Freeway Widening: The Gift That Keeps on Giving (More Traffic)

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Highway 401 in Toronto is purportedly the busiest freeway in North America -- and maybe even the world. Today we take a closer look at this enormous, expensive, and extraordinarily dangerous piece of infrastructure -- and dig into how public officials talk themselves into doubling down on a bad idea by repeatedly expanding freeways.
We'll also look at the current state of freeways widening in the US, and lessons we can learn from Canada's leadership in building and widening this kind of sustainable, greenhouse gas-reducing infrastructure.
Book recommendation! The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis, available here: amzn.to/3mhNjoE
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Previous CityNerd Videos Referenced:
- Stroad Case Study: Aurora Avenue in Seattle • To Improve a STROAD: H...
- Is LA Salvageable? Walkability and the Historic Streetcar Network • In Search of Walkable ...
- The Exclusive Bus Lane, the Lincoln Tunnel, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal • What a Tunnel Should D...
- Canadian High Speed Rail vs Plane vs Car • High Speed Rail vs. Ai...
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Resources:
- www.407etr.com/en/tolls/tolls...
- toronto.citynews.ca/2022/12/1...
- www.blogto.com/city/2022/12/c...
- www.infrastructureontario.ca/...
- files.ceqanet.opr.ca.gov/2694...
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_R...
- www.kvue.com/article/traffic/...
- www.texastribune.org/2023/03/...
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Images
- Highway 401 at Weston Road By Haljackey - Own workPreviously published: www.flickr.com/photos/haljack..., CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Thousand Islands Parkway 1944 By Department of Highways - 1944 Annual Report, Department of Highways, Public Domain, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
- 1963 Toronto Bypass By Ontario Department of Highways - Archives of Ontario (Series RG-14-162-2, Box B986, Photo #648-10), en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
- Widening 401 to 12 lanes By Ontario Department of Highways (Ministry of Transportation of Ontario) - www.gettorontomoving.ca/Don_Va... (originally from Toronto Archives), Public Domain, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
- Highway 401 1987 By GoldDragon (talk) - Aerial photo provided by uploader - GoldDragon (talk), CC BY 3.0, en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...
- Collector-Express System By AlbertaScrambler - www.flickr.com/photos/6215362..., CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- 401 near Pearson Airport By Clashmaker - Cropped version of File:Highway 401.png, CC BY-SA 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- I-105 in Los Angeles By Tony Barnard, Los Angeles Times - digital.library.ucla.edu/cata..., CC BY 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Katy Freeway congestion By Aliciak3yz - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- L Train 6th Avenue Station By Gryffindor - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Highway 401 Thumbnail By AlbertaScrambler - www.flickr.com/photos/6215362..., CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
- Highway 401 shield Public Domain, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
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Music:
CityNerd background: Caipirinha in Hawaii by Carmen María and Edu Espinal (RU-vid music library)
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11 апр 2023

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Комментарии : 1,3 тыс.

@Zachthesloth Год назад

The fact that you can get into your car at work, drive past the corpses of your fellow human beings for an hour at evening rushour, then sit down with the family to watch a reality tv show about the people who scrape those human beings off the pavement you just drove over is quite morose.

@bnmaster6174 Год назад

Cyberpunk is real

@realrobertdenby Год назад

My wife drove past a corpse in LA last week, and she spent time searching the Citizen app and the news channels that day and found nothing. Traffic violence is so common here that several people have to die before it is even covered.

@jamesmacleod9382 Год назад

@@realrobertdenby Maybe he wasn't quite dead yet.

@thefrenchbastard1646 Год назад

well it wasn't me so it must have been there own fault:P

@stevenfetzer4911 Год назад

The body is the least of my concerns. Where did the souls go for eternity?

@Capitanvolume Год назад

The story of the 407 bypass and its privatization is also a great story about terrible policy.

@flargus7919 Год назад

The Harris government's decision to lease out the 407 for 99 years at a huge discount, all for a one-time cash injection to balance a budget, is a topic that still grinds my gears even years after leaving the GTA and Ontario. It might just be the single dumbest, most short-sighted thing an Ontario government has ever done (and there are some real doozies in that competition).

@kaitlyn__L Год назад

I recently learned almost all new freeways are tolls just because the funding it easier to get (investors see the returns on decades of interest) than state funding, which is… so sad. The entire point of government funding is they can get access to the cheapest debt.

@theearlofwellington Год назад

Bump. I would be so interested to hear his thoughts on this abomination

@alannagroen-brunsting Год назад

Also interested. And also on the highway 403 drama.

@oddhampton Год назад

its

@_d0ser Год назад

Thanks Larry Hogan for widening a bunch of highways and cancelling Baltimore transit! Love that for Maryland. We deserve it!

@quinton1001 Год назад

Larry was himself and is close friends with real estate developers (not inherently a bad thing!) who built… suburban projects and large highway associated green field projects (bad thing!)

@markmiiwurdz4016 Год назад

The sarcasm is so thick on this comment I'm having trouble getting through to the like button. Know that somewhere in my heart I liked it though

@njv1234 Год назад

Red Line cancellation truly upset me, to the point of anger. Never been this upset at a Governor since the Civil Rights Era

@geekboy328 Год назад

Apparently We Moore says he wants to build the red line?

@MarloSoBalJr Год назад

@@geekboy328 Him saying it is one thing; actually committing to it is another thing

@naturallyherb Год назад

Two fun facts I learned from random people about the 407: a coach bus driver once told me that the 407 is the most expensive tolled highway in North America per mile or km. There was an aviation enthusiast group online where a pilot who regularly operate from Buttonville Airport say that pilots of single-engine aircraft regularly plan the 407 for emergency landings when the engine fails, because the 407 is so empty it is safe to land on all the time.

@jacnel Год назад

And in fact a plane that was due to land in Buttonville in 2021 did exactly that! No one was hurt either on the plane or the highway. Not even a multi-car crash. That’s how empty the 407 is.

@Nabee_H Год назад

As someone who lives right beside the 407 (Used to live right beside the 401 which is ironic), I have to add a 15-minute drive to my day to drive down onto the 401 because I dont have the money to pay for that Toll and your average Canadian doesn't have the money for it either! 5 dollars maybe even 10 dollars i would understand but paying 50 dollars to get to Toronto for work/school and another 50 dollars on the way back eats up most of what you make in a day.

@erikoftheinternet Год назад

I was driving on the 401 this weekend. It's really insane how little tolerance there is for leaving a reasonable following distance. I use the radar cruise control in my corolla and it leaves about 4 or 5 second following distance. This drives people absolutely insane. They will swerve into the lane on my right, swerve back in front of me, then slam on the breaks so that they can fill that tiny gap.

@bonne_vie Год назад

Agreed. That's how you get that 100 car pile up.

@sunglassesemojis Год назад

Lol I notice this every time I drive. If you leave more than a couple car lengths in between you and the next car, someone is gonna fill it

@Gigaamped Год назад

Unpopular opinion: there should be some law or campaign to promote the use of cruise control for common sense sake

@ElWiggie Год назад

We're they driving a Pick-up Truck or oversized SUV by any chance?

@erikoftheinternet Год назад

@@ElWiggie often, just as often its a sedan, especially BMW, Benz, Audi

@michaelvickers4437 Год назад

It's interesting what seems to have happened with the Hwy 407 toll road. We have friends who moved into a swanky new housing development near the eastern end of 407 some years ago. The husband was an executive with a company in Toronto, and part of his compensation was they paid his 407 tolls. I realized that much of the new development happening near 407 was quite high end because the toll road had become a de facto executive private expressway.

@bonne_vie Год назад

Peasants can take the death express

@nunyabidness3075 Год назад

What does the average user pay? It cannot be $70 a trip from the suburbs to downtown.

@kevwwong Год назад

@@nunyabidness3075 It's free, because the 407 is primarily East-West, and you need to head south to go downtown. :) But driving into downtown TO is a colossal headache on it's own, and I will take public transit vs driving every time if I can help it. And even then, it can be frustrating. They switched my GO Transit service from trains to buses (because they're doing work on the line) and what would've been a 40 minute train ride became a 90 minute bus ride thanks to - you guessed it - traffic.

@nunyabidness3075 Год назад

@@kevwwong Lol. I gotta go look at a map. Is this the same road he talks about in the video? How is it an east west artery has so much demand if people are not commuting on it?

@kevwwong Год назад

@@nunyabidness3075 You might be confusing the 407 (toll road) with the 401. And I never said that people aren't commuting on the 401 (or 407). And certainly people might take the 401 a bit to commute downtown. But it really doesn't make sense to take the 407 to go downtown, since it acts like a I-2xx bypass and avoids Toronto. Hope that helps

@michaeldrabenstott9756 Год назад

When your highway has its own reality show about crashes and deaths, you're way overdue to rethink your approach to transportation.

@WoodenViking Год назад

but… but that keeps the economy going tho

@ecurewitz Год назад

That’s what happens when you let the oil companies buy your government

@user-pq4by2rq9y Год назад

@Francis Petrik it costs more for the economy too.

@WoodenViking Год назад

@@user-pq4by2rq9y as long as the money keep flowing bud, as long as it’s flowing

@CityNerd Год назад

You'd think

@maumor2 Год назад

"They just dont give you the sense of freedom you get when you're sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on a newly expanded Interstate" BOOYAH!!!!!! MIC DROPPING EMOJI NEEDED

@davidreichert9392 Год назад

As someone who grew up in suburban Toronto and now lives in the heart of the city, all I can say is that you are being far too nice. The roads everywhere in the GTA are an absolute abomination and the 401 is the crown jewel of car awfulness in this area (hence the crown on the sign). I'm still hopeful that the expanding public transportation will be of significant help, but even though there's a lot going on, it's still only scratching the surface of what is needed. The only silver lining I see is that the general public is slowly coming on board to the idea that a car centric society isn't so great.

@50gramsof Год назад

Thanks! I don’t really want more videos about how bad things are out there, but would love to know how to actually do something about the whole mess

@Zachruff Год назад

also we're spending so much money on refurbing one stupid elevated highway right through downtown that really needs to go.

@uis246 Год назад

Society isn't car cantric, city is

@toastandpoop Год назад

EFF the Gardiner

@moho472 Год назад

@@Zachruff Partial refurbishment. They want to spend over 3 billion to refurbish the Gardiner East. It's a waste of money.

@niephasus Год назад

Thank you for the spotlight on this blight on Toronto and the GTA. I appreciate how you highlighted the Province of Ontario's disgusting rhetoric on how widening highways and temporarily easing traffic is a net positive for greenhouse emissions. It is blatant pandering to a voter base that is so infuriatingly addicted to cars.

@serbansaredwood Год назад

It's incredibly frustrating I can't even. And Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass are being constructed over sensitive protected lands, and the government says they are solving climate change by making traffic idle less. 🤦‍♂

@CityNerd Год назад

You got it!

@railfanhunterjacob6353 Год назад

@@CityNerd One of the main problems about Metra is it's North Central Service and Heritage Corridors as they have six trains a day into Chicago and six in the opposite direction on the North Central Service and three trains a day from and into Chicago on the Heritage Corridor and the schedules are so bad. It's one of the huge problems with Metra Another major problem with Metra is it's obsession with EMDs locomotives and their locomotives are aging quickly and EMD had been shut down since the mid-2000s, since Metra had refused to buy Amtrak's Genesis engines because they're not EMDs, they decided to come up with a stupid idea to convert older freight locomotives an SD70MAC into SD70MACHs Over the years, Metra has not received any funding to improve it's services and upgrading infrastructure. But a change of state or local government would help Metra, which is part of solving the problem The other problem is that Metra doesn't own all of their tracks as their tracks are shared with major freight companies around the Chicago area such as Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX Transportation and CPKC Some of the freight companies would help Metra such as Union Pacific as Union Pacific recently announced that it would transfer of it's three Metra lines to Metra while Union Pacific owns the right of way and BNSF with helping Metra to extend Metra's BNSF Line to Kendall County, Illinois Others like CPKC, Norfolk Southern and CSX are just openly hostile towards Metra's commuter trains Metra has to buy out the right of ways of freight companies in cases like Norfolk Southern, CPKC and CSX in order for the state of Illinois to own the right of way for Metra Fun fact, Metra's North Central Service used to have 10 trains per day and they extended the trains to 22 trains per day in 2006 which became one of the most busiest Metra lines until 2020 when the pandemic hit. Another problem with Metra is that Metra and CTA are run as completely separate agencies with separate constituents and separate goals despite the fact that the people of Chicagoland travel within the region and often need both services, there is connectivity between the commuter and local rail services. These systems are not integrated very well at all. The downtown Metra terminals don't even directly connect with the CTA rail lines downtown (except Millennium Station). This severely limits the options of Metra commuters to transfer to CTA rail for destinations not in the Loop as well as Chicago commuters going into the suburbs. There are only a few direct connections between Metra and CTA rail. This just underscores the lack of regional planning, vision, or purpose between Metra and CTA politically and functionally to the great disservice of the people of Chicago. If CTA wants to connect with Metra, they need to upgrade Chicago Union Station, Ogilvie Transportation Center and LaSalle Street Station for CTA to connect with Metra and have CTA have it's own yard A lot of it needs to be addressed about Metra

@blakksheep736 Год назад

Yeah, I've heard BS, plenty of it, but touting something that will increase car use as "good for the environment" is a new flavour of ridiculous I hadn't yet tried. So, thanks gov, I guess.

@EvanLeibovitch Год назад

If you want to see a masterclass in Ontario pandering to developers and suburban sprawl, check out the marketing of Highway 413.

@sashaespinosa3099 Год назад

"gets drivers home to their loved ones faster" sure, if they mean heaven

@steadystate4015 Год назад

On a North American road trip in 2002, I drove on 401 from Windsor to Toronto at night while it was snowing. The amount of truck wreckage in the center divider was too much to count. I made it while holding my steering wheel for my life. That and all the speeding/skating/honking giant trucks killed any preconception I had that all of Canada is nice & polite.

@NebulonRanger Год назад

There was a MASSIVE pileup on the 401 near Belleville in like 2016, because the Ford government cheaped out on snow removal

@carlinthomas9482 Год назад

@@NebulonRanger The Ford government wasn't in power in 2016, that was the Wynne/McGuinty government.

@stringlarson1247 Год назад

My in-laws live in Windsor. I drove that stretch of 401 during snow, rain, etc. to/from TO a number of times. The bit out of Windsor was (is?) brutal. I've not been on it for almost 20yrs now, so I don't know what it's like now.

@Ont785 Год назад

You driving in a snowstorm in the middle of the night, and you’re upset at other people? Really? Doesn’t sound like you’re to Canadian

@PlanetLinuxChannel Год назад

Oh Canadians are generally quite polite until they pack into their private two-tonne tin cans.

@bensteedman100 Год назад

This is the type of video I've been waiting for. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Toronto and always hated my life being stuck in traffic on the 401. Now I've moved out to Vancouver for university, a city with no major freeways, and the quality of life difference is night and day. I can get most of my trips done by bike, and if I want to go downtown for a night out, I'll take the bus. Really amazing what living in a city with no major freeway does to your mental health. Maybe that's a good video topic?

@theold1. Год назад

ditto

@locholoco Год назад

Sure and you have to stop eating to pay rent... I was there 2 weeks ago and took me 1,5 hours to get to the airport as there are no highways.. No other options were available

@pianoman47 Год назад

@@locholoco other than the sky train 😉

@rokulus7910 Год назад

Vancouver has plenty of freeways. The suburbs are for all intents and purposes still Vancouver. Toronto and Vancouver are quite similar in that the central parts of both are very walkable with a great quality of life while the suburbs are sprawling hellscapes. My experience of daily life in Toronto rarely includes freeways.

@rabbit251 Год назад

I'm an American living in Tokyo. I couldn't imagine the city surviving without the train system. And the trains are very busy packed during rush hour, and they run every 10-15 minutes during that time. And popular lines have many cars. Before I moved here a friend and I drove up to Disneyland at night. All highways in Japan are toll roads. I was surprised that when the highway got to Tokyo, it remained 2 lanes. At night the highway was filled with delivery trucks. Also surprising, Japan isn't embracing all electric vehicles but instead is relying on hybrids. I've lived in Tokyo now 4 years and really don't even know where the highways are. If you were traveling across the city you would take the train and then a taxi. Cars are only for local (going to the supermarket) or long distance travel (going on vacation). Having a car in Tokyo is also expensive. When you buy a car you must also have proof of a permanent parking space. A space in my condo costs $300/mo.. Plus, every 3 years you must pay to have your car inspected and any defects found must be repaired before you can drive it. We are also just ending "Golden Week" in which Wednesday - Friday are holidays and so everyone travels. The highways were packed, so were the bullet trains. We went up to Yamagata by bullet train, then paid a taxi $300 to drive us over the mountains to Sendai (5 hour drive). From there we took bullet train back home. The road over mountain was packed. Pretty sure Japan is looking into building a train across the north.

@Skip6235 Год назад

I am a civil engineer who has worked in both the US and Canada, and I can confirm that highway widening is a bad idea. I’ve found that even if the planners and engineers think it’s a bad idea, though, politicians get involved and that’s the end of it. Without naming specifics, I did a congestion study for a major suburban highway in a very very very large US city. I concluded that widening it was not going to have a significant effect on delay. My boss pulled me into a meeting and told me “I read your report, I need you to conclude that we need to add two more lanes in each direction, because it’s already been decided that that is what they are going to do.” Sure enough, several years later, it’s four lanes wider and traffic is still just as bad.

@omeganik Год назад

Thats sad

@russetwolf13 Год назад

Hope you kept the report and sent it off after you quit.

@mr.ducarbre9065 Год назад

Wouldn't this go against your professional ethics when you have your PE license ? Sorry for asking, I'm currently finishing my bachelor's degree in civil engineering and I'm quite intrigued on how I should react in this situation.

@robthomas5827 Год назад

I've had the exact same experience as a planner. We're always producing EIS docs to comply with NEPA and there's almost no consideration made for the "no build" design alternative. Management basically gives the direction to make sure the document concludes that the project has to be built - even though the project really doesn't.

@jintsuubest9331 Год назад

@@mr.ducarbre9065 It depends on where you works, but values of ethic ranges from none to divided by 0. Do you want your promotion? Do you want your bonus? Or you want to be replaced?

@DWNY358 Год назад

AI got at least one thing wrong. The 401, an Ontario provincial highway, by definition goes nowhere near Quebec City. Rather, it ends at the Quebec border where it gets renumbered as Quebec Autoroute 20, which is what goes near Quebec City and beyond.

@purplerabbit638 Год назад

Was about to point out the same thing.

@EvanEscher Год назад

I really like what you said at 5:15: "The marginal value of a freeway lane declines with each one you add" That applies to a lot of things in life.

@nullifye7816 Год назад

arguably all of them

@UnicornDreamsPastelSkies Год назад

Indeed, the ratio of quality VS. quantity.

@toastandpoop Год назад

my eyes popped out of my head! having spent some time on the 401, esp from the late 80's to 2000....and revisiting in 2018,,, how did they manage to make things SO MUCH WORSE!

@tonywalters7298 Год назад

And despite the investment in new roads and highways, commute times continue to increase, and average speeds decrease, so we are effectively throwing the money into a black hole.

@dbolt6543 Год назад

Easyily, they are a government run project.

@kevwwong Год назад

I can't be certain, but I think it comes down to one man, Mike Harris, and the perfect storm that swept his PC party into power.

@toastandpoop Год назад

@@kevwwong NJB did a good video about the making of the GTA.

@kevwwong Год назад

@@toastandpoop Not a big fan of NJB. But I'll give you the thumbs up because I think other people might like the content there. I've found CityNerd and RM Transit are more to my liking.

@knarf_on_a_bike Год назад

I happen to live in Toronto. About 15 years ago I had a minor medical emergency, and went to (true story!) Sunnybrook emergency. A major pile-up occurred on the 401 and I sat in the waiting room and watched about a dozen gurneys rush by with bloodied, moaning bodies on them. It was pretty gross. So yeah, your story about Sunnybrook is a true one. So glad I don't own a car. . .

@kelvinhelmholtz Год назад

Civil engineers are taught in their first transportation engineering class that adding lanes doesn't alleviate congestion - it's been that way for decades - they are not the ones telling tax payers they need more lanes.

@Droidman1231 Год назад

I'm still shocked the toll is $70 to bypass Toronto on the 407. I've seen some high tolls before but you can even drive the entire Florida Turnpike, 250+ miles, through multiple major metro areas and it only costs like ~$20.

@Urbanhandyman Год назад

They use the metric system which is different.

@moho472 Год назад

It's also because Highway 407 is privatized. The Harris government sold it on a 99 year lease, and everybody realizes it was a stupid decision.

@jacktattersall9457 Год назад

Highway 407 ETR is privately owned, so the tolls are set to make them a nice profit. It was one of the worst privatizations ever, because the province sold/long-term leased the highway for less than it cost to build.

@NebulonRanger Год назад

Yeah, elsewhere in the country where there're tolls it's WAY cheaper; the bridge across the St. Lawrence outside Montreal is a flat $2.50 and NS-104's Cobequid Pass toll section is like $4, and that's only if you have out-of-province plates. Only one that comes close is the Confederation Bridge at something like $63, and, much to the chagrin of Islanders, that only applies when *leaving* PEI.

@jacktattersall9457 Год назад

@@NebulonRanger so then a two way trip on the Confederation Bridge would be $31.50 one way.

@banovsky Год назад

THANK YOU for following up on your 401 hints and making this video. What can I add? As both a GTA daily cyclist and automotive writer, it’s incredibly frustrating to watch local councils & provincial gov’ts continue to pour gas on highway building over several decades. Such terrible investments that have held back many areas of the city from truly flourishing.

@shturmovik3033 Год назад

When I moved to The Netherlands in the 90s, I was appalled when I found out that the Dutch were changing a traffic lane to a bike lane ion a 4 lane road in the The Hague. I later met an official with the traffic planning authority and I quizzed him on why the planners were going retrograde on their traffic issue in the Northern part of the city. His answer was the idea was to “force everyone to ride bicycles and public transportation.” I thought these guys were nuts until I had lived there for another 2 years…and rather than traffic getting worse, it actually got better. The entire country can apparent exist without cars since their bicycle and public transportation net is that good.

@crisissocoylike446 2 месяца назад

It's true!! The Netherlands is the best country to be a car guy because there's hardly ever any traffic

@lexburen5932 2 месяца назад

@@crisissocoylike446 false. we still have a lot of problems with congested traffic here, especially because of comments like you, car guys come here, and congest our roads. Better use a bycyle and public transportation. Or have a car, but use that for further away distances, and do grocerys, and visiting family or whatever with public transportation. We are currently making even more lanes dissappear, make them to bycycle lanes, and improve our public transportation infrastructure. We are also forcing cars out of our city centers and nearby areas. Utrecht center is completely car free, you wanna park? Sure do that outside the city center, and take public transportation ( bus, tram) to go to the city center. This is our new model wich we are working very HARD on, as car infested people and oil companys try to undo all this, but this is futile. we will ban cars from our city centers, and make everyone cycle, walk or take public transportation near and inside city centers. the total oppossite from the USA. :)

@crisissocoylike446 2 месяца назад

@@lexburen5932 I thank you for correcting me. And I think that's so cool. I can't wait to visit your country and appreciate your people's civil engineering

@thedownwardmachine Год назад

The purpose of freeway widening is not to alleviate traffic. The purpose is to alleviate the complaints of constituents while covertly enhancing total flow for local business interests.

@kaitlyn__L Год назад

This! What it’s sold as isn’t what it’s sold for.

@tonywalters7298 Год назад

There are plenty of people who think cars are the only way people can access businesses.

@linuxman7777 Год назад

This, because stroad business have more leverage than downtown business this is the case.

@josephfisher426 Год назад

@@linuxman7777 What downtown business? (Consumer business, anyway... there are plenty of corporate offices specializing in acquiring government money.)

@tonywalters7298 Год назад

@@josephfisher426 urban renewal is a very sad chapter in our history. Unfortunately a main driver of suburbanization was racism aka white flight as a reaction to racial integration

@roger1818 Год назад

The reason that the toll on the 407 is so high is that the government decided to privatize it with a99 year lease. The private company sets the tolls and have done so to maximize profit. If you double the toll but loose fewer than half the cars as a result, you are making more money. The under utilization of the 407 is one of the key reasons that the 401 is so busy.

@GONINSANE Год назад

One of the reasons why I am not opposed to the potential 413 project. 407 in its current state isn't a viable alternative for average people. Regional rail is only good for funneling people into the Toronto core, but it's useless to anyone who needs to travel through Toronto or north of Toronto. Another idea is subsidizing transport trucks to use 407, but the costs would be so high. Probably could build two 413s with that money.

@DaDoubleDee Год назад

Every time I'm on the 401 I feel like I'm about to die. Between cars flying by at 150km or tailgating you at 120km, I often dream of how life would be if they replaced all the lanes with train tracks and had ten tracks instead of ten highway lanes, how they could connect to all the suburbs.

@lockphilip Год назад

I am a transit user. Taking a GO Bus from Barrie to Toronto can take 3 hours due to heavy traffic around 401 interchanges. In 2007 - 2013, I could get to Toronto in 90 minutes on a greyhound bus.

@knutthompson7879 Год назад

Your deadpan sarcasm on this, especially the bit starting at 11:18 is ...

@GladmanNow Год назад

Riding my electric bike through Minneapolis traffic I often thank the cars and trucks for being what they are as an attempt to paradoxically embrace the awful present as an invitation to some wiser future. Spell check has a sense of humor and suggested I was inviting a wider future. Love will win but it may take some 😢.

@patrickhehl9881 Год назад

Oh I love to see my home highway in the thumbnail. Even before I started learning about urbanism and transportation I always felt that adding a lane to the 401 didn't help a single thing, ever.

@anthonyfox477 Год назад

Came for the hard hitting reporting; stayed for the world class snark. -A satisfied consumer

@philpaine3068 Год назад

One of the earliest successes of Canadian television was a series called "Cannonball," which ran in 1958 and 1959 and was syndicated in the U.S. It was based on the super-coolness of being a truck driver on the 401, where the outdoor sequences were shot. A crabby old and snarky young pair of truck drivers work on the glamorous futuristic superhighway, having thrilling adventures every week. The show's theme song was composed and sung by Merle Haggard! Episode titles include "Nitro Haul," "Trip to Buffalo," and "Moose Hunt," (can't have a Canadian TV series, no matter how futuristic, without a moose appearing in it). This show, probably more than Leave It to Beaver or Father Knows Best, is a window into the bizarre world view of 1950s North America. . . . I remember the first time I was driven through the infamous "basketweave" interchange of the 401 and marvelling at what seemed to be a science fiction dream --- but, of course, I didn't have to do the driving. Grown up, I ended up working in a suburban office building where the cafeteria windows had a good view of the continuous 401 carnage. Extra points in the betting pool if there was visible smoke and flames. Now I live in the heart of the city, where local politicians are at least passably urbanist, but the Tory provincial government, led by the brother of the infamous coke-snorting Rob Ford, controls the highways, and it still lives in the 1950s. . . . One of the truly pull-out-your-hair-with-your-bare-hands frustrations of the early 2000s was that, as soon as Highway 407 was built, the Tories "privatized" it..... selling it to a consortium controlled by the Spanish government, ensuring that all the money Ontarians spent on tolls not only left the country and went directly to Spain, but that all that money went to building high speed rail for the Spanish!

@zachweyrauch2988 Год назад

I really think money export is a large issue in canada. Most of the commerce here is controlled by monopolies and almost anything else people need they get from amazon.... thats not alot of potential for re-investment.

@mdhazeldine Год назад

I ride on the 401 a few times a year to visit my Canadian in-laws. I usually think of Canada as "a bit like a America, but less people and less bad", so when I discovered the 401 and it's amazing accolade, my first question was WHY? Why did they feel the need to build something so massive and why is it so busy. I live in London (UK) and our M25 is bad, but it's not a patch on the 401. I think one reason is because Toronto is on a lake edge, you can't split the traffic around either side of the city in a ring road, but they made a good effort with the QEW (another horrible road). But also I think it's because Toronto is pretty massive and the public transit, while some of the best in North America, is still woefully under built for the size of city it is. There aren't many other options if you want to go around/past the city. Regional rail is terrible and commuter rail is below average. The good news is that they're not starting to build and improve a lot of it, so there's finally some hope.

@Hogtownboy1 Год назад

the 401 was built when the population of toronto was and suburbs was 1.4 million it is now 6 million

@mdhazeldine Год назад

@@Hogtownboy1 That's quite some growth.

@Hogtownboy1 Год назад

@@mdhazeldine fastest growing in North America for 50 years until 2016

@davidreichert9392 Год назад

Part of the problem is also because the Windsor Quebec City Corridor, where more than half of Canadians live, is basically one long thin strip, as you elude to, proximity to the lakes and the St. Lawrence. It's been that way since the earliest European settlement in this part of the world. So basically almost all travel between places in the corridor involves driving along the 401 / A40 (same highway different provinces). The only cities of consequence in the corridor that don't lie on this stretch are Ottawa and Hamilton Niagara. So this one artery has to bear much of the load.

@mdhazeldine Год назад

@@davidreichert9392 All the more crazy that they haven't bothered to build HSR yet. It's perfectly setup for it.

@mikekeenanphd Год назад

As a resident of Houston for 34 years, I try to avoid the Katy freeway. There is little more depressing: 24 lanes of traffic near my office. I have driven on it maybe twice in the last 5 years.

@1978dkelly Год назад

Can't wait to see RM Transit and Not Just Bikes chime in here.

@JM-gs1gr 17 дней назад

The most amazing thing about this video is how you got pictures of the 401 with absolutely no cars on it. That is a miracle.

@HumanInk Год назад

Meanwhile in NH, the Boston commuter rail extension is DOA (again), but the Rt. 3 highway widening is well under way.

@tomgeraci9886 Год назад

Ouch. The NH Boston suburbs (Salem, Nashua, Plastow, etc) have insane sprawl and commuter rail needs to be expanded there asap, but of course NIMBYs are gonna nimby

@HumanInk Год назад

@@tomgeraci9886 mostly people around here still think self driving cars will be coming to save us.

@NebulonRanger Год назад

Haha, talking about DOA commuter rail projects, Bowmanville (my hometown, a not insignificant place with about 50k people in it) has been promised a GO station for the past 50 years and it still hasn't happened

@PlanetLinuxChannel Год назад

It’s so weird, because Toronto (and most major Canadian cities for that matter) is doing so much right. Better transit, more workability, better cycling infrastructure, making wide suburban streets more ped / bike friendly, and for the most part, not building any more highways. Even the Ontario Ministry of Transportation has agreed that widening highways generally doesn’t help and they have stopped doing it for the most part. But we just can’t help it with the 401! Probably because it’s trying to catch up to decades of massive population growth. I think we’ve all accepted that it’ll always be bad and to just always find alternate routes unless the navigation says it’s perfectly clear! The one benefit is that most of Toronto’s highways (including much of the 401) intentionally avoid the dense urban centres, so it’s not like there are giant highways running through downtown (the closest the 401 gets to downtown is almost 4 miles away) Finally, that Toronto to Montreal high-speed-rail plan looks like it’ll be happening, and Toronto is starting a transformation of their commuter rail network into an all-day, high-frequency regional rail network (Deutsche Bahn is helping implement it). You should definitely look into covering the “GO Expansion” project. (unless you’ve done it already? I’ll have to take a look!)

@HipsterShiningArmor 2 месяца назад

yeah as bad as the 401, can you imagine how much worse it would be if it was, like, lodged between Queen and Dundas? cuz thats the situation that some american cities are unfortunately dealing with rn. horrifying to think about.

@davidfroth Год назад

We’re broken and I don’t see much hope for fixing things soon, although I really do appreciate you speaking truth to this and other urban issues. The problem is particularly stark for me, having just returned from a couple of weeks in Japan. Hope you get to spend some time over there - would love to see some video commentary covering their transit system, land use rules, housing policy, and of course youth mobility independence!

@harrisonthorburn7415 Год назад

I grew up in the GTA and now live on its western edge. One thing we could use is a GO line (commuter rail for the uninitiated) that parallels the 401 and another that follows the 407. That would help people cross the city and change trains without the wasted time of going all the way to downtown Toronto and changing at Union station.

@HipsterShiningArmor 7 месяцев назад

the Milton GO line doesn't exactly parallel the 401 but its still a pretty solid alternative that runs in the same general direction that also stops in some actually surprisingly dense neihgbourhoods in Etobicoke and Mississauga and, yknow, causes far fewer accidents. or at least it would be a decent alternative if canadian pacific would stop being buttholes and would sell the line already and let metrolinx run trains in both directions all day at 30 minute headways, which it very easily could have the ridership for.

@ezeewrap66 Год назад

New viewer, old activist. Love the sarcasm. Also the truth telling about the politics of engineering/road building. I grew up near the 401. I did not know the story about Sunnybrook Hospital.

@humanecities Год назад

3:30 Wow… That’s depressing. Every time someone dies in a crash, it’s just part of life 😢

@winterwatson6811 Год назад

feels like we still practice human sacrifice

@jthummell Год назад

Hoping you can make a video on how people can fight things like this and make a difference in their home town/cities!

@frempy4426 Год назад

Your irony and sarcasm just keeps getting more powerful with each video 😤

@Sudz3 Год назад

The issue is that the "bypass" to get around toronto doesn't exist. the GTA area is SO LARGE it adds so much time to take a rural route around it. the 407 was supposed to be this, but it actually, literally, 100% true - costs $80 (EIGHTY!!!!) to drive around the GTA from Burlington to hwy 115/35. Its nuts.

@beanniederjohn1867 Год назад

I’m from Wisconsin and currently in Mexico. The walkability difference is insane.

@zachweyrauch2988 Год назад

yup you would think given that we have SIGNIFICANTLY more space than many other places in north america, we might not have made such egregious errors, and here we are the worst offender.

@andrepoiy1199 Год назад

Highway 401 actually wasn't just gradually adding lanes over the years. It used to be 4 lanes but it got expanded to 12 lanes in one go in the 1970s under the assumption that it will be future proof for any increases in traffic. If they had built it by adding lanes over the years, it probably would not have gotten this wide because of right-of-way. In the 70s the 401 corridor was pretty much empty and so they had the room to expand to 12 lanes.

@barrylinder1373 Год назад

I think your videos are best when you delve into the details. This video was too superficiial. Thanks for the channel.

@mitchc802 Год назад

The amount of sarcasm that you manage to stuff in a single video continues to amaze me

@alexgauger Год назад

I can’t speak for Canadian highways but highways and freeways in the US have substantially lower death rate per vehicle mile traveled compared to other road types, and account for less than a quarter of all traffic deaths. They have problems for sure but there probably is a safety benefit to having a highway vs no highway if some amount of people are going to drive with or without one.

@jintsuubest9331 11 месяцев назад

The same statistic also suggest highway accident has far higher ded than non highway accident. Maybe that's not a bug but a feature? You will be bankrupted by hospital bill if you didn't get killed in the accident.

@j.n.sloane Год назад

Dude! Excellent video and your sarcasm is brilliant! Thank you!!!!

@b_uppy Год назад

If they can widen roads, they can add rail instead. Rail adds water permeability as well as real equity while taking up less overall space. We need more space for housing and trees rather than road space. Switzerland has rail so good even the rich use it, and therefore it is also well run. Likely the government should takeover ownership the rail itself, in addition to adding a lot more freight and passenger rail. Let private individuals and railway lines have access.

@TheRandCrews Год назад

I’ve seen rich people like office workers in suits be beside construction workers on the TTC Subway before when I was there but that’s because Toronto is so car centric still that it’s traffic everywhere. Was surprised to see subway have park & rides not just at the Commuter/GO Train stations.

@b_uppy Год назад

@@TheRandCrews In Switzerland rail is much better done, and more enjoyable. Think if they offered free wifi people would overwhelmingly opt for it because of the personal productivity increase.

@TheRandCrews Год назад

@@b_uppy oh truly TTC Subway has barely any cell service unless you’re a freedom user, Wifi are only on some of the stations and it works somewhat. Compared to Montreal Metro with better cell service, with their new REM trains having on board wifi as well, Vancouver as well having cell service underground.

@ceruleanstone Год назад

They are adding rail. Lots of it. The RMTransit channel does a great job of covering it, if you're interested.

@TravelsWithTony Год назад

Mind numbing that anyone can think 50% more cars = less greenhouse gases! That said, are there any plans to add elevated trains along/in the middle of the 401?

@levioficeland1425 Год назад

I love when you start talking ironically because your tone doesn't change at all, I follow along until you say something like "carbon-reducing infrastructure such as the Katy freeway" and I just lose it every time lmao. Please never change CityNerd

@jenandreas841 Год назад

I'd be delighted to hear more lambasting of the Katy Freeway. The fact that an earlier highway expansion ate the commuter rail line that used to run parallel beside it is particularly juicy.

@runswithraptors Год назад

This may be one of your best videos yet 👍👌keep it up

@donmc1950 Год назад

I remember driving on the 401 in the late 50s when it had less cars and less stress. Fast forward to today , when I go to Toronto I take the expensive toll road 407 which is like the 401 in the 1950's. Next time I go to Toronto I plan to take the Bus which is now cheaper than the 407 tolls and the cost of fuel. It will take one hour longer but I can read and use my wifi on the bus.

@ethanshelton2261 Год назад

Great vid! I recently just went to a city planning commission meeting in my neighborhood and found the amount of NIMBYs there to be overwhelming and discouraging. While many of them seem passionate about the community. It feels as if they’re being led astray by developers in the area. Would you ever consider doing a video on local politics and it’s effects on walkable mixed use development?

@pianoman47 Год назад

Great idea!

@sillasbispo7518 Год назад

i loved the 'keep calm and hoje tem churrasco shirt in the background' ! greetings from Brazil! Much love!

@timothyirwin8974 21 час назад

When built many complained that it was too far north. In the sixties I occasionally ran across it. Would not get an inch today.

@AndreBeverly Год назад

Imagine instead of widening the lanes they used a portion of that to space to put rails in the place.I have only been to Chicago once and when I saw the train in the middle of the highway I was wondering why they don't do that more.

@UserName-ts3sp Год назад

it’s a really good idea and more cities should do it. in my city they’re building these “smart lanes” for rush hour, and honestly it wouldn’t be a bad idea for rapid bus transit between downtown and the airport.

@martylawson1638 Год назад

Afik, while a train down the middle of the highway is a great way to add capacity without building a new right-of-way, it ham-strings the stations. I.e how much land is within a 10min walk of the station when half of it is a 20-lane highway?

@UserName-ts3sp Год назад

@@martylawson1638 can build some kind of cap over it. 200-300 feet for one so it depends on what’s close to the freeway. if it bulldozed through a neighborhood it can easily work, less so for suburban sprawl

@FrancisSiuChock Год назад

As a Torontonian I for one can attest to the love hate relationship we have with Hwy 401! In a utopain world we wouldn't have a highway of this scope anywhere far less in many of our backyards here in Toronto, but we live in a reality. The 401 is a vital transportation hub that is necessary for the vast amount of goods that travel on every hour. Also, we live in a very wide and vast geographic region of over 2,216/sq mi. We do have many pockets of density and we are building many transit projects, both surface and underground to aid in moving our growing population. One thing that would help is for our Province of Ontario to make it MUCH harder to get a drivers license where it is a privilege rather than a right. This is clear and obvious cycle> better drivers> less crashes> less trauma (hospitalizations)> less insurance claims and cost (we have amongst the highest vehicle insurance cost in NA). We can debate endlessly about having less cars which would be ideal, but my beautiful city of Toronto just works and is great just the way it is and I do know with the new transit being built will be even better!

@caseyjones5145 Год назад

Great video! this channel is exceedingly adequate!

@edgarrodriguez8973 Год назад

Love your sense of humour, keep on this great trajectory, I enjoy your channel each day more. Greetings from Bogotá Colombia

@Souleymanbane Год назад

Grateful for your channel! Always a great time, and highly educational. Thinking of taking a trip to Chicago because of you

@profjonb6944 Год назад

Make sure you avoid driving on 90/94 like your life depends on it, because it probably does.

@gurrierpl Год назад

You got inspired by the waterfront freeway episode? :D

@UserName-ts3sp Год назад

@@profjonb6944 it’s definitely an interesting drive. chicago has a lot of bats outta hell drivers. compared to other cities you really gotta be alert

@rjmcallister1888 Год назад

I've been on the 401 and the QEW between Toronto and Buffalo in afternoon drive. All the stories are true. Took well over four hours to get back to the US from Rogers Centre.

@NebulonRanger 6 месяцев назад

Yeah, the 401, QEW and especially the Gardiner are absolutely atrocious. Went out to the IKEA in North York back when I lived at the edge of the old city limits, GPS directed me to take the Gardiner to Dixie. Listening was one of the biggest mistakes of my life LOL

@tking3 Год назад

So much great sarcasm and dark humor here (slightly more the usual). Great stuff. Keep them coming!

@danieldanko7346 Год назад

Reminds me of when Maryland recently diverted $800 million of guaranteed funding for Baltimore's Red Line and instead widened several highways. Perhaps you could do a Top 10 video for radio alignments that are most needed (based on density, theoretical ridership)?

@JosephAnnino76 Год назад

The widest and most congested roads are often the ones that need to carry both local and through traffic. Thunk the New Jersey Turnpike. An effort to accommodate both leads to worsening local conditions via sprawl. A lot is said about getting cars off the road, but a lot of the traffic on roads like this is trucks and commercial. Urbanist alternatives for commercial traffic is not something you hear a lot about, but it disproportionately contributes to pollution and congestion.

@Token_Nerd Год назад

My one qualm with this video is your last point on civil engineers being bad at city design. As a civil enginerd myself, I can confidently say that the disasters the Finch West LRT and Eglinton Crosstown LRT (as well as pretty much North American low floor LRT in general) is failure caused by leaving effective transit design to planners and architects who figured putting trains in the middle of a busy stroad with stops every half mile or less was an effective way to convince people to take transit.

@josea7804 Год назад

As a Civil Engineer PE I 100% agree with your soapbox rant at the end.

@bluegill5802 Год назад

I believe these videos reach people and will incite positive change. Keep it up, I really appreciate your work

@MrGriff305 Год назад

1 more lane absolutely helps

@justanotheryoutubechannel Год назад

First! Okay seriously it’s kinda shocking how much money is wasted widening roads, surely some economist should realise it’s less expensive to subsidise a loss making train than keep doing this? Especially since it doesn’t actually seem to help. It’s always great to see new videos from you and this is gonna be a good one, I can tell from the amount of parking lots in the intro.

@doolittlegeorge Год назад

Actually it's not as both Cities mentioned here Orlando and Denver in the latter case especially so very much have public transportation surface rail options all that made money in the case of Denver *LONG* before Car Culture suddenly arrived.

@KyrieFortune Год назад

Economists have realized it long ago... unfortunately, economists don't control the Department of Transport, sock puppets for the automobile and oil industry do.

@fredashay Год назад

Studies have shown that adding more lanes actually increases traffic and makes conditions worse. Trains are good, but to get people out of their cars and into trains, the trains have to be at least as convenient and comfortable as a car. Frequency needs to be 5 minutes or less between trains, trains and stations need to be heated and air conditioned, seats need to be comfy.

@user-hv6wb5gk8p Год назад

@@fredashay 5 minutes or less seems excessive. In medium density areas even something like a bus can serve a route by running one every 15 minutes, especially if bike infrastructure is decent.

@awwmanboi9791 Год назад

@@fredashay That's literally how the rest of the developed world build their railways?

@theparadigmshifter Год назад

It's nice to know Skynet isn't perfect yet. The ad youtube played immediately after this video is for Ford. I assumed it knew I was more of train guy by now.

@briansieve Год назад

Thanks for your usual outstanding content.

@aprilmg7072 Год назад

"Let's hear it for human progress" the deadpan delivery made me laugh so hard.

@jbrook4526 Год назад

I drive on the 401 for work 3 days a week… worst part of my week (especially between Milton and Mississauga). The kicker is that my office is near a go train station, and I live near a go train station, but they aren’t on the same line, I’d need to go into Toronto and double back to Mississauga. It would be awesome to have a reasonable alternative than driving along this nerve wracking awful highway.

@TheTroyc1982 Год назад

oh you can just take the GO Buses which exist to link the different lines.

@jbrook4526 Год назад

@@TheTroyc1982 Thanks, but the bus doesn't stop at the stations, and the extra travel to walking and taking city bus adds almost another hour to total travel time... also the bus gets stuck in traffic just like my car.

@brucewilkinson8599 Год назад

Great video, Ray.

@pitchwind Год назад

The Kitchener-Waterloo region on the 401 is trying (provincial government be damned) to show the rest of Ontario what walkable really looks like! Sadly reliant on the 401 to get to TO, its recently added its own light rail, has excellent an excellent park and bike network between the cores, and we're well on our way to the 15-minute, walkable city. If you do come out to TO to check out the 401, don't forget to make a stop over here!

@primeechoes8297 Год назад

Toronto is such a confusing place when it comes to transportation. While it easily has one of the most ambitious transit expansion plans in North America at the moment (multiple new LRTs, new TTC lines, and extensions, and GO Regional Express Rail), it also continues to aggressively widen highways throughout the region. Ultimately, I think it really comes down to a failure of planning the peripheral centres of the GTA, they are becoming dense and populated (as well as evolving into major employment centres in their own right), but are not being hooked into a transit system that allows non-Toronto-centric transportation between them. The greatest example of this is Mississauga, a city of approx 750,000, and it possesses the second largest employment centre in the country (Pearson Airport) but is mostly disconnected from the greater transit network. Only in the last 10 years has there actually been any effort to link the airport to Rapid Transit. The most efficient way to get there from the vast majority of places is to use the 401/403/407/QEW.

@jtsholtod.79 Год назад

Do you know who owns the majority (50.01%) of the 407 ETR? The Canada Pension Plan (more specifically its investment board). Which means its revenue goes to providing retirement income for Canadians. That's pretty savvy, but if you want to be even more shocked, just look up what the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan owns (and has owned in the past).

@matthewgasparin7000 Год назад

CPP owns so much infrastructure, it’s crazy if you look deeper into it. It’s easily one of the largest retirement and wealth funds in the world.

@alquinn8576 Год назад

they had a smallish investment in FTX lol

@matthewgasparin7000 Год назад

@@alquinn8576 CPP had not invested in FTX. only the teachers pension did.

@livinlavidaloki2158 Год назад

Thanks for shedding light on this! Our 2 lane freeway is heading this direction and I am not happy

@TimHodges Год назад

Toronto was setup so that there is basically only the 401 to travel west to east. The smaller planned expressways were cancelled. The city is designed so that if you want to get across town in a car you are funneled into the 401, DVP, 427, and the Gardiner.

@ninabeena83 Год назад

Just want to say how much I thoroughly enjoy this channel’s content and yes, absolutely love when you roast the absurdities of my local area’s (Houston) insane traffic and sprawl issues 😊

@Towboatin Год назад

It's absolute hellscape.

@nikevisor54 Год назад

If you're willing to stick around the Toronto area, would love a video on the usefulness of Greenbelts to contain urban sprawl. Recently wrote a paper on Ontario's and it's a complex discussion touching on transit problems, zoning allowances, and environmental protection in urban and suburban areas.

@DWNY358 Год назад

25 miles outside NYC is a major green belt consisting of large parks like Ringwood, Ramapo, Harriman, Bear Mountain, Hudson Highlands and Fahnestock. Sprawl has now leapfrogged those parks into Dutchess and Orange counties.

@jacobfalardeau676 Год назад

I also wrote a paper back when I was in university on this same topic, the greenbelt is such an interesting idea and it's largely been a success. The only issue that I observed is the tendency for a "leapfrog effect" in places like Simcoe County and the Niagara Region that were located just outside the greenbelt but that were still within a reasonable driving distance to Toronto. That said, if anything, that's proof that the greenbelt is largely effective at containing sprawl and that the solution is just to expand the greenbelt further out. I really like the proposal to add a "blue belt" along Lake Simcoe, the Grand River, and the Niagara River, along with other major waterways in the region with some protections.

@hendman4083 Год назад

But how can you contain the sprawl when there is a huge demand for housing, and (almost) the only type of houses you are allowed to build are detached single family ones?

@andrepoiy1199 Год назад

@@jacobfalardeau676 Ottawa has a greenbelt but it seems like they simply just built communities outside of it... E.g. Barrhaven, Kanata, Orléans. So does it really contain development? Or does it actually encourage greenhouse emissions by simply moving new developments far out?

@jacobfalardeau676 Год назад

@@andrepoiy1199 That's the leapfrog effect I was getting into, it's a legitimate concern as long as the greenbelt doesn't include the entire commuting range of a city but you can extend it out far enough to include all the places people would reasonably want to commute from. Think of the GTA's greenbelt where Niagara and Simcoe are seeing similar growth. The problem isn't the greenbelt, it's the fact that it doesn't encompass a large enough area. Sure, people might be willing to drive 90 minutes to Barrie or Niagara but would they be willing to drive even further into Orillia (2 hours away)? I also want to point out that reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preventing urban sprawl are two separate policy objectives and the greenbelts were largely created to prevent sprawl and encourage agriculture and they have largely been successful in doing so. The greenbelt should be viewed as one part of many that make-up effective planning regulations that protect agricultural lands from development. The leapfrog effect is a legitimate concern though, it demonstrates the need for large widespread and comprehensive laws that protect farmland and rural areas in general.

@ameenwalli-attaei6343 Год назад

I dream of replacing some 2-4 lanes of Highway 401 with a transit way for all the existing + more regional buses to all use and we would have a bunch of regional bus routes that bypass traffic and provide one seat rides from city to city.

@theold1. Год назад

Yes more freeway videos, it's cathartic to hear someone diss them sarcastically for 15 minutes.

@RookieRider93 Год назад

Random Dallas-bashing. Love it! It gets far less hate/references that it deserves 😅

@Strawberria Год назад

I grew up in Rhode Island, where the area code is 401, so whenever channels like this would refer to it, I'd just kinda wonder why they were talking about Rhode Island. Also I had no idea Titanic Terrarium was talking about a Canadian highway! I love how decades later I'm still learning the meanings of Tragically Hip songs. None of this has anything to do with the content of the video, but still. I learned things today.

@clamato54 Год назад

Interested in not only their greenwashing but how exactly do they measure the economic benefits of a freeway, or has it ever been measured?

@yanngagnon1484 Год назад

From Sunnybrook's own "Our history" page: "1976 Sunnybrook Medical Centre establishes Canada's first regional trauma unit to care for patients sustaining life-threatening multiple injuries."

@IanLaffey Год назад

You should visit Montreal and do a video on how awesome it is. You'd love it.

@TheRandCrews Год назад

The city planning is so different compared to anything else in Canada too practically almost a 15 min city if you live downtown, neighborhoods close or bordering it

@rauli386 Год назад

Well it is not like people do not drive like crazy in Montréal, plus Montréal has also freways near dowtown

@kelseyduerksen6404 Год назад

@@rauli386 There will be crazy drivers in any city. As far as highways near downtown - yes there is the Met and Décarie but you can't really just remove them since Montréal is an island. And there are no viable bypasses anyways.

@connorspiech309 Год назад

Montreal is just Chicago with a couple more metro lines and slightly better healthcare

@IanLaffey Год назад

@@connorspiech309 😬😬😬

@kgbinfo Год назад

I drove from Niagara Falls to Toronto on 401 and it took me 2 hours to drive 40km. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

@adam4n1um Год назад

You really pulled no punches in this one. As much as I enjoy your wit and sarcastic methods of criticism, I really appreciated the bluntness of this video. This is malpractice and corruption plain and simple

@supersnivy48 Год назад

Nice Synchro output sheet you got there, truly the traffic engineer’s bread and butter

@jtdavis62 Год назад

The saying "100 years ago" is losing some of its bite because death by automobile was definitely known in 1923.

@ryanwilkinson2743 Год назад

moving out of toronto literally tomorrow and the Ontario government's consistently asinine infrastructure decisions are a key driver of my decision to leave

@the23er Год назад

Not to dismiss your Top10 Videos, they are good and well made and researched, but i like to see this single topic video. This is more engaging for a european, as i am not debating which city to move to or dont. :)

@robsemail Год назад

It’s odd how I’ve learned something about my dad watching your videos. My dad and I don’t get along, and he’s about the biggest right-wing boor I ever knew, but it’s remarkable that he was telling me many of the same things you say about freeways back when I was a boy in the 1970s. I don’t remember ever asking him what his minor was in college, but I’m thinking now it must have been engineering, because somewhere he learned whatever you learned about freeway dynamics. He used to point out to me why he felt cloverleaf interchanges should be limited to non-freeways, and now many years later it’s easy to see how correct he was. He liked freeways for getting around, but he felt they should always be built as bypasses in urban areas, never right through the center of a city. He likes trains and believes we should have more of them available as alternatives to cars Because he is so right-wing in his politics, I’m a little amazed that he had such insight long ago, and he’s still always skeptical of widening projects unless it’s just from two to four-lanes. I can’t remember him ever supporting anything more expansive, he always says widening just attracts more traffic. He would support safety upgrades but not widening. I’m sure you and my dad would not get along at all politically, but it’s remarkable how your opinions about travel infrastructure are not just similar but almost identical. Why can’t we find more agreement about these things in the general public?

@tonywalters7298 Год назад

I think there are plenty of people across the political spectrum in North America who associate cars with freedom. Not to mention the auto industry is a large employer in many communities

@sinisterdesign Год назад

Because very rich people depend on the public not agreeing on basic and obvious things in order to make their money, and so they invest in think tanks and buy news outlets and donate huge sums of cash to politicians in order to turn these issues from obvious, commonsense points of agreement into arbitrary markers of personal identity and tribal affiliation. Just look at the insane conspiracy theories now being passed around about 15-minute cities. It's pathetic.

@robsemail Год назад

@@tonywalters7298 I agree, and I guess my best response is that the idea is easily challenged. I’ve listened to my dad argue about it with people of his generation, now in their 80s, and it isn’t too hard to convince them that trains and planes aren’t exactly slavery. Maybe we should do what he does and speak their language, at least so far as it’s possible to understand it 😜. Point out how trains create more freedom, not less. It occurs to me I should add that the argument I most often hear in favor of new rail projects or other non-car travel infrastructure (and I do not mean on this video channel) is how getting more people off the roads is good for the environment. I just think that argument has already convinced everyone it’s ever going to convince. It should be minimized as a talking point, and freedom should be promoted more.

@user-hv6wb5gk8p Год назад

We're currently seeing right-wing talking heads like FoxNews' Tucker Carson trying to weave walkable cities into their weird culture war B.S. They're targeting "15-Minute cities" and claim they're being built to lock people in their neighborhoods. In reality those cities are just trying to ensure that people can reach all basic amenities without a car in 15 minutes or less. We're gonna see if their BS sticks

@pacerdanny Год назад

What a refreshing story! In the 1970s, there was a lot more room for a diversity of political views, even within one person's perspective. It was a time when, for example, there were such things as liberal Republicans.