Quote:
Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
The highest traffic component of the highway is expected to be between the 400 and 427 as it allows vehicles to bypass the central part of the 401, which is the most consistently congested stretch of provincial highway in the province. Original planning had only that stretch being 6 lanes, with the remaining part of the highway as 4 lanes (this has since been revised for the entire highway to be 6 lanes).
It serves more than just trucks going from Barrie to Milton (of which there are actually quite a few), but also trucks going from anywhere along the 400 to basically anywhere west of the 427.
A vehicle going from the Honda Plant in Alliston to, say, Oakville today currently needs to go down the 400, across the 401 through central Toronto, down the 427, then across the QEW. With the 413, that trip will bypass the central 401 on the 413 and 427.
Network connections are more complex than just where the highway starts and ends.
If you read into the 413 highway justification reports, most travel time savings from the highway are expected to come from reduced arterial road congestion in Vaughan and Brampton, actually. The 413 will be a massive service to industrial areas in Bolton, Brampton, and Vaughan, which right now have insane amounts of trucks stuck on roads like Airport Road and Highway 50.
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I used to be more familiar with regional planning from an employment lands/goods movement pov so my knowledge is a bit out of date, but these general trends persist:
Almost all of the growth in "logistics heavy" employment and employment lands - warehouse/fulfillment centres, vehicle assembly and parts, etc. - has been on the western edge of the GTA, specifically in Brampton, Milton, Bolton, northern Mississauga, western Vaughan near the 427, etc. There hasn't been much growth in these kinds of industries/employment in northern and eastern York region, or to the east (Durham), or in Simcoe and points north for that matter. There's growth, of course, but not relative to what's been happening on the west side.
I'm sure there's quite a bit of demand for private cars to bypass the 401 between the 400 and 427, but (a) I don't think we should be prioritizing new highway builds to accommodate single occupancy vehicle travel, and, (b) there's always the 407 for that stuff. It's expensive, but it's there.
I am not one of those people who is reflexively anti-highway, but I think new highways should primarily be oriented around goods movement, and the next priority should be to build a highway to relieve an over-capacity surface road, particularly one with no alternatives. So I'm pro the Bradford Bypass even though it's not much of a goods mover, and I was pro the 401 widening through Milton from a goods movement perspective, but I'm only "agnostic" about the 413. If it goes ahead, that's okay, but I'll kind of lament the loss of the Humber river valley around Nasheville conservation area. If it doesn't go ahead, then, I'm not too bummed out.
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