Ontarians could face bumper-to-bumper gridlock, even if the provincial government moves ahead with building Highway 413 and other new highways, according to internal Ministry of Transportation documents obtained by The Trillium through the freedom of information process.
Highway 413 is part of Ontario’s plan to expand highways and public transit across the Greater Golden Horseshoe (the urban region centred around the City of Toronto) — the province wants to build it to fight congestion and prepare for the massive population growth expected over the next three decades.
“We are delivering on our promise to build Highway 413 with a plan to fix gridlock and get drivers across Halton, Peel, and York regions where they need to go faster,” Premiere Doug Ford said at a press conference back in April.
But internal documents obtained by The Trillium — which include travel times, speeds, and congestion projections for 2041 under various scenarios — reportedly show that the province knows Highway 413 won’t end gridlock.
These documents contain maps that show very slow typical commute speeds on 400-series highways (speeds in the teens, 20s, 30s, and 40s km/hr range) both to and from Toronto during peak travel times in 2041 — this is regardless of whether Highway 413 has four, six, or eight lanes, and regardless of whether other Ministry of Transportation projects are completed.
Although the 413 was originally pitched as a four-to-six-lane highway, by 2041, it will be at or near capacity, and could grow to 10 lanes, this is according to notes dating back to 2022 from the Ministry of Transportation’s project team, as obtained by The Trillium through another freedom of information request.
Although Ford suggests that the 413 will save drivers up to an hour per day/five hours per week, an internal technical briefing from 2022 showed that out of 22,400 drivers expected to use Highway 413 during morning rush hour (from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.), only 1,200 are expected to drive the whole route and save about 30 minutes; most other morning commute drivers (about two in every five, or 8,760 drivers) will save less time as they will only use part of the highway — this would include drivers just commuting to/from Toronto.
According to the province, the proposed 52-kilometre Highway 413 and transitway will extend from Highway 400 (between Kirby Road and King-Vaughan Road) in the east to the Highway 401/407 ETR interchange area in the west, connecting the regions of York, Peel, and Halton.
The project includes a 4 km extension to Highway 410 and a 3 km extension to Highway 427 for a total of 59 km for the corridor.
Construction is expected to begin in 2025, but the project has brought out a ton of critics.
Environmental Defence Canada, a vocal critic of the highway, argues that it will cost taxpayers over $10 billion and only save drivers less than a minute across the region.
“Hwy 413 will add over 17 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, resulting in $1.4 billion in damages from pollution” the advocacy organization stated on its website.