(06-06-2017, 08:27 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(06-06-2017, 08:15 PM)p2ee Wrote: I have a feeling MTO wants to avoid reducing lanes on the 401 as much as possible, but you're right it'd make more sense to reduce a lane westbound than eastbound (and currently they have it backwards).
One thing that is somewhat shocking about this project is that they're taking 5 years to widen 4 kms of highway. Down in Chicago, they're in the process of widening (maybe they're already done?) about 40 kms of I-90 from 6 lanes to 10. That highway is just as busy (maybe even slightly more) and they have similar climate as us. And their timeline is about 2.5 years. Some people have mentioned the replacement of speed river bridges as the reason, but in the I-90 project they're also replacing the bridge over Fox river, which seems to be about as wide as grand river (google street view here).
And there's an obvious pattern here.. 4 years to add 2.5 km of express-collector in Mississauga back in 2010-2013 and another 4 years to add another 2.5 km of express collector currently under construction.
I'm quite certain they weren't widening 40 km, that would be the entire length of the highway through the city, perhaps, 40 lane kms (10 kms total), even 10 kms would be quite impressive in 2.5 years, I question if that's the entire project. The 5 year timeline here, includes rebuilding number of bridges before any apparent work starts.
It is in fact 40 km (25 miles) in the northwestern suburban area of Chicago, but it appears to be 8 lanes instead of 10 (my bad). They're also reconfiguring several interchanges. Source:
http://hoffmanestates.org/government/dev...nstruction
The replacement of the Fountain Street and Speedsville Rd bridges was done prior to when the construction began in 2015.
(06-06-2017, 08:28 PM)Canard Wrote: Do you think it's a money thing? Like, is it somehow cheaper to do this more slowly (fewer workers)?
I don't even remember - when is all of this widening scheduled to wrap up? And when does the "second phase" up to Franklin start? Really, this is going to be a mess until that's also complete.
It could be related to the cost, but I am not sure the cost scales when you take less time but have a lot of workers v/s you take more time but have less workers.
401 to Hespeler construction is supposed to be done by summer of 2019. The Hespeler to Townline widening is supposed to start in 2018 and be finished in "2021-2022".