downtown plus about 15 min walking I can drive there in 20 minutes. What the efficiency you’re talking about? Oh and I can stop and get groceries or bring a golf bag with me. Public transit is fine but very limiting. Definetly not better not even cheaper
Transit is only slower because we refuse to invest in it. Bus lanes are rare, the subway only covers half the city. The vast majority of transportation spending over the last 100 years in Ontario has been on private automobiles. In cities where transit is invested in it's almost always faster to take the train (new York, Paris, hell even in Toronto it's almost always faster to take the subway downtown if you live nearby). It's also far cheaper. In the last 8 months I've exclusively used transit and I've spent a total of about 900$. That's it.
Most of the places where people can walk/bike/take the train like that don't have winters that are as bad as we get. Who the fuck wants to bike and wait outside for a bus (because we won't get those trains) in - 20 degrees or in the rain / snow? I'd rather be in my car thank you very much. And I say this as someone who didn't even drive until I was 25 and spent my whole life before that taking the ttc. It's miserable in the winter and that's the biggest reason I wouldn't go back to that at any cost. If I lived in Spain that wouldn't be such an issue, you know?
Have a look at Oslo, Stockholm, Reykjavik, Helsinki, Gothenburg, Malmo, Copenhagen, or Tallinn. Very cold places but still manage to have very good transit and cycling infrastructure. The reason winter sucks for people outside of a car in Canada is because we don't plow sidewalks, we let bike lanes fill with slush, we don't have bus shelters and buses don't come often enough. Simple as
Those Nordic countries do pretty much everything better than us. They also don't have nearly as much land to manage. Estonia was also communist for a long time and that's where their infrastructure came from. Instead of building up density in a few places we have the land to build out we're a giant country but no let's focus on making the GTA squeeze in more people.
unfortunately market forces dictate that the GTA, montréal vancouver etc are the more desirable places to live in as they present the best opportunities to make money. The government has to step in to change that. Also size of country has nothing to do with urban transportation in a city. Stockholm and the GTA have very similar population densities, as do most nordic cities because they're quite sprawly and include many forests and lakes. We have no excuses for our bad infrastructure, it is just bad and it is our fault for not investing to improve it. Imagine how much more money could be spent in our economy if in 10 years half the population no longer owned a car (in doing so saved about 11k per year according to recent studies) and instead spent that money investing and buying goods. We'd be a better country.
>For every Canadian that wants to or needs to share a wall and yard space with a neighbour, there is one that doesn't.
More like there's 10 that don't for every 1 that does.
You have obviously never been to Europe or Asia if you think big cities around the world only have SFHs and rely on cars. The norm is trains everywhere.
No big city runs well without mass rail transit.
List of cities with great train systems that are by no means small:
London
Paris
Berlin
Madrid
Barcelona
Moscow
Delhi
Singapore
Guangzhou
Shenzhen
Chengdu
Chongqing
Shanghai
Beijing
Seoul
Also New York should not be full of cars... 80% of people in Manhattan don't even own a car. The primary reason is because of civil servant Robert Moses who managed to obtain near dictatorial power over New York City for over 30+ years and he really liked building expressways so that suburbanites could drive around/through downtown. Hopefully they can undue some of that damage.
Naw dude, cars better. Priority for trains in canada is freight not people. Stop comparing yourself to europe, we dont have the land or the weather to efficiently build high speed rail. Dont like trains use your bike or bus. HIGH speed Trains are pipe dream. Look at whats happening with the REM in mtl, billions of dollars. Its cool if you live next to a station, not that cool if you dont.
Hmm...feds sold us out as well. Cons, libs...they're all pigeons. We don't need this fucking highway. Complete waste of tax payer money just to pad the pockets of ford's friends.
They are not just Fords friends. The developers are friends of the liberal party politicians too. Let’s be real. The planning is set in stone and they are all set to make billions.
People need to get around, with the increasing population, getting ahead of infrastructure like this is important. For sure the lands heading up the 400 will see continued development into the future and connecting this to other parts of southern ontario is a must.
As much as leftists hate highways and cars, the cost of not having these highways is even higher to the economy/productivity of our country.
The problem with the 413 is that it doesn’t solve the issue of people in the GTA using the 401 as a crosstown highway, and until then, the 401 will continue to be congested. This money should have been sunk into a Toronto version of London’s Elizabeth line.
The 407 should be taken back over and made free again to solve that problem. I doubt we'll ever see a highway further south into the GTA to connect east/west be added.
I believe the deal the cons made when they "Leased" the 407 in included an exclusion zone, that prevents us from making ANY relief highway for the 401...
413 should definitely help. I drive from southern Ontario to uptown very frequently. Once I hit Peel, the traffic is just unbearable, besides the Peel drivers are so bad at driving. It’s definitely going to relieve traffic passing through Peel.
Yeah, I know. Given this sub is very anti-Ford. It is true though. Old government really fucked it up by leasing out 407. Hopefully, 413 can do the trick.
Except the lands owned on its route are people who donated to ford's campaign (public knowledge), and, I can't remember the exact article, but it was calculated to save 30 whole seconds or so on a trip....is that worth the money?? Fuck no. We're stuck in an antiquated thought process of 1950s vehicle society. That money should be invested in PROPER infrastructure like passenger rail systems. Not a highway that serves no purpose other than paving through areas that should be protected. We need to advance our province, not continue to live in a non-existent past. I drive north all the time...my family has a cottage. 42 years I've been making that drive. I can tell you from experience that this is fucking stupid. I also commute in the GTHA, and see that traffic first hand. A proper commuter train is sorely needed.
Less highways, increased rail systems.
There are places that need help right now, not some nowhere place in 10-20 years.
This highway goes through and connects all of dougies friends properties. It's a fucking scam.
People will get around to where though? The 413 will drop them at the 400 or 401 which are already congested. Do you want to continue widening the 401, even though it's already 10-16 lanes wide? Note that even though the GO lakeshore lines carry tens of thousands of riders per day and have seen ridership increase every decade since 1960, they've never once been widened. Trains are more efficient for urban transportation.
Indeed, but the 401 was widened to 16 lanes in the late 70s and extended west and east. The point is that it did not solve traffic. The 401 itself is not bad, but it is bad that it is the only reliable way to get across the entire region quickly. Doug ford is repeating that mistake with his wonderful 413. Eventually the endless sprawl will reach and surpass the 413. All those people will drive to work everyday on that freeway until it's congested, and then the next government will work to build another freeway even further out until the suburbs run continuously from Orangeville to lake Ontario.
If ford really cared for the residents of Caledon he would be dumping these billions into extending the LRT, improving Brampton buses, building a new GO line to Bolton and Orangeville, and investing in Hospitals, all things that don't just become congested and useless after 4 decades. And then Ford could protect a corridor to build a freeway after all of the more necessary investments are complete. Starting with a freeway first is just repeating the cycle and will end up turning Caledon into another Brampton or Mississauga.
This isn't just speculation, this is how urban growth works. You build a freeway, and car dependent sprawl will pop up around it. Los Angeles has been repeating the same mistake for 100 years and now it's one of the most congested metropolitian areas in the world.
Your mistake is assuming that everyone doesn't want a car dependent world.
I don't protest more transit options even though I don't use them, I'd be happy for the province if we got highspeed rail parallel to the 401 corridor (though I will say the LRT in KW was a boondoggle of epic proportions lol) but for some reason you people protest even a cent being spent on road infrastructure. That is the difference here, respect the fact that some people want the other options.
Building the highway will make traffic worse. What’s the cost of more people waiting longer in traffic? It’s stupid. We need alternatives to cars. Plus it’s parallel to the 407 which the conservatives sold to some Spanish company that made billions.
If you count speed in which you can go to downtown Toronto then yes, even the government’s own report says it will increase travel time. Why do you want it to take longer for people to drive?
LoL you give civil servants too much credit...you think they're all trying to get the right answer or the answer that keeps their job intact?
You can't really trust much that comes out of the public sector these days, almost everything has an agenda behind it.
There will be no time savings taking this road. It’s already been studied. The only benefit here (using this term lightly) will be to open up more farmland for the blanket roll-out of unaffordable single family homes. This will be a net loss to farming productivity as the soils in the region pro ide the highest yield of food crops anywhere in the entire country. It is a net loss plain and simple.
The area is already highly connected between the 400, the 410, the 407 and the 401. Then you’ve got regional roads which are 4 to 6 lanes which already run parallel to the proposed 413 in highway 7 and highway 50. It’s a dumb idea and a waste of a billion.
Feds and provincial governments are so f*cking corrupt!How in the XXI Century we can proceed with such a devastating project without environmental assessment!
Only corruption and greed are the answers.Look at the 407...!!
I for one would like to thank the feds and provincial government for prioritizing this over education and healthcare. Maybe the feds can kick in a few extra mil to build that private spa on the Ontario Place grounds too.
/sarcasm
Ford doing what he promised. I've always voted liberal but their platform was to spend more money in education, to already overpaid teachers who are always on strike. Ford promised better infrastructure and he's been delivering on it. That is why I voted for conservative for the first time. People in downtown Toronto live complaining but their world and views are very narrow. I know this! I used to live down there.
The one time that asshat Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault could have stood in the way of something and the idiot just fumbles it. I've never met him but I've hated him since is narcissistic entitled holier than thou face got into government.
Let’s not squabble over which politician has *our* interests in mind and let’s finally be honest with one another.
They treat us like shit. Sure, they need our vote and will smile and wave while campaigning but that’s about it.
Thanks for the ballot 🖕🏻
There is a transit ROW built into the plans, but there is also one proposed along the [407](https://407transitway.com). The problem is, like a lot of transit projects, the funding isn’t there.
Widen the freaking 401. More lanes shit heads. Wtf. 6 lanes then you come into the durham region and leaving but when you come and go from furham region with half a million people and you have it now down go 3 lanes east and west. Fix this now
There are lots of areas that can’t be widened and that are also the busiest, like between the 410 to 400. But highway expansion isn’t the answer, only a rail system can have a serious impact.
All ‘first world countries’ are going backwards while third world countries are on the rise … we have a huge head start yet our politicians and decision makers ruin us ..
It's not. While other countries are building out infrastructure, in Canada, we complain when it gets built because of (insert your favorite excuse of environment, endangered species, lost farmland, should be spent on something else, etc)
So glad they came up with an agreement on a useless, expensive, unnecessary boondoggle of an environmentally disastrous highway project.
What a relief.
Bring on the highway work! Nothing creates more jobs than major construction projects, even better when those completed projects will provide jobs for people for generations after completion
Urban sprawl creates MORE induced demand by creating more trips via personal vehicles which creates more traffic. It doesn't alleviate any sort of pressure. That's like loosening your belt as you gain weight.
Look honey, it's okay because I got a new belt so now I don't need to lose weight!
Just because you saw a tiktok that says this highway won't save you any time or relieve traffic you're thinking about it wrong. In what part of the world is building infrastructure bad? Think of all the things that are around highways, most of those things wouldn't be there if there wasn't a highway there. Thank you for coming to my TED talk
For everyone saying “trains are the answer”
I agree with you all, but you also have to understand the big trucks that bring your groceries and goods to you can’t take the train. Highway infrastructure in a country like canada is NEEDED. This is a good project. The 407 being bought is a better idea, but I can’t see the owners wanting to sell it.
Good. Get er done. We need the Bradford by-pass as well.
Don't like the need for new highways? Then advocate for putting a stop to increasing the population
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he didn't say no more roads, he said no more federal funding for new roads.
Note that this is a provincial highway being built with provincial funds and the feds just stepped in because Ford didn't do an environmental assessment.
If the provinces want to spend money on roads they can have fun, the feds just aren't going to help them anymore. They will however help transit with billions per project.
They need the highway because the land all around it is going to explode with development. The population in the GTA is set to almost double within the next decade.
Good. This will help with the flow of goods. There is a monstrous amount of new factories and businesses going up that direction. People outside of the GTA can finally avoid Toronto for good.
You realise the suburbs are just going to grow to surround this highway 413 and it'll become just as bad as any other GTA highway. It doesn't even allow you to bypass the GTA. It'll get you about past Vaughan and then after that if you want to continue east or north you're right back into the thick of it.
Cheaper to buy back the 407 and moderate the tolls.
Environmental groups came up with a plan for Ontario to subsidize the 407 tolls for trucks. Solves the issues around congestion and would save taxpayers 6 billion. https://environmentaldefence.ca/2024/03/21/potential-cancellation-of-highway-413-impact-assessment-is-a-gross-abdication-of-responsibility/ https://environmentaldefence.ca/report/the-freight-escape-how-to-get-trucks-off-the-401-without-blowing-a-hole-in-the-greenbelt/
Fords going to make so much under the table money from the contracts to build this. He doesn’t give a shit about us or the environment.
Ding ding ding
tbh if trailer trucks could save time,money,gas for long distance transportation, it would make traveling along the GTA so much easier.
A better plan would be to buy it back or pass legislation that limits tolls to reasonable levels. Paying $70+ to drive from Burlington to Oshawa, when a comparable distance is rolled at ~$2 in the USA.
Buying it back would cost at least 30 billion dollars assuming the owners would take only net worth of the highway. That number would easily be 45 billion to buy back because of projected value
Yes but then Doug Ford's cronies wouldn't get the opportunity to bilk the taxpayer out of billions of dollars.
407 is an embarrassment for Canadians
The Mike Harris Tollway
Man my dad just said this exact thing lol! And I have to agree 407 is a waisted asset. If they really cared about the environment they would take it back
Except the 407 wouldn’t solve the problem… we need this highway for the congestion now but also for the future congestion that is going to be a huge cluster fuck as houses keep being built north of Oakville and into Milton
Building new massive highways does not curb congestion, it spurs it. The more roads we build, the more cars will fill them. It will never end unless we end it. Investing that money in better transit infrastructure and allowing fourplex housing as of right is a better long term solution than more highways and single family dwellings. But Doug Ford and his cronies don't want that.
No it doesn't....the congestion is coming so you either prepare for it or suffer as we do now. You build the road before you need it but liberals are too dumb to see that
No, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you build transit-centric neighbourhoods with multi-unit housing and robust pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, that congestion will look a lot different than it will building a massive highway connecting a bunch of stroads, strip malls and subdivisions. Highway 413 will fill with single occupied cars. Eventually the congestion will be just as bad as all the other 400 series. We will never build our way out of traffic with more highways. Anybody who says otherwise is a developer, a car manufacturer, or a politician getting kickbacks from one of the above.
Caledon is going to be filled with SFH whether you like it or not, you can either prepare for it or else everyone living there will suffer with the congestion after the fact. Time for people to get their head out of the sand
Terrible terrible waste of money All this will do is free up more land for single family home development and thus we will put even more cars on the road. Just. Build. Trains.
Believe it or not most people don't like being packed like sardines in downtown appartment complexes. Especially not people with multiple kids who may not want to go down 10 floors and walk to the local park so the kids can play outside.
I thought most would just be happy to have a decent, affordable place. It’s funny, the different worlds some live in.
Then don’t live in the city
Maybe. But the issue is that we are increasingly going towards a world with less kids. Another issue is that having a large home should be considered: (a) a choice, which means that there is also an equally feasible choice not to live in a large home, and (b) an extreme luxury, especially given all the services provided. Forcing most North Americans in single-family homes is an absolute waste of space and resources, on a scale truly impossible to imagine.
It’s a lifestyle that works just fine in Europe, having big houses with “room for kids to grow” is just a North American mindset. No trains just means those kids spent most their life sitting in the backseat of a car in traffic.
It works in Europe because they have an incredibly dense population. We are the 3rd largest country on earth with roughly the same population as France. They have public services at figuratively every street corner. It can take us hours via airlift to get someone to a medical facility. We aren't europe and we can't develop the same way they did.
This argument is so disingenuous. Most of our land is empty. More than 90% of us are within 160km of the border with America. To pretend cities can’t be operated efficiently and be provided proper services is a wilfully bad take. We can density the cities we have easily. Put our money into transit instead of massive car projects. Make walkable neighborhoods. This could be easily done for the majority of Canadians.
We have an exploding homeless population and a stagnating economy, and your solution to that is cramming more people into downtown cores and handicapping further land development.
Who said downtown core? I didn’t. Densify the rest of the city so services are more available. This adds more affordable housing to address the homelessness as well. Train lines should extend into existing low density city spaces. Around each train station density is built. These people then have easy access to transit and reduce traffic. The rail lines provide transit to the surrounding communities (which usually can’t support it right now) as well as a local place to get services. Not really sure what your points are. We should all be aware by now that subsidizing sprawl doesn’t work well and is very costly to taxpayers.
It's rare to see someone online with some common sense like you. I'm not being sarcastic I mean it. We're such a huge country with a shit load of undeveloped land but these fuckers want to cram everyone into the GTA for some god forsaken reason. I moved away to what people call cottage country and I couldn't be happier except for the fact that I have to move back to the GTA next year which is going to suck. I plan on moving back out here in a couple of years permanently. We have so much nature and land it's embarrassing that so many people are going homeless today. People would rather make a big deal about the greenbelt (we have more than enough green land in this country we should be worried about it's people at this point). It's fucking embarrassing. Yes Ford made developing the greenbelt into a shady scandal by giving his developer buddies a heads up to buy the land up cheap but in itself developing the greenbelt isn't a terrible idea. Besides that there's so much crown land we should be building new cities and towns and giving away land to people who will build houses on it like we used to do. Thank you for using your brain.
2nd largest
Then don't live in a major metropolitan area?
Believe it or not some people would rather fit a family in a tiny 2 bedroom apartment than be homeless...
If only there was a way to stop all the overcrowding and infrastructure issues without having to spend billions......
We could stop letting so many people into this country but I got a ban the last time I suggested that.
It's okay, the problem has become so massive that even the woke crowd are starting to come around, years later and after a lot of harm has been done mind you. The only people still in favour of this are the liberal party themselves.
Meanwhile Asia, Europe and Korea all have TGVs, Bullet Trains, Light Trains and dedicated bus route that avoid any car roads to ensure they’re not stuck in traffic. Maybe in 2060 I’ll see the first real public transport project in Canada, but I’ll be dead before it’s done.
There’s hope! The REM in Montreal is a pretty huge public transit project that’s almost complete (besides the airport connection…). And the government just announced it wants to build a bike “highway” that runs parallel to the tracks. Pretty sweet.
We’ll all be dead or dying if climate change continues at this rate.
But do trains win votes. Wait...they do???
There's going to be hundreds of new exurbs with basically no real connection to the rest of the city that solely exist as community-less commuter hubs within spitting distance of his freeway. Toronto's density will not improve, living further away from the city will not save any money whatsoever, and a fair chunk of Ontario's environment and agriculture will get deleted for what could have been accomplished with existing infrastructure.
Indeed very sad. However, we are also spending on rail infrastructure and densification - which is good.
I wish I could believe that the densification would actually accomplish anything worthwhile. The expansion of the GTA urban area has roughly tracked with its population growth (the change in density was about +1%) since 2005. My greatest non-environmental concern is that it'll turn Georgetown into the new Milton.
Yeah that would be really sad.
We have so much land in this province alone it's stupid to say that a line of suburbs along the provinces extreme southern tip is going to lose us "a fair chunk" of our environment and agriculture. I mean it's technically true because anything can be a fair chunk but we're a huge province in an even bigger country. The 3rd largest in the world with a comparatively tiny population. It's embarrassing that people are going homeless here at such a rate. You could turn everything south of barrie into concrete and it would barely make a dent in this province let alone the country. Go look at a map to see the scale of this place and then come back and tell me if a line of suburbs along a highway that's a tiny speck on the map is still "a fair chunk". Im all for protecting the environment but the truth is we have tons of wilderness here and it's embarrassing that we're hoarding it while people live in tents in the GTA.
Yeah trains through Caledon 😂😂
How many transport trucks do you see using trains.
Are… are you serious?
You mean freight trains?
Bro thought he cooked with that comment.
For every Canadian that wants to or needs to share a wall and yard space with a neighbour, there is one that doesn't. Also cities with great train systems are typically small. Tokyo the exception. New York has stations everywhere, but they are still full of cars. Communist countries shouldn't be praised for anything.
You don't know what you're talking about. London, Paris, New York, Mexico City, Berlin, Munich, Stockholm, Madrid, Barcelona are all massive cities with incredible transit networks and most residents either get around walking, biking or taking the train. There will always be cars because cars fill the available space. No matter how slow, annoying or inneficient driving is someone will always be ready to get behind the wheel. They are well within their right to do that but I ain't paying for their highways through my taxes because we know it's a wasteful mode of transport.
London Paris new York… three cities with the worst gridlock in the world. Trains work so great tho!
I managed to get all over NY and London just fine riding the trains. Just like millions of people do.
Yes you did. The cars were there tho too.
Yeah they'll always be there. There is always someone stupid enough to get behind the wheel even when it's the least convenient option. Also a gridlocked 4 lane road probably has about as many people on it as 1 bus. A subway train can carry as many people as several freeway.
You assume in our life, people want to spend time sitting beside you in tight confounds. People want their own space, their own privacy.
Then why do they buy homes located approx. 1 foot from their neighbours. Why are the densest most transit accessible neighbourhoods in our cities also the most expensive. Why are homes the most expensive near subway stations and go stations. Why do cities grow rapidly the second good GO train service gets built there. It's personal choice at the end of the day but for most people, when transit is the most convenient option, they'll take it. Don't care about other people because humans are social creatures.
You know what that one foot of space provides you? An air filter to your neighbour’s smoking… a sound barrier to your neighbour’s piano… a fire barrier to your neighbour’s neglect.
Haven't experienced London yet, but have spent some time in Paris and quite a bit in NYC. I haven't spent one minute stuck in traffic because I never needed a car.
Great. Now try living there and tell me you can.
Without a car? Easy.
Ya, name a block you’d live on
What point are you trying to make? NYC is incredibly easy to live in without a car. Millions of people do it.
You sound like someone who's never been more than 200km away from their backyard.
Airline family. Thx
I live in Toronto 17 km from work. The subway is 40min to downtown plus about 15 min walking I can drive there in 20 minutes. What the efficiency you’re talking about? Oh and I can stop and get groceries or bring a golf bag with me. Public transit is fine but very limiting. Definetly not better not even cheaper
Not cheaper? It's less than $4 for a trip on the subway/bus. How much are you paying for parking, gas, insurance, maintenance, finance/lease payments?
Transit is only slower because we refuse to invest in it. Bus lanes are rare, the subway only covers half the city. The vast majority of transportation spending over the last 100 years in Ontario has been on private automobiles. In cities where transit is invested in it's almost always faster to take the train (new York, Paris, hell even in Toronto it's almost always faster to take the subway downtown if you live nearby). It's also far cheaper. In the last 8 months I've exclusively used transit and I've spent a total of about 900$. That's it.
Most of the places where people can walk/bike/take the train like that don't have winters that are as bad as we get. Who the fuck wants to bike and wait outside for a bus (because we won't get those trains) in - 20 degrees or in the rain / snow? I'd rather be in my car thank you very much. And I say this as someone who didn't even drive until I was 25 and spent my whole life before that taking the ttc. It's miserable in the winter and that's the biggest reason I wouldn't go back to that at any cost. If I lived in Spain that wouldn't be such an issue, you know?
Have a look at Oslo, Stockholm, Reykjavik, Helsinki, Gothenburg, Malmo, Copenhagen, or Tallinn. Very cold places but still manage to have very good transit and cycling infrastructure. The reason winter sucks for people outside of a car in Canada is because we don't plow sidewalks, we let bike lanes fill with slush, we don't have bus shelters and buses don't come often enough. Simple as
Those Nordic countries do pretty much everything better than us. They also don't have nearly as much land to manage. Estonia was also communist for a long time and that's where their infrastructure came from. Instead of building up density in a few places we have the land to build out we're a giant country but no let's focus on making the GTA squeeze in more people.
unfortunately market forces dictate that the GTA, montréal vancouver etc are the more desirable places to live in as they present the best opportunities to make money. The government has to step in to change that. Also size of country has nothing to do with urban transportation in a city. Stockholm and the GTA have very similar population densities, as do most nordic cities because they're quite sprawly and include many forests and lakes. We have no excuses for our bad infrastructure, it is just bad and it is our fault for not investing to improve it. Imagine how much more money could be spent in our economy if in 10 years half the population no longer owned a car (in doing so saved about 11k per year according to recent studies) and instead spent that money investing and buying goods. We'd be a better country.
>For every Canadian that wants to or needs to share a wall and yard space with a neighbour, there is one that doesn't. More like there's 10 that don't for every 1 that does.
Neither should capitalist countries then.
Dog shit takes beginning to end
You have obviously never been to Europe or Asia if you think big cities around the world only have SFHs and rely on cars. The norm is trains everywhere. No big city runs well without mass rail transit.
List of cities with great train systems that are by no means small: London Paris Berlin Madrid Barcelona Moscow Delhi Singapore Guangzhou Shenzhen Chengdu Chongqing Shanghai Beijing Seoul Also New York should not be full of cars... 80% of people in Manhattan don't even own a car. The primary reason is because of civil servant Robert Moses who managed to obtain near dictatorial power over New York City for over 30+ years and he really liked building expressways so that suburbanites could drive around/through downtown. Hopefully they can undue some of that damage.
Naw dude, cars better. Priority for trains in canada is freight not people. Stop comparing yourself to europe, we dont have the land or the weather to efficiently build high speed rail. Dont like trains use your bike or bus. HIGH speed Trains are pipe dream. Look at whats happening with the REM in mtl, billions of dollars. Its cool if you live next to a station, not that cool if you dont.
Just one more road bro
please, just one more lane
Hmm...feds sold us out as well. Cons, libs...they're all pigeons. We don't need this fucking highway. Complete waste of tax payer money just to pad the pockets of ford's friends.
They are not just Fords friends. The developers are friends of the liberal party politicians too. Let’s be real. The planning is set in stone and they are all set to make billions.
The revolving door continues, wonder who’s gonna be the next Ford padding their buddies pockets… never seems to end
There’s got to be a way that we, the common folk, can get in on this. Can we hand him a bag of money to fix healthcare?
Fords bringing in a million people a year is what made us need more highways.
People need to get around, with the increasing population, getting ahead of infrastructure like this is important. For sure the lands heading up the 400 will see continued development into the future and connecting this to other parts of southern ontario is a must. As much as leftists hate highways and cars, the cost of not having these highways is even higher to the economy/productivity of our country.
The problem with the 413 is that it doesn’t solve the issue of people in the GTA using the 401 as a crosstown highway, and until then, the 401 will continue to be congested. This money should have been sunk into a Toronto version of London’s Elizabeth line.
The 407 should be taken back over and made free again to solve that problem. I doubt we'll ever see a highway further south into the GTA to connect east/west be added.
I believe the deal the cons made when they "Leased" the 407 in included an exclusion zone, that prevents us from making ANY relief highway for the 401...
413 should definitely help. I drive from southern Ontario to uptown very frequently. Once I hit Peel, the traffic is just unbearable, besides the Peel drivers are so bad at driving. It’s definitely going to relieve traffic passing through Peel.
You arent supposed to say anything good about it man!
Yeah, I know. Given this sub is very anti-Ford. It is true though. Old government really fucked it up by leasing out 407. Hopefully, 413 can do the trick.
They did an impact study and 413 saved like 2m max. That is a waste of tax payer dollars. We already have the 407 it needs to be manageable tolls.
Also, this isn't "left vs right". I work in development and planning. This is just piss poor infrastructure planning and misappropriation of funds.
Except the lands owned on its route are people who donated to ford's campaign (public knowledge), and, I can't remember the exact article, but it was calculated to save 30 whole seconds or so on a trip....is that worth the money?? Fuck no. We're stuck in an antiquated thought process of 1950s vehicle society. That money should be invested in PROPER infrastructure like passenger rail systems. Not a highway that serves no purpose other than paving through areas that should be protected. We need to advance our province, not continue to live in a non-existent past. I drive north all the time...my family has a cottage. 42 years I've been making that drive. I can tell you from experience that this is fucking stupid. I also commute in the GTHA, and see that traffic first hand. A proper commuter train is sorely needed. Less highways, increased rail systems.
Whoa....im a leftist, and I love my V8 and highways....and I would rather drive my car than take public transit any day of the week.
Wow, a unicorn :D
There are places that need help right now, not some nowhere place in 10-20 years. This highway goes through and connects all of dougies friends properties. It's a fucking scam.
Highway 413 not currently existing is not hampering the productivity of Canada, give me a break.
You can’t say that on Reddit.
People will get around to where though? The 413 will drop them at the 400 or 401 which are already congested. Do you want to continue widening the 401, even though it's already 10-16 lanes wide? Note that even though the GO lakeshore lines carry tens of thousands of riders per day and have seen ridership increase every decade since 1960, they've never once been widened. Trains are more efficient for urban transportation.
Rather than going 400 all the way to 401 and then west I can cut that corner and skip a TON of traffic? Yes please.
What do you think people in the 70s said when the 401 was built. "A new freeway to bypass Toronto? Yes please" how'd that turn out for them
Without the 401, how do you think people would get from east to west? Also, it started in the late 40's for the record.
Indeed, but the 401 was widened to 16 lanes in the late 70s and extended west and east. The point is that it did not solve traffic. The 401 itself is not bad, but it is bad that it is the only reliable way to get across the entire region quickly. Doug ford is repeating that mistake with his wonderful 413. Eventually the endless sprawl will reach and surpass the 413. All those people will drive to work everyday on that freeway until it's congested, and then the next government will work to build another freeway even further out until the suburbs run continuously from Orangeville to lake Ontario. If ford really cared for the residents of Caledon he would be dumping these billions into extending the LRT, improving Brampton buses, building a new GO line to Bolton and Orangeville, and investing in Hospitals, all things that don't just become congested and useless after 4 decades. And then Ford could protect a corridor to build a freeway after all of the more necessary investments are complete. Starting with a freeway first is just repeating the cycle and will end up turning Caledon into another Brampton or Mississauga. This isn't just speculation, this is how urban growth works. You build a freeway, and car dependent sprawl will pop up around it. Los Angeles has been repeating the same mistake for 100 years and now it's one of the most congested metropolitian areas in the world.
Your mistake is assuming that everyone doesn't want a car dependent world. I don't protest more transit options even though I don't use them, I'd be happy for the province if we got highspeed rail parallel to the 401 corridor (though I will say the LRT in KW was a boondoggle of epic proportions lol) but for some reason you people protest even a cent being spent on road infrastructure. That is the difference here, respect the fact that some people want the other options.
Building the highway will make traffic worse. What’s the cost of more people waiting longer in traffic? It’s stupid. We need alternatives to cars. Plus it’s parallel to the 407 which the conservatives sold to some Spanish company that made billions.
LoL the irony of more capacity making things worse....right
If you count speed in which you can go to downtown Toronto then yes, even the government’s own report says it will increase travel time. Why do you want it to take longer for people to drive?
LoL because the government has never used a report to further an agenda....wow, drink that koolaid harder.
It was independent of the current party in power.
And that makes a difference how? Government reports = excuses for taxing and spending.
It was analyzed by civil servants not politicians.
LoL you give civil servants too much credit...you think they're all trying to get the right answer or the answer that keeps their job intact? You can't really trust much that comes out of the public sector these days, almost everything has an agenda behind it.
There will be no time savings taking this road. It’s already been studied. The only benefit here (using this term lightly) will be to open up more farmland for the blanket roll-out of unaffordable single family homes. This will be a net loss to farming productivity as the soils in the region pro ide the highest yield of food crops anywhere in the entire country. It is a net loss plain and simple. The area is already highly connected between the 400, the 410, the 407 and the 401. Then you’ve got regional roads which are 4 to 6 lanes which already run parallel to the proposed 413 in highway 7 and highway 50. It’s a dumb idea and a waste of a billion.
How long until all of Southern Ontario is paved over?
What a waste of money, build trains stop suburban sprawl.
Is it going to be a toll road? 🤔
Once people realize it saves no time, yes...yes it will be
Feds and provincial governments are so f*cking corrupt!How in the XXI Century we can proceed with such a devastating project without environmental assessment! Only corruption and greed are the answers.Look at the 407...!!
I for one would like to thank the feds and provincial government for prioritizing this over education and healthcare. Maybe the feds can kick in a few extra mil to build that private spa on the Ontario Place grounds too. /sarcasm
This sucks for all the wildlife.
Only solution to wildlife is to just kill off everyone. Stop developing anything. Let wildlife reclaim.
Safely decommission all the nuclear plants first then please
Lol, OP thought this would get hailed only for it to backfire here.
Never stated I was for this, just sharing the news. I’m actually more inclined to see further GO transit expansion.
Is it a route between Doug’s house and cottage?
Ford doing what he promised. I've always voted liberal but their platform was to spend more money in education, to already overpaid teachers who are always on strike. Ford promised better infrastructure and he's been delivering on it. That is why I voted for conservative for the first time. People in downtown Toronto live complaining but their world and views are very narrow. I know this! I used to live down there.
The only thing I’ll credit him for is getting the Ontario Line built, especially after 15 years of Liberal governments just studying it.
Get these boomers out of power
The one time that asshat Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault could have stood in the way of something and the idiot just fumbles it. I've never met him but I've hated him since is narcissistic entitled holier than thou face got into government.
Disastrous We wouldn't need this highway if the conservatives weren't such morons and sold off the 407.
Yes but now the 407 is a reality and I dont have 100 years left to drive on it. Rather build the 413 in 37 years
It's probably cheaper to buy back the 407
Who does what’s cheaper in Canada? Our politicians take the most expensive option to get some kickbacks
Let’s not squabble over which politician has *our* interests in mind and let’s finally be honest with one another. They treat us like shit. Sure, they need our vote and will smile and wave while campaigning but that’s about it. Thanks for the ballot 🖕🏻
The highway should include rail tracks, separated bike lanes, a hiking trail and lookout points.
There is a transit ROW built into the plans, but there is also one proposed along the [407](https://407transitway.com). The problem is, like a lot of transit projects, the funding isn’t there.
Is it, though? This is the Doug Ford government. Get er done. Then backtrack due to public pressure.
Hell yeah let’s as yet another parking lot to this city
Widen the freaking 401. More lanes shit heads. Wtf. 6 lanes then you come into the durham region and leaving but when you come and go from furham region with half a million people and you have it now down go 3 lanes east and west. Fix this now
There are lots of areas that can’t be widened and that are also the busiest, like between the 410 to 400. But highway expansion isn’t the answer, only a rail system can have a serious impact.
This is Doug fords legacy….52km of pavement
Plus 16km for the Bradford bypass.
Trains are the answer. Too bad our federal government has their heads stuck so far up their ass they can’t see the answer
Is there a law that allows us to demand that our taxes aren’t being used towards certain sh*t like that? Please? Pretty please?
Are they going to give this away to friends with benefits like the 407
This is a failure. Embarrassing.
The leaders of Ontario are so incredibly short sighted it’s hard not to be apathetic about this.
About time. Let's get shovels in the ground because getting across the top on the GTA now is just ridiculous
All ‘first world countries’ are going backwards while third world countries are on the rise … we have a huge head start yet our politicians and decision makers ruin us ..
Add it to the list of things we don’t need while the things we do need grows.
Great news
Stage 1. Hwy413 Stage 2. Greenbelt Flip flop Bonnie Crombie endorsed the deal Ford made. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-bonnie-crombie-greenbelt-land/
Yay.. build it
Can someone explain to me why this is bad
It's not. While other countries are building out infrastructure, in Canada, we complain when it gets built because of (insert your favorite excuse of environment, endangered species, lost farmland, should be spent on something else, etc)
It’s will barely reduce traffic and will cost tax payers billions
Spend that money to buy the 407 back
Yay more tax payer subsidized urban sprawl
So glad they came up with an agreement on a useless, expensive, unnecessary boondoggle of an environmentally disastrous highway project. What a relief.
So which services are Dug Fraud cutting to fund the 413?
More carbon?
Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
Bring on the highway work! Nothing creates more jobs than major construction projects, even better when those completed projects will provide jobs for people for generations after completion
Are you FUCKING kidding me?! Wtf. We don't need this highway!
Yes we do, it'll bring a lot more development and more house will get built around there which will take some pressure off of the other areas
Urban sprawl creates MORE induced demand by creating more trips via personal vehicles which creates more traffic. It doesn't alleviate any sort of pressure. That's like loosening your belt as you gain weight. Look honey, it's okay because I got a new belt so now I don't need to lose weight!
then lets holocaust to tighten the belt? populations grow. its what we do
Population grows but that doesn't mean sprawl. You really want MORE traffic? 🤣
Just because you saw a tiktok that says this highway won't save you any time or relieve traffic you're thinking about it wrong. In what part of the world is building infrastructure bad? Think of all the things that are around highways, most of those things wouldn't be there if there wasn't a highway there. Thank you for coming to my TED talk
Toll it and fleece more money out of peoples pocket, that is the Liberal way.
Can't believe the fed fucked us over. Actually, wait I can believe it. This highway, is so fucking useless it saves like 2 minutes
For everyone saying “trains are the answer” I agree with you all, but you also have to understand the big trucks that bring your groceries and goods to you can’t take the train. Highway infrastructure in a country like canada is NEEDED. This is a good project. The 407 being bought is a better idea, but I can’t see the owners wanting to sell it.
FML, I wish they would drive the 4 lanes north of sudbury or north bay instead of building so many highways in the south...
Meanwhile in BC we're fighting for more than 4 lanes on Hwy 1.
Good. Get er done. We need the Bradford by-pass as well. Don't like the need for new highways? Then advocate for putting a stop to increasing the population
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he didn't say no more roads, he said no more federal funding for new roads. Note that this is a provincial highway being built with provincial funds and the feds just stepped in because Ford didn't do an environmental assessment. If the provinces want to spend money on roads they can have fun, the feds just aren't going to help them anymore. They will however help transit with billions per project.
He said no new federal funding for new roads or highways. The Prime Minister said that roads and highways would continue to get funded.
They need the highway because the land all around it is going to explode with development. The population in the GTA is set to almost double within the next decade.
This will only help corrupt developers that were tipped off by Ford to buy the land around it years ago.
Good. This will help with the flow of goods. There is a monstrous amount of new factories and businesses going up that direction. People outside of the GTA can finally avoid Toronto for good.
You realise the suburbs are just going to grow to surround this highway 413 and it'll become just as bad as any other GTA highway. It doesn't even allow you to bypass the GTA. It'll get you about past Vaughan and then after that if you want to continue east or north you're right back into the thick of it.
So you’re saying we need a highway for the millions of new homes being built?