Tag: infrastructure

Tunnel vision will make traffic worse

This article was written by Matti Siemiatycki and was published in the Toronto Star on September 27, 2024.

MATTI SIEMIATYCKI IS DIRECTOR OF THE INFRASTRUCTURE INSTITUTE AND PROFESSOR OF GEOGRAPHY AND PLANNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.

Years late and way over budget, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT highlights local difficulties with tunneling.

Ambitious. That’s the word that Premier Doug Ford used to describe his proposal to build a tunnel under Highway 401 potentially stretching from Brampton to Scarborough.

Financially reckless and ineffective are other words that come to mind. There are far better options worth exploring to tackle Toronto’s traffic gridlock.

In his remarks, the premier lamented the terrible state of traffic in the region and called for bold solutions. I’ve been stuck on Highway 401 like everyone else. It’s awful. We need real solutions.

Unfortunately this proposed tunnel will not solve the problem, it will only make it worse. For decades, cities trying to solve their congestion problems by building bigger highways have experienced the phenomenon of induced demand.

New highway capacity encourages more people to drive and spurs auto-oriented development. More people then choose to commute by car because there is additional road capacity, and they choose to travel during the rush hour period rather than at off peak hours.

All of this ultimately leads to a return of gridlock, just with more vehicles flooding onto surrounding highways, arterial roads and neighbourhood streets that will not be increased in size. It’s like creating a bigger funnel without increasing the size of the spout.

Nor do suggestions of adding a transit line to this tunnel improve its merits. Transit works best for riders when the stations are on main streets surrounded by shops and dense housing, not in the middle of highways.

While there is ample evidence that expanding lane space through a new tunnel will be ineffective at solving gridlock long-term, the risks of building this project can hardly be overstated.

Tunnelling is hugely expensive at the best of time, prone to massive cost overruns and delays. Building one of the longest urban highway tunnels in a dense city environment under a wide, operating freeway only increases the degree of difficulty.

Many people will point to the Big Dig in Boston, a particularly notorious tunnelling project to replace an existing elevated freeway that was eight years late and skyrocketed in cost. The ballooning costs and delays on the Eglinton Crosstown LRT highlights local difficulties with tunnelling.

As the proposed tunnel idea is being spearheaded by the provincial government, all Ontarians would be on the hook for paying for this tunnel project and should be concerned about the risk of how much it will cost.

The premier’s announcement was to conduct a feasibility study. We’re a long way from construction getting under way.

In the spirit of early investigations of big, bold ideas to solve congestion in the region, it would be far more productive to conduct a robust study of the impacts of implementing road tolls on the most congested highways in the area. The road tolls would be required to go hand in hand with a massive expansion of existing public transit service at lower fares.

What are the benefits and the costs of implementing road tolls on Highways 401, 427, the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway that together make up the inner ring of freeways in Toronto? And can road tolls be implemented in concert with transit expansion in such a way that they don’t exacerbate existing inequalities or unaffordability?

This is not about implementing luxury lanes so the wealthy can move more easily, but rather about making travel faster and more reliable for everyone.

I know the chances of this suggestion being taken up are slim to none. Road tolls are loathed by Ford and are not popular across the political spectrum. But they have proven effective in reducing congestion in cities like London, Singapore and Stockholm.

Since we’re thinking big about how to solve Toronto’s nightmarish congestion, why not at least take a serious look at road tolls that have been effective in other cities.

Given the scale of the congestion problem, no stone should be left unturned.

Ford only has tunnel vision for Toronto

Critics say idea is a ‘distraction’ that would cost taxpayers billions and make gridlock even worse

This opinion was written by Edward Keenan and was published in the Toronto Star on September 26, 2024.

Premier Doug Ford said the province will launch a feasibility study to determine more details and costs of a tunnel underneath Highway 401.

Wednesday brought another WTF (What the Ford?) moment, when the premier, out of the blue, proposed expanding Highway 401 by tunnelling under it to add more lanes — an underground expressway that might stretch from Brampton to Scarborough.

Never mind trying to imagine the hell of being stuck in a 38-kilometre traffic jam underground.

Never mind that anyone who has spent even a few minutes looking into traffic research will tell you that a perpetual traffic jam is what would result very shortly after construction finished.

Never mind that if the tunnelling of the Eglinton Crosstown has absolutely ruined surface traffic there for a decade, it’s hard to picture just how FUBAR a decades-long tunnelling project would make the highway above it.

Never mind that construction would likely cost — if the per-kilometre expense of Boston’s Big Dig is anything to go on (adjusted for consumer inflation and currency exchange but not for the skyrocketing cost of infrastructure since then) — well north of $150 billion, and take more than 30 or 40 years to build.

“We’re getting the tunnel built,” the premier said.

Call it Doug’s big dig. Or as skeptics call it, Doug’s big distraction.

Premier Doug Ford is touting a tunnel under Highway 401, possibly from Mississauga to Scarborough, to carry more traffic and a public transit line as GTHA roads become increasingly crowded.

“Ontario is growing too fast and we need to do more,” he said Wednesday at Islington and the 401 with heavy rush-hour traffic moving slowly on Canada’s busiest multi-lane highway behind him.

Ford said the province will launch a feasibility study to determine more details and costs, but insisted “we’re getting the tunnel built” because gridlock in the region costs the economy $11 billion annually.

No timelines were provided. Experts said it could take many months or longer to determine a path forward and years to build.

“This is not happening soon,” said Matti Siemiatycki, professor of geography and planning and director of the infrastructure institute at the University of Toronto.

“This felt like the starting gun to do a study on the concept of a plan.”

Acknowledging that critics will dismiss the bold proposal, Ford said, “I know this is an ambitious idea and some people will say it can’t be done.”

Opposition parties were skeptical, given that Ford has been hinting at calling an early election next spring and it is unlikely a full feasibility study could be completed before then.

“This is a fantasy tunnel when we need real, solid solutions for a serious issue,” said New Democrat Leader Marit Stiles, who called it a reminder of Ford’s previous plans on Toronto city council for a monorail and a Ferris wheel.

Ford also mused about extending subways to Pickering and Markham after he was elected premier in 2018.

Stiles and Green Leader Mike Schreiner said Ford could quickly ease traffic congestion on Highway 401 by allowing trucks to bypass Toronto with free access to toll Highway 407.

Schreiner warned a 401 tunnel project “will cost taxpayers billions, make your commute more expensive and only make gridlock worse” because of years of complicated construction.

They both called the tunnel idea is a “distraction” from the province’s growing homelessness and encampment problem, a shortage of family doctors and long wait times in hospital emergency rooms.

Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie slammed the tunnel as a “pipe dream” that would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars” and urged the feasibility study examine the costs of buying the privately owned Highway 407, which is underused most of the day.

But the Toronto Region Board of Trade applauded the proposal.

“We need big and bold ideas, and a transit line under the 401 is exactly the kind of visionary thinking governments should pursue,” the organization said in a statement.

“By integrating both car and transit solutions, this plan tackles gridlock at its core, offering a transformative path forward.”

Ford’s tunnel plan is reminiscent of Boston’s controversial “Big Dig” that replaced above-ground highways through downtown with tunnels but ran years over schedule, caused major disruptions and was billions over budget. It was also a much smaller project of just a few kilometres. A tunnel across the Greater Toronto Area could be 60 kilometres long, depending on the route chosen.

Siemiatycki cautioned that a 401 tunnel “is not going to solve the problem” of traffic because of the concept of “induced demand,” which draws cars to new highways that encourage more auto-oriented housing and industrial development.

That would create bottlenecks on feeder roads and at interchanges, the professor predicted, saying the feasibility study should look at road tolls and more public transit to ease the traffic burden.

“If we’re at the stage where we’re throwing out big, bold ideas, let’s do a study on road tolls.”

The premier would not estimate a cost for the 401 tunnel — which, if built, would be one of the largest public infrastructure projects in the world — or put a price tag on the feasibility study.

He has yet to reveal a cost for building the planned Highway 413, with construction slated to begin next year, from Highway 401 at Milton northeast to Highway 400 in Vaughan. Critics said that does not bode well for transparency on the cost of a 401 tunnel.

The tunnel feasibility study will consider the number of lanes needed, the length of the route and number of interchanges, and involve preliminary soil testing to determine how the geology of the route would impact design and construction.

It’s not clear how many lanes could be included in a tunnel under the 401, raising questions about how much additional traffic capacity it would provide in terms of a cost-benefit analysis.

According to the province’s traffic modelling, all of the 400-series highways in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area “will be at or exceed capacity within the next decade.”