Despite the passion behind them, councillor wishes for the more road widening aren’t making much progress with provincial authorities. Queen’s Park’s recent cancellation of the long-planned GTA West 413 expressway and a letter to Hamilton from the Minister of Transportation Steven Del Duca indicate the era of more roads is coming to an end.
The correspondence from the Minister was quietly received at the most recent city council meeting. It said that future widening of the QEW and 403 requested by Hamilton are “dependent on further review and prioritization of expansion needs across the province”. Without those expansions, city staff say there’s no sense in trying to widen municipal expressways like the Red Hill Parkway.
“Until the MTO improves the interchanges at the QEW and the number of lanes there and at the 403, it would be somewhat pointless to widen our facilities because the bottlenecks would still be in place,” the city’s manager of traffic operations told councillors in mid-January. “I think we have to sort of plan our facility to match the timing for their widening.”
The Del Duca letter responded to one from Mayor Eisenberger last October that the council had ordered. The city pleaded that the province give “high priority” to “the expansion of Highway 403 from two to three lanes between the Lincoln Alexander Parkway and Main Street both down bound and up bound.”
Del Duca noted that such widening had been recommended a few years ago by the larger study that rejected a new mid-peninsula highway (also still demanded by the city) but that the “recommendations are subject to environmental assessments and approvals before implementation [and] timing to initiate this next phase will be dependent on further review and prioritization of expansion needs across the province.”
Eisenberger’s October letter also pushed “that the Ministry re-prioritize upgrades to the Highway 5 and 6 interchange within the next five years.” A full interchange at Clappison’s Corners with a 2006 price tag of $75 million has been a city priority for well over a decade but it’s still not under construction.
Del Duca’s letter says it is “planned for 2022 and beyond” and that “timing to initiate construction will be dependent on the future review and prioritization of important infrastructure needs across the province.” Waterdown councillor Judi Partridge was happy with this delay despite having supported the October council decision to push for re-prioritization.
“I am very pleased to see that it is still in the design stages and is not going to be on the books until after 2022 for consideration,” Partridge told the February 15 council meeting. “It may not be on the books at that point but for my residents who are listening this is something we want to make sure we have all the infrastructure in place that should be in place by 2022 before we start construction.”
Partridge is the Liberal government candidate in the June 6 provincial election – running against councillor Donna Skelly of the Progressive Conservatives.
The provincial focus is clearly on expanding transit like LRT but some Hamilton councillors either haven’t gotten that message or don’t like it. Early in February, Queen’s Park abandoned the proposed Highway 413 from Milton to Vaughan that would have passed through Caledon well north of the 407 and that also dates back more than a decade.
The advocacy group Environmental Defence enthused that the cancellation “shows that there is growing provincial recognition that building complete communities rather than highway-led planning is better for our health, our shared climate and our wallet.” A provincial statement said the decision “accepted an expert advisory panel's recommendation that a proposed highway in the GTA West corridor is not the best way to address changing transportation needs” and said Ontario will protect a much smaller corridor for new transit.
The decision came less than a month after Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner advised the province that more road building is counter-productive.
“In theory, making more roads for traffic could reduce congestion if traffic volumes did not increase, but in practice congestion does not drop in busy areas with pent up or growing demand, such as the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area,” explained Commissioner Dianne Saxe. “Opening new road capacity in busy areas briefly reduces congestion, which encourages more people to drive and to drive farther; this increases traffic until congestion chokes it again.”