Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
The cost of a 52 km divided highway on the outskirts of the Toronto built up area will be astronomical. An infrastructure project that's this big has to have a long history and a need that everyone accepts is critical to avoiding a collapse elsewhere in the system. The Ontario Line, for example, was built off the a decades-old idea of a relief line that avoids capacity of the critical Yonge subway line from breaking down. The 413 is the highway equivalent of the Ontario Line in terms of cost and complexity, but it doesn't quite have the same pressing need.
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I mean the province built 60km of extremely high-quality highway for the 407 East on the edge of the GTA not even 10 years ago. It cost them $4 billion at the time. Expensive, but far from astronomical, that's roughly half the cost of the Ontario Line.
MTO had originally planned the 413 to be built in the ~2030 timeline, not now, as it was indeed seen as a "further range" need. Dougs politics has moved it's priority up however after the Liberals dumped the entire project in 2017. Given how politics works, I don't think the highway will ever get built if it doesn't happen under this government, so it's important for it to happen now for that very reason.