Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[tomh009]

How many of those cars at rush hours are single-occupant commuters? Substantially all of those could go by train with an improved public transportation system.

Charge tolls with various components — congestion and road wear being the most important — and watch much of the truck traffic move to trains (trucks should be charged an enormous road wear component).

I think the remaining traffic would have no trouble fitting on the existing highway.

I would support occupant-based tolling for passenger cars on the 401 (three and it's free, or something like that), and wear-based for transports. That would likely reduce the number of cars substantially (and improve our CO2 emissions while we are at it) but it would be a very hard sell politically.

But we don't have a rail network that can take over the goods transportation. Have you ever observed the rail shipments coming into Kitchener? We need better trains, more parallel tracks, better crossings -- and a denser network in the first place. And it would still be difficult to displace the trucks coming from Michigan or Quebec. I simply don't think we have the capability or capacity that many other countries do.