December 16, 2025 • 36 mins
Why the Proposed 401 Tunnel is a Misguided Solution to Toronto's Traffic Woes
As Toronto grapples with ever-increasing traffic congestion, the province of Ontario is considering a drastic solution: burying a tunnel beneath the 401 highway. However, this approach raises more questions than answers and may not be the panacea that officials hope for. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the complexities surrounding this proposed project and explore more effective alternatives.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Tunnel, really?
That's what it's come down to?
The Province of Ontario is now looking at burying a tunnel underneath the 401 to try andalleviate traffic through Toronto.
Meanwhile, they've had tons of other great ideas to alleviate traffic over the years.
And yet all these tree hugging people have pushed them down and said, we're destroying oururban area.
(00:23):
Literally, that's what sound like.
So now our province wants to use all of our money.
from the rest of the province and pilot into a 50 kilometer stretch of the 401 in Torontoonly to build a tunnel to somewhat alleviate traffic.
Yeah, bullshit on that.
Okay.
This ain't going to alleviate nothing unless you build it twice the size of the 401 today.
(00:45):
Cause really all you're doing is just digging hopes and dreams that are getting backfilledbehind you.
So today, AutoLooks is going to take a look at the 401 tunnel idea.
Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast.
I'm your host as always the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr.
(01:07):
Everett Jay coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net you haven't been there,stop by check it out, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings, go to the
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(01:28):
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(01:48):
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So like I said, the 401 tunnel house, stupid is Doug Ford to think that this is gonnawork.
bury a tunnel underneath the busiest fucking highway in the country and one of the busiestin North America.
(02:11):
Did he not see how much it cost and how much
It fucked up the city of Boston when they did their big dig.
The project was over twice.
The original price tag took years longer to build, cause so many headaches and literallyput the city of Boston at a standstill for any type of expansion or major projects for
(02:37):
well over a
Decade seriously you're gonna think of doing this I get it We put subway tunnels in andthey disrupt roads But they disrupt city traffic roads where there's a million other roads
to bypass it for short amount of times and hell They don't usually mess up everything butbuilding a limited access through a underneath a major city one of the busiest Highways in
(03:01):
North America, and you think this is a good idea this highway
connects to a multitude of others.
The 50 kilometer stretch they're thinking of essentially goes from Milton almost all theway to Oshawa.
So you get the 410, the 407, the 403, 427 and the original the 400.
Oh yeah.
And the 404 is in there as well, which is the 404 Don Valley Parkway.
(03:23):
All of these different highways, this thing has to connect to underneath an existinghighway, which was built in the 1950's was built to that code and has never really been
updated past that code.
So right about now, you're probably asking yourself, Everett, how do you know aboutbuilding a tunnel?
Have you ever built a tunnel?
Have you ever been involved with a project building a tunnel?
(03:45):
The answer to that is no.
I have to say that out loud.
No, I have never built a tunnel.
I've never been part of a construction project to build a tunnel, but I have been aproject manager for a construction company on some fairly large projects plus
working as an estimator on the other side of the construction project, seeing how much itcosts for labor, material, tools, anything else that goes into developing big projects.
(04:09):
So yeah, I have a little bit of knowledge behind me to understand the complex constructionof a tunnel going underneath the 401.
And the reason why I say it's going to take at least 20 years, a subway tunnels are noteasy to build.
And I've seen some of these subway tunnels and I've gotten the construction projects.
Seeing the layouts and all that from a few of them that have it in Toronto from somecontractors I work with and just seeing them and what's involved and just pricing out like
(04:35):
one or two things I was able to include in it and seeing the price of them, it's justastronomical.
And then what goes in to building these things, seeing those giant boring machines digthrough all of this shit and to dig underneath a pre-existing highway.
that literally has no end to traffic ever throughout the day, hell, throughout the year.
(04:58):
It's constantly busy.
And unless you're going to work for a two hour period in the middle of the night, you'renever going to get this project through.
And on top of that, you got to deal with pipes, rivers, bridges, subway systems,electrical lines, and then the pre-existing structure that's above you.
need to reinforce the structure that's above you and knowing what the city of Toronto isgoing through right now to read
(05:22):
to the Gardner Expressway, literally an elevated highway just doing reconstruction on it.
The original timeframe was five years.
They've managed to bring that down to between two to three years by putting more peopleonto it to try and move along a lot quicker.
There's a lot of work just to go into repair of an existing elevated highway.
Now something underground.
(05:42):
You have to talk about putting vent shafts in, putting escape hatches in.
Like people have to be able to get out of it in case of an emergency.
Then you got all these brand new systems you have to put in place.
Fire suppression systems, you have to get smog and pollution out.
If there's a battery vehicle that goes up, you have to make sure that the tunnel is notgoing to collapse under the immense heat from an electric vehicle burning in that tunnel.
(06:03):
These are all things you have to consider when putting this and it's going to beunderneath a pre-existing highway.
Seriously, that's, it's just wrong.
One of the biggest.
biggest problems I have with this idea is what is gonna constitute as an actual connectionfor the highway.
Is this highway only gonna connect to other feeder highways that break off of it?
(06:24):
So going from the end of Milton all the way out to Oshawa, the 50 kilometer stretch thatthey wanna do, is it gonna be breaking off for the 404, DVP, the 400, the Allen
Expressway?
The 427, the 403 and 410, and hell, even the 407, 413.
Are these gonna be the only areas that they're gonna have to build underground bridges?
On top of that, these bridges, these tunnels are gonna have to go either over top orunderneath the tunnel they wanna build just to get people out without having to put
(06:53):
traffic lights or anything in.
See, even that, you gotta build a cloverleaf underneath a cloverleaf underground.
The engineering feat that would go into doing that is mind boggling.
especially for a city that has land available to build on.
We get it, Southern Ontario is one of the most prime agricultural areas of all of thecountry of Canada.
(07:13):
Well its the, prime area and it's the one area that we're developing on top of all thisfarmland and destroying it.
We're taking food away from ourselves.
Kind of stupid, don't you think?
But if you're put a new highway in, you have to do it somewhere.
Like I said, building this underneath the old Spadina Expressway, yes, we'd still havethose issues, but you would be building underneath buildings that pre-exist as opposed to
(07:35):
a functioning roadway.
To build any extension or addition or upgrade to a highway that already exists is agreater feat than putting a brand new one in in an area that one doesn't exist.
Because you have to keep the flow of traffic on the...
pre-existing roadway while you're building underneath of it.
Like I said in the intro, go back and look at the big dig and how long and expensive itwas just to do that in the city of Boston.
(08:03):
yay, they got some great park space above the ground now.
But Toronto is just gonna have a two tiered highway instead of building an elevatedhighway above the highway that's already there, they're gonna drop it underneath.
Like the amount of things you're gonna go through.
And even in the country of Canada, you could still run into artifacts.
run into an area that once was a building or a native settlement, and then BAM, the wholeproject comes to a standstill.
(08:27):
So really, these are questions you need to ask as well.
It's going to disrupt whatever it's going underneath it for a long period of time.
And you need to build entrances and exits.
You need to build safety.
You need to build a tolerance for heat, for cold, everything else.
including the country of Canada, salt, because people coming from the surface underneath,they're to be bringing salt and sand on their vehicles into this area so you're to have to
(08:50):
wash it.
Think about all of this before you even consider building this fucking tunnel.
Seriously, has Doug Ford ever sat down and put a list together of the pros and cons ofactually doing this?
Or has he just said, there's too much traffic, let's dig under it.
We could do that.
Hell, they blast to Northern Ontario.
They got tons of mines underground.
Yeah.
(09:11):
built into massive rock, which barely moves and it's long distance underneath anythingabove it to take that into consideration as well.
Say the reason why this is one of the dumbest ideas you can ever think of for the provinceof Ontario is the fact that the province of Ontario has a 50 year deficit on major
(09:32):
infrastructure improvements.
There's a lack of major public infrastructure in the city of Toronto just to begin withfor public.
use.
We're talking light rail systems, subways, streetcars, buses, hell, even cabs.
And some instances, they don't have dedicated bus routes.
The city of Ottawa has dedicated bus routes.
(09:53):
It has a light rail system.
Montreal just built a massive light rail system.
Montreal also has double the amount of subways as the city of Toronto and the city ofToronto is almost three times the size of Montreal is now.
So where's your public transit system?
They want to bury this highway without investing tons more into public transit.
The GO train now goes all the way up to bury to try and alleviate people on the 400 andthe 404.
(10:18):
That's good, but it still only goes to select locations and it barely even connects withsubway stations.
Adding two more subway lines could help alleviate some of that traffic for just standardcross traffic and automobiles.
For transportation traffic, we talked about this one on a past podcast, dedicatedtransport routes.
Keep the tolls on the 407 and make it free for transports.
(10:40):
There you go.
Most of the four seven goes through industrial parks anyways.
Just allow all the truckers to drive on it for free.
Keep the fucking people in the cars off of it.
Now they want to build the 413 just above it as well.
But the 413 only going down from the edge of Milton where the 401 407 meet to the 400.
It doesn't even cross over to go to the 404.
The 427
(11:01):
has never been expanded.
The 410 hasen't been expanded.
Conestoga Parkway hasn't expanded.
17 hasn't been expanded.
11 hasn't been expanded properly.
69 isn't finished.
There are tons and tons of more projects.
Two things the city of Toronto could do to alleviate traffic right now.
And I hope Doug Ford's listening to this because I'm literally going to try and forwardthis to his office and tag him so that he fucking listens to my podcast for once and gets
(11:27):
this through his little Toronto mindset fucking skull.
Okay.
Two things the city of Toronto needs.
One, stop being a hog.
We get it.
You're called hog town because Toronto was originally the place that you brought all ofthe hogs in Southern Ontario to get slaughtered.
Okay.
It was a main slaughterhouse for pigs in the province of Ontario for the longest time.
Hence hog town.
(11:47):
Now it's called hog town because Toronto gets everything.
Everything goes to Toronto.
New manufacturing plants, new immigrants, everything.
So they grow faster than anywhere else in the province.
Quit hogging it there.
Two.
Public transit, expand your fucking subway lines.
I get it.
You're slowly starting to realize that you can expand your street cars to make it moreaccessible to people.
(12:10):
And you get city buses running everywhere.
You need dedicated high speed buses that run on the highway system to get people frompoint A to point B a lot quicker.
You need dedicated transit routes.
You need brand new subway lines.
All of this alleviates car congestion.
We love our cars and we love our big highways, but unfortunately you've jammed too manypeople into one area and instead of building them up and forcing them to take public
(12:33):
transit and be closer to everything else, you spread them off on this massive expanse,making it so they have to rely on their automobile.
And now you're thinking about burying the 401.
No, you can't do that.
Okay.
That's solution besides burying the 401 go back and check an old idea that the city ofToronto had back in the seventies.
Before the city of Toronto was, know, Etobicoke, Scarborough, Vaughan, North York,Mississauga, Markham, you know, all those areas kind of merged into the mega city that it
(13:03):
is today.
I'm sorry, but like all those are actually just the city of Toronto.
Okay.
The greater Toronto area.
And now it's actually called the greater Toronto Hamilton area, the GTHA Okay.
Hamilton, you're included with it.
Sorry, but Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, you're all part of Toronto.
Same with Milton now.
It's all Toronto, one mega city.
Back in those days, they couldn't build these expressways from where the 427 meets the401.
(13:28):
There was supposed to be another added highway that was going to cross from there all theway across the DVP Don Valley Parkway onto the 404.
It was called the Spadina Expressway.
It was only going to be about eight to 10 blocks away from the 401.
And it was going to be for a centralized residential travel highway, six lane throughway,the Spadina Expressway going all the way across to alleviate traffic on the 401.
(13:52):
401 was made for transport traffic.
They wanted this alternative Expressway, but because Scarborough, Etobicoke, Markham, allthese areas were all separate towns.
They all fought amongst themselves and wouldn't allow Toronto across their territories tobuild this.
And because at that point in time, things like the 401 weren't under Ontario rule, theOntario government couldn't push them to say, yeah, we need this.
(14:13):
So tree hugging people that wanted to protect their houses, organized dwellers andtownships killed the project.
And this project
It's going to alleviate traffic on the 401, which at that point in time in the seventieswasn't as great as it is now, but they were looking at 50 years in the future and the
congestion it would have by now.
This highway would alleviate so much of that on top of it.
(14:37):
Highway 400 was going to be expanded down Black Creek Drive all the way down to theGardner Expressway.
Allen Road was going to go from the Downsview Airport all the way to the GardnerExpressway as well.
So you're to have two other carrier roads besides the Don Valley Parkway at one end ofToronto and the 427 at the other end between these two highways.
If you're doing 130 on the highway between the two of them is 25 minutes at 130 kilometersan hour, just between the two ends of each other.
(15:05):
Okay.
That's a long distance, especially in a major city.
When you really think about it, there's no crossroads that come down on road.
We're supposed to do that.
The Spadina Expressway was supposed to cross over and the 400 was supposed to come down.
That would alleviated so much of the traffic back then.
Make it so that transports can come all the way from our northern areas, almost intodowntown Toronto.
(15:27):
When the 407 was built, they didn't extend it all the way out to the 115 to Peterboroughand then extend it all the way out to Hamilton.
They quickly realized that they needed to expand it to the Hamilton portion.
But the other section up to the 115 was just completed a couple of years ago.
They created traffic snarl on that highway.
Even though you have to pay to use it, it was getting up there.
Now they're planning the 413 as another ring road through the other green belt.
(15:51):
Just to let you know, the 401 was built on a green belt, the 407 built on a green belt,and the 413 now is going to be built on the green belt.
So, Toronto's lungs are constantly getting brand new highways built on them.
If you ever watched the old show about the big highways and cities expanses, I rememberwatching one about Moscow, Russia, and they did that every single time they put a ring
road, it went onto the oxygen area.
(16:13):
Same thing with Toronto.
that Spadina Expressway was supposed to alleviate a lot.
The Gardiner Expressway, it ends and then it's just surface roads all the way up untiljust before you hit the 401 at the other side of Scarborough.
It was supposed to go along the waterfront to alleviate downtown traffic to the east.
So it didn't have to all go up the Don Valley Parkway.
(16:35):
But today,
Because of all these people, all traffic has to move out of downtown Toronto up the DonValley Parkway to go east on a six lane highway that they can't expand.
They're fucked.
So by extending the Gardner, burying the Gardner from where it ends under Scarborough allthe way to the end of the 401 would help alleviate traffic.
(16:56):
Freeing the original Spadina Expressway, road and even Black Creek Drive would alleviatemore congestion.
I understand this.
live in a city that has rock all over the place.
There was an accident.
Okay.
From my, time of recording this podcast, there was actually an accident the previous nightwhen I was taking my son out to Taekwondo.
I couldn't get to one area where I was going because there was an accident on the mainthroughway.
(17:21):
Now between entrances to this area, you think it's just a block or two up.
No, the city of Sudbury into Minnow Lake, theres second Avenue.
The next entrance is Bancroft and the next entrance is
Van Horne downtown between Bancroft and Second Avenue driving at standard speeds on theroadway between 70 and 80 kilometers an hour.
(17:42):
Even if you don't hit any of the traffic lights is five minutes between Bancroft and VanHorn going to downtown even having to go through the traffic lights is 12 minutes.
That's a lot of blocks.
So when the one road had an accident the other night, everybody's going through minnowlake causing congestion causing buildup.
If there was another flow through road, like there's planned Silver Hills drive go all theway through, there would be less of a traffic snarl in Minnow Lake.
(18:09):
When you get past second Avenue all the way out to moonlight, there's a multitude ofdifferent roads that crisscross in and out of it.
So when there's an accident on one, you got a multitude of different ways to get around.
And we get it.
The city of Toronto has tons and tons of different surface roads.
You can get around and get past all of this, but most people don't want to take that.
Transports can't take every single road.
(18:29):
For them to get through would take hours to try and figure out the system.
It's easier to stay on the highway.
So by burying the original Spadina Express way, essentially between the Don Valley Parkwayand the 427, that's about half of what they want to bury on the 401, would alleviate tons
of traffic.
Allen Road all the way into downtown Toronto would alleviate traffic of the DVP and the427.
(18:51):
And if you buried on the other side, going all the way up to the 407 and swinging aroundthrough Vaughan to connect and become part of the 413 BAM, people get out of town easier.
You want to bury something.
You don't bury the four one.
You bury other planned highways.
And that's what the city of Toronto could do.
You want to bury something Doug Ford, bury the original Spadina expressway, bury theoriginal planned Allen road extension, bury the original plan 400 extension, bury the end
(19:17):
of the 413 underneath Aurora.
from the 400 to the 404, because you're going to need it when it opens up.
Bradford bypass won't alleviate enough of it.
You need another crossroad down there.
You need to understand how your traffic works.
See, I live in a city that understands how traffic works.
And even though our city doesn't grow, trust me, throughout my life in 40 years, I've beenon this planet.
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I've watched my city go from
up to 172,000 and back down to 165 and back up to 168 and back down to 161 and back up to172 and back down to 165.
And now we're actually up to 185 biggest we've ever been, but it's yo-yoed in my 40 yearson this planet.
And yet we still expand and build other roads, even though our city is expandingextensively, we know how to alleviate traffic built a throughway to alleviate traffic on a
(20:09):
main throughway.
to get truck traffic onto its own road.
No, where we need to put crossroads in to alleviate traffic.
I used to get stuck in a traffic in the Kingsway around between five and six every singleday for 15 to 20 minutes.
I get it, people in big cities are probably yelling at their screens right now going, whatthe fuck you mean, 15, 20 minutes, it's nothing.
I get stuck in traffic for hours.
(20:29):
I get it, okay, smaller city.
When they built the brand new throughway, there's no traffic.
You used to get stuck at the intersection of La Salle and Notre Dame.
For all the people leaving the tax center, leaving downtown, all heading out to thevalley.
When they expanded that intersection, made it wider, it alleviated that traffic snarl.
And when the new three-way was put in, it's like empty all the time because we understoodthat we needed to build a road close by to alleviate that traffic.
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We need an alternate route.
We also need better planned public transit, which we have done in the past 20 years.
Trust me, it's about five times better than it was when I was a kid.
Where I used to live, there was three buses a day.
Now there's 12.
Okay.
I got, it's not five times as four times, but for that area, even where I live, there'sabout nine buses a day that come out to where I live.
(21:13):
And I'm like 20 minutes from the edge of the city, edge of the city, not even downtown.
So plan where you're putting these things.
Don't just build them on flat arable land that you could just buy right now.
Think about it properly.
Plan your infrastructure investments, spending billions upon billions of dollars.
(21:34):
20 years of development to build a 50 kilometer section buried underneath the 401.
That's literally going to only be two side by side, three lane highway.
So six lanes on either side, 12 lane highway underneath the 401 is not going to do thatmuch.
Considering the fact that the 407 and some areas, the biggest areas can get up to about 10or 12 lanes on either side.
(21:59):
So 20 to 24 lanes, you're not going to alleviate anything but building a tunnel.
You're going to spend tons of the province's money, put us into massive debt and then tellthe rest of us we can't build all of our projects.
Remember I said at the beginning of this, there's a 50 year deficit on projects for thisprovince.
I'll give you a hint.
Here's a few of them.
They're not all from my neck of the woods.
I know I've complained and bitched about the fact that highway 17, highway 11, highway 69aren't expanded.
(22:25):
They're on this list, but there's a lot more in Southern Ontario that aren't even done.
Listen to me right now.
Even people living in Southern Ontario, this is your deficit.
And these are planned projects that were thought through between the sixties to theeighties.
Okay.
And a lot of these have been assessed, planned, and even shown that they're needed, butwere never built because the province is literally just too cheap because it doesn't help
(22:48):
Toronto.
And if it doesn't benefit Toronto, you ain't getting it.
Trust me, Doug Ford.
I know you're fucking listening to me right now.
Your mentality is that big city, small mind, and trust me.
I know people from the greater Toronto Hamilton area that are big city, small mine.
My in-laws and I proved that when they shut down Sudbury downs, big city, small mines,they didn't see that a horse racing track in the city of Sudbury was needed to keep.
(23:13):
the racing market alive and all of Northeastern Ontario.
were the only track.
Now everybody has to go to Barrie What happened to all those people with those racetracksand horses?
They sold them off because there's nowhere to race.
It's too expensive to go down south constantly.
Big city, small mind.
you're not making tons of money in the smaller market, but the smaller market needs it tokeep the industry going.
Big city, small mind.
Okay.
(23:33):
So the highways that are hampering growth in Southern Ontario, highway six, go on Googlemaps.
Check these out between the city of Hamilton and the city of Guelph highway six.
is a full lane accurate road except at the very last cutoff near Morriston, which goesdown to two lanes is a major traffic issue.
And it needs to be a limited access through a between a city of what what's well like140,000 people to Hamilton, that's over half a million, like their main traders, and they
(24:02):
need to have a limited access through a for truck traffic.
Now they're about to build a little bit of an extension up top of the hill.
Now, but highway six was originally planned to be expanded from where it exited on the 401all the way down to Hamilton in 1968, the 427.
They've been talking about expanding this since the seventies from where it meets now,right at the 407 actually goes a little further than that goes to major Mackenzie drive.
(24:27):
It's originally planned to go from there all the way up behind Barrie and connect up with400 closer to penitentiary in Ontario to alleviate.
traffic so that 400 could be for all the people going to the Muskoka's and 427 could befor all the people going to the Parry Sound cottage area.
The 404 from Newmarket to Gravenhurst.
They need a secondary highway to go around the back end of Lake Simcoe.
(24:49):
That's an area that's growing extensively, especially with Barrie and Innisfil expandingright now.
And Innisfil is literally about to explode.
Same with Bradford.
The 404 going off to Gravenhurst.
Well, the 400 is being utilized for all these other small towns along it.
Bradford, Innisfil, Barrie, Orillia, King-Township, hell, even the Cut-Off for Newmarket,they're all utilizing the 400 to ship all their goods.
(25:11):
They could use the 404 if the 404 went all the way up to Gravenhurst.
It can alleviate all that Northern Ontario traffic coming to downtown Toronto, where wewouldn't have to get all the way off and travel on two-lane secondary roads and help
expand an area in Kawartha Heights.
Highway 7
expansion between Peterborough and Ottawa.
You may not think it's big, but Highway 7 between Peterborough and Ottawa needs to beexpanded because it's essentially part of the Trans Canada Highway for one and two would
(25:41):
help create a secondary route to the 401 to get from the biggest city in our province orprovincial capital to our nation's capital.
Right now we only got the 401 and 416.
And how the 416 wasn't even built until 1997.
Before that, you had to drive all the way up to Montreal and back on the 417 to Ottawa ifyou want to stay in limited access.
(26:01):
If you didn't, had to take surface roads through counties.
We all know how slow that moves.
Highway 17, expanding the 417 from Ottawa all the way to Sault Ste.
Marie and then from Nipigon to the Manitoba border for Northwestern and Northeasternexpansion.
69 Parry Sound to Sudbury, 68 fucking kilometers.
And for the last six years, nothing's been done on it.
Highway 11 North Bay to Timmins with the expansive electric battery in Cobalt, Ontariowith the first Cobalt sulphide refinery in all of North America being built there and a
(26:31):
brand new battery recycling facilities and a whole battery park poised to create upwardsof 500 jobs for an area that has less than 10,000 people is big news.
But their highways not being expanded.
The Conestoga Parkway from Waterloo, Ontario all the way to Elmira
Hell expanding it from the other side from Waterloo all the way to Stratford Highwayeight.
(26:54):
That's the one I just talked about essentially from Waterloo all the way into Stratfordand all the way on to the 402.
So you can go from Waterloo to the 402 without having to get on the 401.
Highway three from Windsor to Leamington.
It's planned to be expanded.
Hell, shit's been there since the sixties.
It has never once been updated.
The 406 from Welland to Port Colborne.
Highway 20 from Hamilton to Niagara Falls, Highway 24 from Brantford to Cambridge, Highway6 from Ancaster to Caladonia, Highway 3 from Fort Erie to Port Colborne.
(27:22):
These are all major highways that need to be expanded for the shipment of goods, not forpeople, for goods, to help these areas expand as we become a unified nation.
On top of that, we have cities in our own province that don't have their own ring roads.
City of London, City of Ottawa.
The EC row and winds are not even connected to the 401 at both ends, which essentiallygoes through Chatham, St.
(27:47):
Thomas, the expansion of Highway 6 through it.
Now with the new Volkswagen plant, I'm surprised they're not expanding that highway fromthe 401 all the way to the Volkswagen plant.
They're going to use surface rows to get all their shit out.
There are tons of deficits.
We built the 401 as a massive belt to go from Windsor all the way to Quebec, essentiallyfrom the US to Quebec.
That was done in the 1950s and there's been no other.
(28:10):
major infrastructure projects like that created in this entire province since that time.
400 slowly moved up towards Sudbury.
11 got turned into a four lane access road.
115 got expanded.
You know, we've added the 417, added the 403, which essentially is also part of the QEW.
We've added few little ones to gain access to a few extra cities along the route, butnothing else has been done to help the 401.
(28:35):
A brand new belt, like we said.
that goes from the 402 behind London to Stratford to Waterloo up all the way towardsOrangeville and across the New Market and then down to connect to Peterborough would help
you alleviate some traffic on the 401 and help from Peterborough all the way to Ottawa.
We need another crossroad, the 417 all the way through Northeastern Ontario.
(28:58):
Before you put a shovel in the ground to dig underneath the 401, think about it.
Think if it's actually good thing to do with an expressway.
was originally supposed to start at the corner of 403 and East Gate Parkway.
It was supposed to have connections to the 427, the 400, Allen Road, DVP, and end of the401 and Highway 2A.
None of these were done.
(29:20):
You essentially have one strip through a city of 5 million people to connect it to everyother major city close to it.
Montreal, Ottawa, Windsor, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, all these other major areas areonly connected by one road.
I get at the road six lanes, but the amount of population the province of Ontario has justwithin that one belt, a six lane highway isn't going to cut it anymore.
(29:45):
You want a nation building project?
Two of them for the province of Ontario.
One, the 417 from Ottawa all the way to the Manitoba border to alleviate truck trafficissues for crossing our great nation.
Number two, a brand new belt in Southern Ontario running from the 402 all the way toOttawa instead of burying the 401.
(30:05):
build a collector highway kilometers away from it.
The 413 could help, but the 413 shouldn't really end at Milton.
Literally, it should go all the way over and connect with the top of Guelph where they'rebuilding a brand new roadway from highway 27 all the way over to between Guelph and
Waterloo.
That whole brand new throughway should connect over.
(30:26):
The 401 should be our long single belt for trucks and travelers.
Feeder highways running from the 402 behind London.
to Stratford through Kitchener Waterloo up the Guelph, you cut across the top of Bramptonover through Vaughan up towards Peterborough and off to Ottawa.
You have all your connection highways in a brand new belt.
(30:47):
If you're going to do this thing, you have to do it right.
Like I said, if you're going to bury something, bury the original Spadina Expressway andthe Gardner extensions to alleviate these traffic snarls.
The reason why the city of Toronto has such a
big issue with traffic because there's only one highway that goes east west in that city.
You can fight me and say, the 407 does that.
(31:08):
No, the 407 connects with it.
The 413 is going to connect with it.
A three eventually connects with it.
The 401 is the only singular belt like Northern Ontario with highway 17.
11 comes around and loops to it and loops off of it.
But 17 crosses the entire Northwestern and Northeastern portion of Ontario.
And it's not safe right now.
(31:28):
So it needs to be.
rebuilt, refreshed, and expand using feeder roads between the 403 and a new 401A entranceto move the 403 to the QEW.
Essentially burying Allen Road 400 extensions by Expressway Gardner extensions as analternative to the 401 and creating a shorter route could use the same entry with an ended
(31:48):
Allen Road 400 DVP with the future extensions to be added.
The 401
doesn't need to be buried.
This is the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard in this entire province.
we got the busiest entire highway in North America.
Let's put it under construction for the next 20 years creates so many headaches.
You know, this is gonna do to our economy.
If you decide to do that, going with my alternative may cost a bit more, but it'llalleviate more traffic from more cities.
(32:17):
But while doing it, let's do it smart.
You're gonna build a brand new highway as like the 413 crossing over the upper ridges.
all the way from like, let's say EC row comes all the way up goes from the current end ofEC Row, essentially is the secondary band for Southern Ontario from Windsor to Ottawa, not
Windsor to Montreal Windsor to Ottawa this time crosses over and hits all the upper areas.
(32:40):
don't we make it so that the center of this also is wide enough to put either dual or aquad rail system, put a high speed train in the center of it.
So personal traffic can move.
even quicker.
We can get people on public transit using high speed rail.
Rail is something that people would use if it was only great.
(33:01):
VIA rail between Toronto and Ottawa is not good.
VIA uses CP &CN's rails, but when their freight rails are coming through, VIA gets pushedto the side tracks and has to wait for the other one, which means they get delayed
constantly.
Dedicated rail routes would help alleviate personal transportation in the province ofOntario between major cities.
(33:22):
An expanse to a secondary ban from Ottawa to Windsor would help alleviate even more.
But on top of that, you still have to focus on the fact that Northeastern Ontario stillisn't finished.
Northwestern Ontario isn't finished.
And we've been sitting here waiting for 70 years and we still can't even get breadcrumbs.
401 Tunnel, stupid as motherfucking idea that our province and the biggest asshole to evercome out of the city of Toronto, Doug Ford.
(33:49):
ever thought of.
Yeah, let's put all of our eggs into one basket.
Let's see where this shit takes us.
Toronto wants to go into construction with the 401 for the next 20 years go right ahead.
But the cities of Ottawa and London are going to recoup all of its losses because peopleare going to realize that these other cities have a lot more to offer them.
So if you like this podcast, we'd like share a comment about an unnamed your social feedor streaming sites that you found the AutoLooks podcast on tell us your thoughts about
(34:17):
this.
stupid idea that they have about burying the 401 like really, you got to be a completebrain dead moron.
There's so many other alternatives you can do.
And if Doug Ford really wants to sit down with me and go over and hash out a trueinfrastructure project plan for the province of Ontario, I'm willing to listen and to talk
to them.
I could tell you a million other great ideas that would alleviate even more traffic thanyour freaking university educated assholes that you have sitting behind you.
(34:45):
Hell, all of them are from the city of Toronto, so they don't understand how the entirerest of the province works.
It's like I always say, you think 17 doesn't have enough traffic on it because you onlyseen statistics, drive the highway in the middle of fucking winter when it's a snowstorm
and tell me differently about how safe the highway really is.
And after you've clicked the like button, you know, you've liked us, you followed us, youcomment about it.
(35:08):
You sent an email.
You shared this with your friends, go to the website, stop by, read some of the reviews,check out some of the ratings, go to the links website page, big or small, have them all.
Car companies from around the globe, all available in one direct location.
That is the AutoLooks.net website at the corporate links tab at the top of the page.
And stop by, check some of it out and send us an email, send, talk for your own opinion,your own letter, calling them out as a stupid fucking moron.
(35:34):
He's either doing this for smoke and mirrors before he does something even bigger, or he'sjust literally an egotistic Toronto city dweller, big city, small mine.
The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed byPodbean.com If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over
email@AutoLooks.net.
So for myself, Everett Jay the AutoLooks team, Ecomm Entertainment, and Podbean.com Strapyourself in for this one fun wild ride that the Ontario government is going to take us on
(36:02):
with this with this tunnel idea.
Tunnel, really?
That's what it's come down to?
The Province of Ontario is now looking at burying a tunnel underneath the 401 to try andalleviate traffic through Toronto.
Meanwhile, they've had tons of other great ideas to alleviate traffic over the years.
And yet all these tree hugging people have pushed them down and said, we're destroying oururban area.
(00:23):
Literally, that's what sound like.
So now our province wants to use all of our money.
from the rest of the province and pilot into a 50 kilometer stretch of the 401 in Torontoonly to build a tunnel to somewhat alleviate traffic.
Yeah, bullshit on that.
Okay.
This ain't going to alleviate nothing unless you build it twice the size of the 401 today.
(00:45):
Cause really all you're doing is just digging hopes and dreams that are getting backfilledbehind you.
So today, AutoLooks is going to take a look at the 401 tunnel idea.
Welcome back to the AutoLooks podcast.
I'm your host as always the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr.
(01:07):
Everett Jay coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net you haven't been there,stop by check it out, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings, go to the
corporate links website page, big or small, we have them all car companies from around theglobe all available on one direct location.
That is the corporate links tab at the top of the page of AutoLooks
And if you're looking for some other fun stuff, check out the help pages.
(01:28):
We got all kinds of cool stuff from wrecking yards to law firms to product information,three design studios, hell, even 3d printers to my favorite 3d studios design, make your
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It's right there all available on the AutoLooks.net.
tabs.
(01:48):
The other podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed byPodbean.com If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at
email@AutoLooks.net.
So like I said, the 401 tunnel house, stupid is Doug Ford to think that this is gonnawork.
bury a tunnel underneath the busiest fucking highway in the country and one of the busiestin North America.
(02:11):
Did he not see how much it cost and how much
It fucked up the city of Boston when they did their big dig.
The project was over twice.
The original price tag took years longer to build, cause so many headaches and literallyput the city of Boston at a standstill for any type of expansion or major projects for
(02:37):
well over a
Decade seriously you're gonna think of doing this I get it We put subway tunnels in andthey disrupt roads But they disrupt city traffic roads where there's a million other roads
to bypass it for short amount of times and hell They don't usually mess up everything butbuilding a limited access through a underneath a major city one of the busiest Highways in
(03:01):
North America, and you think this is a good idea this highway
connects to a multitude of others.
The 50 kilometer stretch they're thinking of essentially goes from Milton almost all theway to Oshawa.
So you get the 410, the 407, the 403, 427 and the original the 400.
Oh yeah.
And the 404 is in there as well, which is the 404 Don Valley Parkway.
(03:23):
All of these different highways, this thing has to connect to underneath an existinghighway, which was built in the 1950's was built to that code and has never really been
updated past that code.
So right about now, you're probably asking yourself, Everett, how do you know aboutbuilding a tunnel?
Have you ever built a tunnel?
Have you ever been involved with a project building a tunnel?
(03:45):
The answer to that is no.
I have to say that out loud.
No, I have never built a tunnel.
I've never been part of a construction project to build a tunnel, but I have been aproject manager for a construction company on some fairly large projects plus
working as an estimator on the other side of the construction project, seeing how much itcosts for labor, material, tools, anything else that goes into developing big projects.
(04:09):
So yeah, I have a little bit of knowledge behind me to understand the complex constructionof a tunnel going underneath the 401.
And the reason why I say it's going to take at least 20 years, a subway tunnels are noteasy to build.
And I've seen some of these subway tunnels and I've gotten the construction projects.
Seeing the layouts and all that from a few of them that have it in Toronto from somecontractors I work with and just seeing them and what's involved and just pricing out like
(04:35):
one or two things I was able to include in it and seeing the price of them, it's justastronomical.
And then what goes in to building these things, seeing those giant boring machines digthrough all of this shit and to dig underneath a pre-existing highway.
that literally has no end to traffic ever throughout the day, hell, throughout the year.
(04:58):
It's constantly busy.
And unless you're going to work for a two hour period in the middle of the night, you'renever going to get this project through.
And on top of that, you got to deal with pipes, rivers, bridges, subway systems,electrical lines, and then the pre-existing structure that's above you.
need to reinforce the structure that's above you and knowing what the city of Toronto isgoing through right now to read
(05:22):
to the Gardner Expressway, literally an elevated highway just doing reconstruction on it.
The original timeframe was five years.
They've managed to bring that down to between two to three years by putting more peopleonto it to try and move along a lot quicker.
There's a lot of work just to go into repair of an existing elevated highway.
Now something underground.
(05:42):
You have to talk about putting vent shafts in, putting escape hatches in.
Like people have to be able to get out of it in case of an emergency.
Then you got all these brand new systems you have to put in place.
Fire suppression systems, you have to get smog and pollution out.
If there's a battery vehicle that goes up, you have to make sure that the tunnel is notgoing to collapse under the immense heat from an electric vehicle burning in that tunnel.
(06:03):
These are all things you have to consider when putting this and it's going to beunderneath a pre-existing highway.
Seriously, that's, it's just wrong.
One of the biggest.
biggest problems I have with this idea is what is gonna constitute as an actual connectionfor the highway.
Is this highway only gonna connect to other feeder highways that break off of it?
(06:24):
So going from the end of Milton all the way out to Oshawa, the 50 kilometer stretch thatthey wanna do, is it gonna be breaking off for the 404, DVP, the 400, the Allen
Expressway?
The 427, the 403 and 410, and hell, even the 407, 413.
Are these gonna be the only areas that they're gonna have to build underground bridges?
On top of that, these bridges, these tunnels are gonna have to go either over top orunderneath the tunnel they wanna build just to get people out without having to put
(06:53):
traffic lights or anything in.
See, even that, you gotta build a cloverleaf underneath a cloverleaf underground.
The engineering feat that would go into doing that is mind boggling.
especially for a city that has land available to build on.
We get it, Southern Ontario is one of the most prime agricultural areas of all of thecountry of Canada.
(07:13):
Well its the, prime area and it's the one area that we're developing on top of all thisfarmland and destroying it.
We're taking food away from ourselves.
Kind of stupid, don't you think?
But if you're put a new highway in, you have to do it somewhere.
Like I said, building this underneath the old Spadina Expressway, yes, we'd still havethose issues, but you would be building underneath buildings that pre-exist as opposed to
(07:35):
a functioning roadway.
To build any extension or addition or upgrade to a highway that already exists is agreater feat than putting a brand new one in in an area that one doesn't exist.
Because you have to keep the flow of traffic on the...
pre-existing roadway while you're building underneath of it.
Like I said in the intro, go back and look at the big dig and how long and expensive itwas just to do that in the city of Boston.
(08:03):
yay, they got some great park space above the ground now.
But Toronto is just gonna have a two tiered highway instead of building an elevatedhighway above the highway that's already there, they're gonna drop it underneath.
Like the amount of things you're gonna go through.
And even in the country of Canada, you could still run into artifacts.
run into an area that once was a building or a native settlement, and then BAM, the wholeproject comes to a standstill.
(08:27):
So really, these are questions you need to ask as well.
It's going to disrupt whatever it's going underneath it for a long period of time.
And you need to build entrances and exits.
You need to build safety.
You need to build a tolerance for heat, for cold, everything else.
including the country of Canada, salt, because people coming from the surface underneath,they're to be bringing salt and sand on their vehicles into this area so you're to have to
(08:50):
wash it.
Think about all of this before you even consider building this fucking tunnel.
Seriously, has Doug Ford ever sat down and put a list together of the pros and cons ofactually doing this?
Or has he just said, there's too much traffic, let's dig under it.
We could do that.
Hell, they blast to Northern Ontario.
They got tons of mines underground.
Yeah.
(09:11):
built into massive rock, which barely moves and it's long distance underneath anythingabove it to take that into consideration as well.
Say the reason why this is one of the dumbest ideas you can ever think of for the provinceof Ontario is the fact that the province of Ontario has a 50 year deficit on major
(09:32):
infrastructure improvements.
There's a lack of major public infrastructure in the city of Toronto just to begin withfor public.
use.
We're talking light rail systems, subways, streetcars, buses, hell, even cabs.
And some instances, they don't have dedicated bus routes.
The city of Ottawa has dedicated bus routes.
(09:53):
It has a light rail system.
Montreal just built a massive light rail system.
Montreal also has double the amount of subways as the city of Toronto and the city ofToronto is almost three times the size of Montreal is now.
So where's your public transit system?
They want to bury this highway without investing tons more into public transit.
The GO train now goes all the way up to bury to try and alleviate people on the 400 andthe 404.
(10:18):
That's good, but it still only goes to select locations and it barely even connects withsubway stations.
Adding two more subway lines could help alleviate some of that traffic for just standardcross traffic and automobiles.
For transportation traffic, we talked about this one on a past podcast, dedicatedtransport routes.
Keep the tolls on the 407 and make it free for transports.
(10:40):
There you go.
Most of the four seven goes through industrial parks anyways.
Just allow all the truckers to drive on it for free.
Keep the fucking people in the cars off of it.
Now they want to build the 413 just above it as well.
But the 413 only going down from the edge of Milton where the 401 407 meet to the 400.
It doesn't even cross over to go to the 404.
The 427
(11:01):
has never been expanded.
The 410 hasen't been expanded.
Conestoga Parkway hasn't expanded.
17 hasn't been expanded.
11 hasn't been expanded properly.
69 isn't finished.
There are tons and tons of more projects.
Two things the city of Toronto could do to alleviate traffic right now.
And I hope Doug Ford's listening to this because I'm literally going to try and forwardthis to his office and tag him so that he fucking listens to my podcast for once and gets
(11:27):
this through his little Toronto mindset fucking skull.
Okay.
Two things the city of Toronto needs.
One, stop being a hog.
We get it.
You're called hog town because Toronto was originally the place that you brought all ofthe hogs in Southern Ontario to get slaughtered.
Okay.
It was a main slaughterhouse for pigs in the province of Ontario for the longest time.
Hence hog town.
(11:47):
Now it's called hog town because Toronto gets everything.
Everything goes to Toronto.
New manufacturing plants, new immigrants, everything.
So they grow faster than anywhere else in the province.
Quit hogging it there.
Two.
Public transit, expand your fucking subway lines.
I get it.
You're slowly starting to realize that you can expand your street cars to make it moreaccessible to people.
(12:10):
And you get city buses running everywhere.
You need dedicated high speed buses that run on the highway system to get people frompoint A to point B a lot quicker.
You need dedicated transit routes.
You need brand new subway lines.
All of this alleviates car congestion.
We love our cars and we love our big highways, but unfortunately you've jammed too manypeople into one area and instead of building them up and forcing them to take public
(12:33):
transit and be closer to everything else, you spread them off on this massive expanse,making it so they have to rely on their automobile.
And now you're thinking about burying the 401.
No, you can't do that.
Okay.
That's solution besides burying the 401 go back and check an old idea that the city ofToronto had back in the seventies.
Before the city of Toronto was, know, Etobicoke, Scarborough, Vaughan, North York,Mississauga, Markham, you know, all those areas kind of merged into the mega city that it
(13:03):
is today.
I'm sorry, but like all those are actually just the city of Toronto.
Okay.
The greater Toronto area.
And now it's actually called the greater Toronto Hamilton area, the GTHA Okay.
Hamilton, you're included with it.
Sorry, but Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, you're all part of Toronto.
Same with Milton now.
It's all Toronto, one mega city.
Back in those days, they couldn't build these expressways from where the 427 meets the401.
(13:28):
There was supposed to be another added highway that was going to cross from there all theway across the DVP Don Valley Parkway onto the 404.
It was called the Spadina Expressway.
It was only going to be about eight to 10 blocks away from the 401.
And it was going to be for a centralized residential travel highway, six lane throughway,the Spadina Expressway going all the way across to alleviate traffic on the 401.
(13:52):
401 was made for transport traffic.
They wanted this alternative Expressway, but because Scarborough, Etobicoke, Markham, allthese areas were all separate towns.
They all fought amongst themselves and wouldn't allow Toronto across their territories tobuild this.
And because at that point in time, things like the 401 weren't under Ontario rule, theOntario government couldn't push them to say, yeah, we need this.
(14:13):
So tree hugging people that wanted to protect their houses, organized dwellers andtownships killed the project.
And this project
It's going to alleviate traffic on the 401, which at that point in time in the seventieswasn't as great as it is now, but they were looking at 50 years in the future and the
congestion it would have by now.
This highway would alleviate so much of that on top of it.
(14:37):
Highway 400 was going to be expanded down Black Creek Drive all the way down to theGardner Expressway.
Allen Road was going to go from the Downsview Airport all the way to the GardnerExpressway as well.
So you're to have two other carrier roads besides the Don Valley Parkway at one end ofToronto and the 427 at the other end between these two highways.
If you're doing 130 on the highway between the two of them is 25 minutes at 130 kilometersan hour, just between the two ends of each other.
(15:05):
Okay.
That's a long distance, especially in a major city.
When you really think about it, there's no crossroads that come down on road.
We're supposed to do that.
The Spadina Expressway was supposed to cross over and the 400 was supposed to come down.
That would alleviated so much of the traffic back then.
Make it so that transports can come all the way from our northern areas, almost intodowntown Toronto.
(15:27):
When the 407 was built, they didn't extend it all the way out to the 115 to Peterboroughand then extend it all the way out to Hamilton.
They quickly realized that they needed to expand it to the Hamilton portion.
But the other section up to the 115 was just completed a couple of years ago.
They created traffic snarl on that highway.
Even though you have to pay to use it, it was getting up there.
Now they're planning the 413 as another ring road through the other green belt.
(15:51):
Just to let you know, the 401 was built on a green belt, the 407 built on a green belt,and the 413 now is going to be built on the green belt.
So, Toronto's lungs are constantly getting brand new highways built on them.
If you ever watched the old show about the big highways and cities expanses, I rememberwatching one about Moscow, Russia, and they did that every single time they put a ring
road, it went onto the oxygen area.
(16:13):
Same thing with Toronto.
that Spadina Expressway was supposed to alleviate a lot.
The Gardiner Expressway, it ends and then it's just surface roads all the way up untiljust before you hit the 401 at the other side of Scarborough.
It was supposed to go along the waterfront to alleviate downtown traffic to the east.
So it didn't have to all go up the Don Valley Parkway.
(16:35):
But today,
Because of all these people, all traffic has to move out of downtown Toronto up the DonValley Parkway to go east on a six lane highway that they can't expand.
They're fucked.
So by extending the Gardner, burying the Gardner from where it ends under Scarborough allthe way to the end of the 401 would help alleviate traffic.
(16:56):
Freeing the original Spadina Expressway, road and even Black Creek Drive would alleviatemore congestion.
I understand this.
live in a city that has rock all over the place.
There was an accident.
Okay.
From my, time of recording this podcast, there was actually an accident the previous nightwhen I was taking my son out to Taekwondo.
I couldn't get to one area where I was going because there was an accident on the mainthroughway.
(17:21):
Now between entrances to this area, you think it's just a block or two up.
No, the city of Sudbury into Minnow Lake, theres second Avenue.
The next entrance is Bancroft and the next entrance is
Van Horne downtown between Bancroft and Second Avenue driving at standard speeds on theroadway between 70 and 80 kilometers an hour.
(17:42):
Even if you don't hit any of the traffic lights is five minutes between Bancroft and VanHorn going to downtown even having to go through the traffic lights is 12 minutes.
That's a lot of blocks.
So when the one road had an accident the other night, everybody's going through minnowlake causing congestion causing buildup.
If there was another flow through road, like there's planned Silver Hills drive go all theway through, there would be less of a traffic snarl in Minnow Lake.
(18:09):
When you get past second Avenue all the way out to moonlight, there's a multitude ofdifferent roads that crisscross in and out of it.
So when there's an accident on one, you got a multitude of different ways to get around.
And we get it.
The city of Toronto has tons and tons of different surface roads.
You can get around and get past all of this, but most people don't want to take that.
Transports can't take every single road.
(18:29):
For them to get through would take hours to try and figure out the system.
It's easier to stay on the highway.
So by burying the original Spadina Express way, essentially between the Don Valley Parkwayand the 427, that's about half of what they want to bury on the 401, would alleviate tons
of traffic.
Allen Road all the way into downtown Toronto would alleviate traffic of the DVP and the427.
(18:51):
And if you buried on the other side, going all the way up to the 407 and swinging aroundthrough Vaughan to connect and become part of the 413 BAM, people get out of town easier.
You want to bury something.
You don't bury the four one.
You bury other planned highways.
And that's what the city of Toronto could do.
You want to bury something Doug Ford, bury the original Spadina expressway, bury theoriginal planned Allen road extension, bury the original plan 400 extension, bury the end
(19:17):
of the 413 underneath Aurora.
from the 400 to the 404, because you're going to need it when it opens up.
Bradford bypass won't alleviate enough of it.
You need another crossroad down there.
You need to understand how your traffic works.
See, I live in a city that understands how traffic works.
And even though our city doesn't grow, trust me, throughout my life in 40 years, I've beenon this planet.
(19:40):
I've watched my city go from
up to 172,000 and back down to 165 and back up to 168 and back down to 161 and back up to172 and back down to 165.
And now we're actually up to 185 biggest we've ever been, but it's yo-yoed in my 40 yearson this planet.
And yet we still expand and build other roads, even though our city is expandingextensively, we know how to alleviate traffic built a throughway to alleviate traffic on a
(20:09):
main throughway.
to get truck traffic onto its own road.
No, where we need to put crossroads in to alleviate traffic.
I used to get stuck in a traffic in the Kingsway around between five and six every singleday for 15 to 20 minutes.
I get it, people in big cities are probably yelling at their screens right now going, whatthe fuck you mean, 15, 20 minutes, it's nothing.
I get stuck in traffic for hours.
(20:29):
I get it, okay, smaller city.
When they built the brand new throughway, there's no traffic.
You used to get stuck at the intersection of La Salle and Notre Dame.
For all the people leaving the tax center, leaving downtown, all heading out to thevalley.
When they expanded that intersection, made it wider, it alleviated that traffic snarl.
And when the new three-way was put in, it's like empty all the time because we understoodthat we needed to build a road close by to alleviate that traffic.
(20:53):
We need an alternate route.
We also need better planned public transit, which we have done in the past 20 years.
Trust me, it's about five times better than it was when I was a kid.
Where I used to live, there was three buses a day.
Now there's 12.
Okay.
I got, it's not five times as four times, but for that area, even where I live, there'sabout nine buses a day that come out to where I live.
(21:13):
And I'm like 20 minutes from the edge of the city, edge of the city, not even downtown.
So plan where you're putting these things.
Don't just build them on flat arable land that you could just buy right now.
Think about it properly.
Plan your infrastructure investments, spending billions upon billions of dollars.
(21:34):
20 years of development to build a 50 kilometer section buried underneath the 401.
That's literally going to only be two side by side, three lane highway.
So six lanes on either side, 12 lane highway underneath the 401 is not going to do thatmuch.
Considering the fact that the 407 and some areas, the biggest areas can get up to about 10or 12 lanes on either side.
(21:59):
So 20 to 24 lanes, you're not going to alleviate anything but building a tunnel.
You're going to spend tons of the province's money, put us into massive debt and then tellthe rest of us we can't build all of our projects.
Remember I said at the beginning of this, there's a 50 year deficit on projects for thisprovince.
I'll give you a hint.
Here's a few of them.
They're not all from my neck of the woods.
I know I've complained and bitched about the fact that highway 17, highway 11, highway 69aren't expanded.
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They're on this list, but there's a lot more in Southern Ontario that aren't even done.
Listen to me right now.
Even people living in Southern Ontario, this is your deficit.
And these are planned projects that were thought through between the sixties to theeighties.
Okay.
And a lot of these have been assessed, planned, and even shown that they're needed, butwere never built because the province is literally just too cheap because it doesn't help
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Toronto.
And if it doesn't benefit Toronto, you ain't getting it.
Trust me, Doug Ford.
I know you're fucking listening to me right now.
Your mentality is that big city, small mind, and trust me.
I know people from the greater Toronto Hamilton area that are big city, small mine.
My in-laws and I proved that when they shut down Sudbury downs, big city, small mines,they didn't see that a horse racing track in the city of Sudbury was needed to keep.
(23:13):
the racing market alive and all of Northeastern Ontario.
were the only track.
Now everybody has to go to Barrie What happened to all those people with those racetracksand horses?
They sold them off because there's nowhere to race.
It's too expensive to go down south constantly.
Big city, small mind.
you're not making tons of money in the smaller market, but the smaller market needs it tokeep the industry going.
Big city, small mind.
Okay.
(23:33):
So the highways that are hampering growth in Southern Ontario, highway six, go on Googlemaps.
Check these out between the city of Hamilton and the city of Guelph highway six.
is a full lane accurate road except at the very last cutoff near Morriston, which goesdown to two lanes is a major traffic issue.
And it needs to be a limited access through a between a city of what what's well like140,000 people to Hamilton, that's over half a million, like their main traders, and they
(24:02):
need to have a limited access through a for truck traffic.
Now they're about to build a little bit of an extension up top of the hill.
Now, but highway six was originally planned to be expanded from where it exited on the 401all the way down to Hamilton in 1968, the 427.
They've been talking about expanding this since the seventies from where it meets now,right at the 407 actually goes a little further than that goes to major Mackenzie drive.
(24:27):
It's originally planned to go from there all the way up behind Barrie and connect up with400 closer to penitentiary in Ontario to alleviate.
traffic so that 400 could be for all the people going to the Muskoka's and 427 could befor all the people going to the Parry Sound cottage area.
The 404 from Newmarket to Gravenhurst.
They need a secondary highway to go around the back end of Lake Simcoe.
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That's an area that's growing extensively, especially with Barrie and Innisfil expandingright now.
And Innisfil is literally about to explode.
Same with Bradford.
The 404 going off to Gravenhurst.
Well, the 400 is being utilized for all these other small towns along it.
Bradford, Innisfil, Barrie, Orillia, King-Township, hell, even the Cut-Off for Newmarket,they're all utilizing the 400 to ship all their goods.
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They could use the 404 if the 404 went all the way up to Gravenhurst.
It can alleviate all that Northern Ontario traffic coming to downtown Toronto, where wewouldn't have to get all the way off and travel on two-lane secondary roads and help
expand an area in Kawartha Heights.
Highway 7
expansion between Peterborough and Ottawa.
You may not think it's big, but Highway 7 between Peterborough and Ottawa needs to beexpanded because it's essentially part of the Trans Canada Highway for one and two would
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help create a secondary route to the 401 to get from the biggest city in our province orprovincial capital to our nation's capital.
Right now we only got the 401 and 416.
And how the 416 wasn't even built until 1997.
Before that, you had to drive all the way up to Montreal and back on the 417 to Ottawa ifyou want to stay in limited access.
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If you didn't, had to take surface roads through counties.
We all know how slow that moves.
Highway 17, expanding the 417 from Ottawa all the way to Sault Ste.
Marie and then from Nipigon to the Manitoba border for Northwestern and Northeasternexpansion.
69 Parry Sound to Sudbury, 68 fucking kilometers.
And for the last six years, nothing's been done on it.
Highway 11 North Bay to Timmins with the expansive electric battery in Cobalt, Ontariowith the first Cobalt sulphide refinery in all of North America being built there and a
(26:31):
brand new battery recycling facilities and a whole battery park poised to create upwardsof 500 jobs for an area that has less than 10,000 people is big news.
But their highways not being expanded.
The Conestoga Parkway from Waterloo, Ontario all the way to Elmira
Hell expanding it from the other side from Waterloo all the way to Stratford Highwayeight.
(26:54):
That's the one I just talked about essentially from Waterloo all the way into Stratfordand all the way on to the 402.
So you can go from Waterloo to the 402 without having to get on the 401.
Highway three from Windsor to Leamington.
It's planned to be expanded.
Hell, shit's been there since the sixties.
It has never once been updated.
The 406 from Welland to Port Colborne.
Highway 20 from Hamilton to Niagara Falls, Highway 24 from Brantford to Cambridge, Highway6 from Ancaster to Caladonia, Highway 3 from Fort Erie to Port Colborne.
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These are all major highways that need to be expanded for the shipment of goods, not forpeople, for goods, to help these areas expand as we become a unified nation.
On top of that, we have cities in our own province that don't have their own ring roads.
City of London, City of Ottawa.
The EC row and winds are not even connected to the 401 at both ends, which essentiallygoes through Chatham, St.
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Thomas, the expansion of Highway 6 through it.
Now with the new Volkswagen plant, I'm surprised they're not expanding that highway fromthe 401 all the way to the Volkswagen plant.
They're going to use surface rows to get all their shit out.
There are tons of deficits.
We built the 401 as a massive belt to go from Windsor all the way to Quebec, essentiallyfrom the US to Quebec.
That was done in the 1950s and there's been no other.
(28:10):
major infrastructure projects like that created in this entire province since that time.
400 slowly moved up towards Sudbury.
11 got turned into a four lane access road.
115 got expanded.
You know, we've added the 417, added the 403, which essentially is also part of the QEW.
We've added few little ones to gain access to a few extra cities along the route, butnothing else has been done to help the 401.
(28:35):
A brand new belt, like we said.
that goes from the 402 behind London to Stratford to Waterloo up all the way towardsOrangeville and across the New Market and then down to connect to Peterborough would help
you alleviate some traffic on the 401 and help from Peterborough all the way to Ottawa.
We need another crossroad, the 417 all the way through Northeastern Ontario.
(28:58):
Before you put a shovel in the ground to dig underneath the 401, think about it.
Think if it's actually good thing to do with an expressway.
was originally supposed to start at the corner of 403 and East Gate Parkway.
It was supposed to have connections to the 427, the 400, Allen Road, DVP, and end of the401 and Highway 2A.
None of these were done.
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You essentially have one strip through a city of 5 million people to connect it to everyother major city close to it.
Montreal, Ottawa, Windsor, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, all these other major areas areonly connected by one road.
I get at the road six lanes, but the amount of population the province of Ontario has justwithin that one belt, a six lane highway isn't going to cut it anymore.
(29:45):
You want a nation building project?
Two of them for the province of Ontario.
One, the 417 from Ottawa all the way to the Manitoba border to alleviate truck trafficissues for crossing our great nation.
Number two, a brand new belt in Southern Ontario running from the 402 all the way toOttawa instead of burying the 401.
(30:05):
build a collector highway kilometers away from it.
The 413 could help, but the 413 shouldn't really end at Milton.
Literally, it should go all the way over and connect with the top of Guelph where they'rebuilding a brand new roadway from highway 27 all the way over to between Guelph and
Waterloo.
That whole brand new throughway should connect over.
(30:26):
The 401 should be our long single belt for trucks and travelers.
Feeder highways running from the 402 behind London.
to Stratford through Kitchener Waterloo up the Guelph, you cut across the top of Bramptonover through Vaughan up towards Peterborough and off to Ottawa.
You have all your connection highways in a brand new belt.
(30:47):
If you're going to do this thing, you have to do it right.
Like I said, if you're going to bury something, bury the original Spadina Expressway andthe Gardner extensions to alleviate these traffic snarls.
The reason why the city of Toronto has such a
big issue with traffic because there's only one highway that goes east west in that city.
You can fight me and say, the 407 does that.
(31:08):
No, the 407 connects with it.
The 413 is going to connect with it.
A three eventually connects with it.
The 401 is the only singular belt like Northern Ontario with highway 17.
11 comes around and loops to it and loops off of it.
But 17 crosses the entire Northwestern and Northeastern portion of Ontario.
And it's not safe right now.
(31:28):
So it needs to be.
rebuilt, refreshed, and expand using feeder roads between the 403 and a new 401A entranceto move the 403 to the QEW.
Essentially burying Allen Road 400 extensions by Expressway Gardner extensions as analternative to the 401 and creating a shorter route could use the same entry with an ended
(31:48):
Allen Road 400 DVP with the future extensions to be added.
The 401
doesn't need to be buried.
This is the stupidest fucking idea I've ever heard in this entire province.
we got the busiest entire highway in North America.
Let's put it under construction for the next 20 years creates so many headaches.
You know, this is gonna do to our economy.
If you decide to do that, going with my alternative may cost a bit more, but it'llalleviate more traffic from more cities.
(32:17):
But while doing it, let's do it smart.
You're gonna build a brand new highway as like the 413 crossing over the upper ridges.
all the way from like, let's say EC row comes all the way up goes from the current end ofEC Row, essentially is the secondary band for Southern Ontario from Windsor to Ottawa, not
Windsor to Montreal Windsor to Ottawa this time crosses over and hits all the upper areas.
(32:40):
don't we make it so that the center of this also is wide enough to put either dual or aquad rail system, put a high speed train in the center of it.
So personal traffic can move.
even quicker.
We can get people on public transit using high speed rail.
Rail is something that people would use if it was only great.
(33:01):
VIA rail between Toronto and Ottawa is not good.
VIA uses CP &CN's rails, but when their freight rails are coming through, VIA gets pushedto the side tracks and has to wait for the other one, which means they get delayed
constantly.
Dedicated rail routes would help alleviate personal transportation in the province ofOntario between major cities.
(33:22):
An expanse to a secondary ban from Ottawa to Windsor would help alleviate even more.
But on top of that, you still have to focus on the fact that Northeastern Ontario stillisn't finished.
Northwestern Ontario isn't finished.
And we've been sitting here waiting for 70 years and we still can't even get breadcrumbs.
401 Tunnel, stupid as motherfucking idea that our province and the biggest asshole to evercome out of the city of Toronto, Doug Ford.
(33:49):
ever thought of.
Yeah, let's put all of our eggs into one basket.
Let's see where this shit takes us.
Toronto wants to go into construction with the 401 for the next 20 years go right ahead.
But the cities of Ottawa and London are going to recoup all of its losses because peopleare going to realize that these other cities have a lot more to offer them.
So if you like this podcast, we'd like share a comment about an unnamed your social feedor streaming sites that you found the AutoLooks podcast on tell us your thoughts about
(34:17):
this.
stupid idea that they have about burying the 401 like really, you got to be a completebrain dead moron.
There's so many other alternatives you can do.
And if Doug Ford really wants to sit down with me and go over and hash out a trueinfrastructure project plan for the province of Ontario, I'm willing to listen and to talk
to them.
I could tell you a million other great ideas that would alleviate even more traffic thanyour freaking university educated assholes that you have sitting behind you.
(34:45):
Hell, all of them are from the city of Toronto, so they don't understand how the entirerest of the province works.
It's like I always say, you think 17 doesn't have enough traffic on it because you onlyseen statistics, drive the highway in the middle of fucking winter when it's a snowstorm
and tell me differently about how safe the highway really is.
And after you've clicked the like button, you know, you've liked us, you followed us, youcomment about it.
(35:08):
You sent an email.
You shared this with your friends, go to the website, stop by, read some of the reviews,check out some of the ratings, go to the links website page, big or small, have them all.
Car companies from around the globe, all available in one direct location.
That is the AutoLooks.net website at the corporate links tab at the top of the page.
And stop by, check some of it out and send us an email, send, talk for your own opinion,your own letter, calling them out as a stupid fucking moron.
(35:34):
He's either doing this for smoke and mirrors before he does something even bigger, or he'sjust literally an egotistic Toronto city dweller, big city, small mine.
The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed byPodbean.com If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over
email@AutoLooks.net.
So for myself, Everett Jay the AutoLooks team, Ecomm Entertainment, and Podbean.com Strapyourself in for this one fun wild ride that the Ontario government is going to take us on
(36:02):
with this with this tunnel idea.
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