海角社区官网

鈥淲e are very committed to the tunnel under the 401,” Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria said at a news conference in Brampton Tuesday morning.

“We know that gridlock is only going to get worse over the next 10 to 20, 30 years, and every one of our projects that we have put forward 鈥� is all committed towards making people move around more efficiently.”

The proposed study will not only explore a possible final length of the tunnel 鈥� which could stretch past Brampton and Mississauga in the west to Markham and Scarborough in the east 鈥� but will also explore other congestion management options in the near term, including high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) or express bus lanes.

The province is also looking for other solutions to expand capacity along the busy Highway 401 corridor, leaving the door open for an elevated highway, altering the number of lanes, updating interchange designs and expanding transit.

At Queen’s Park, Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie warned such a project could easily go over budget “and won’t solve the issues that exist today, and won’t for decades.”

There are “certainly alternatives which could be considered that would be much more economical, such as leveraging assets like the (toll Highway) 407 and 鈥� putting a truck-only lane on the 407,” she added.

“I would be very concerned why the government is entertaining this massive infrastructure project at this time,”聽Crombie said. “We’ll be scrutinizing it very closely.”.

This isn’t the first time the Ford government has explored solutions to relieve congestion on the busy roadway 鈥� it had proposed using the highway shoulders to help gridlock, but shelved the idea an hour after it was reported by the Star.

The stated “desired outcomes” of the study, according to the RFP, are to decrease travel times and increase speed on the highway, encourage a shift to transit options to reduce congestion, and to realize “productivity gains” from reduced traffic.聽

The study is expected to take two years, with an estimated completion date of Feb. 28, 2027.

Ford first floated the idea of tunnelling under the busiest highway in Ontario last fall, ahead of the provincial election in February, as a way to combat the GTA’s debilitating congestion. Infrastructure and engineering experts, however, have put a damper on the proposal, estimating costs of anywhere from $250 million to $1.5 billion per kilometre and a timeline of more than a decade, with marginal to no impacts on congestion.

The 海角社区官网Region Board of Trade estimates traffic gridlock costs the provincial economy $11 billion annually.

The proposal to tunnel under the 401 is part of a package of driver-friendly proposals the Ford government has floated since the election campaign, including removing tolls on portions of Highway 407 and removing bike lanes throughout Toronto’s downtown core, the latter of which has been put on pause by a court injunction.

The province鈥檚 focus is along the heavily travelled portion of the 401 from west of Highway 410 in Mississauga to east of Scarborough, where 鈥渂y 2051, average travel time along the corridor is expected to double from 22 minutes to 44 minutes along the same 22-kilometre stretch,鈥� the RFP says.

It also suggests the province consider 鈥渢ravel demand management, to reduce or shift the need to travel, particularly during peak hours, promote and incent telecommuting, flexible work hours, and alternative modes.鈥�

With files from Ilyas Hussein