Toronto 407 opens new segment

TORONTO

407 opens new segment

Toronto’s 407-ETR toll road has opened another segment at the western end of the initial road opened, so it now runs for 49km, and links directly into the giant H-401. A drier than usual summer and speedier than planned construction by Canadian Highways International had this part of the second stage of the eventual 69km road ready almost a year early.

Ali Mekki a senior traffic numbers official at the Ontario Ministry of Transp told us the opening of the new section raised trips to about 120k/day weekdays. He said the highway is a "great success" and that: "It’s great, it works very well. I don’t think there are any major complaints."

Among the minor complaints are the shortage of electronic toll transponders which continues. Pamela Wing, marketing manager at OTCC (the road’s owner) told us that patrons who register for a transponder get tolled as if they have a transponder, but their account is identified through the toll road’s unique automatic license plate imaging and recognition system. The same is done for vehicles with metallic windshields which block the radio signals and make tranponder use unreliable for tolling. They will be permanently identified by license plate reads.

Mekki said the new toll road seems to have "only a marginal effect" in relieving conditions on H-401, but it is serving other tripmakers and commuters very well. In the 4 months without tolls, when it carried over 300k daily trips 407 had a noticeable effect on the major east-west highway through the Toronto area, but with the imposition of tolls it has lost two-thirds of its ‘free use’ traffic. Mekki said that toward the end of the year traffic looked to be peaking out on the original 36km stretch from H-410 to H-404. The addition of the 13km H-410 to H-401 segment at year’s end appeared to add about 20% to daily trips.

Forecasting "bang on": Mekki says that forecasting done when the project was being developed slightly overestimated trip numbers and similarly underestimated average trip distance for the toll regime adopted. But that left the net revenue result "bang on."

"You simply cannot get any closer than we got," said Ali speaking of the forecasting done by his unit at the Ministry and by Wilbur Smith Associates.

Other officals are wrestling with local opposition to opening the eastern end of the highway at H-48 in the Markham area, where current construction contracts terminate. They say it is likely part of the section currently being built at the eastern end will not be opened until a better terminus for the highway can be developed further east of H-48.

In an interview last year Dannis Galange head of OTCC said the H-48 end-point was unsatisfactory, dumping too much traffic on inadequate local streets.

Overall, the financial and technical success of this toll road, and its popularity with Toronto drivers, is encouraging action to move on a large segment west to Burlington near the port city of Hamilton that would parallel the crowded Queen Elizabeth Way. The Ontario government has said it wants this stretch to be done by private franchise rather than through the provincially-owned OTCC that owns the present highway. OTCC itself is likely to be put up for sale to investors.

An official told us: "Privatization is the big thing at the moment. This road produces good revenues. Why not have it run like a real business? It makes sense for the province to take its capital gain on a project well done, and let business run it and take responsibility in the future." (Deborah Reid 416 325 0408)