ANALYSIS | Doug Ford’s Hwy 401 Tunnel: Will More Lanes Solve the Problem?

Photo Credit: City News Toronto

With the never-ending flow of cars, trucks, and noise behind him, Ontario Premier Doug Ford announced his government’s plans to construct a vehicle tunnel under Highway 401. He committed to building what may become the world’s longest vehicular tunnel, whether or not the experts approve. Now that’s tunnel vision.

The tunnel, which could be built under 60 km of the busiest stretch of highway in North America, has been derided by experts as lacking feasibility and a viable fix for congestion, while the province and business groups promote the project as vital to Ontario’s growth and its residents’ quality of life.

While details are scarce, a statement from Ford’s office indicated the roadway will “[extend] from beyond Brampton and Mississauga in the west to beyond Markham and Scarborough in the east,” and include new infrastructure for rapid transit.

The proposal attempts to address Toronto’s gridlock problem, and the statement also claims the added lanes will “significantly reduce traffic,” and provide “a new, faster route for some of the most gridlocked roadways in the province.”

One aspect that has gone undisputed is Toronto’s terrible traffic. The Toronto Region Board of Trade found that commuters in the area spend 98 hours a year stuck in rush-hour traffic, the most of any metro area in North America. It also costs the regional economy $11 billion a year in lost productivity. 

And the problem is about to get a whole lot worse. Exacerbated by an expected 2 million new residents in 2031, all major GTHA highways will reach capacity by 2034, according to Ministry of Transportation numbers. Highway 401 will see travel times double by 2051, and making the same trip would now take 90 minutes longer than usual.

Ford is attempting to win over suburban voters — who ultimately decide the province’s elections. Faced with an astonishing new-normal, they have now found themselves in an aggressive courtship with him, as he portrays himself as the saviour of the car-centered suburban lifestyle. 

With traffic “taking up precious time that would be better spent with family, friends and loved ones,” Ford has committed to addressing the issue with multiple new multi-billion-dollar highways and expansions of existing corridors  — but all projects pale in comparison to the tunnel.

But whether the billions towards new asphalt will actually address the problem remains to be seen. On countless similar projects, experts have noted the effects of induced demand. If you build it, they will come and use it.

Before a road expansion is completed, the surrounding area is typically fast-growing, so the current infrastructure becomes under-built, relative to the increasing population. Faced with crushing congestion, residents shift travel away from peak times, use public transit, or choose not to make the trip. If it’s such a painful slog, why travel to a further-away discount grocery store?

But after a facility is expanded, potential drivers perceive faster travel times and choose to drive more. Far-away jobs, stores, and leisure activities seem so much closer. The surrounding area becomes ripe for more auto-centric developments. Then shopping malls abound. Then an increasing population. Then congestion. Then highway expansion…The cycle repeats.

A prime example of the issue is the Katy Freeway in Houston. Initially built as a six-lane highway in the 1960s, it was repeatedly expanded, reaching up to 26 lanes in 2011 after undergoing a US$2.8 billion expansion that was explicitly aimed at reducing congestion.

And why did tax-payers pay billions to expand the highway? So they could wait longer in traffic. 

A 46 km morning commute from the suburb of Pin Oak took 25 minutes, or 30 per cent, longer in 2014 — just three years after the expansion was completed. Commuting home took 55 per cent longer, or 23 minutes, according to data from Houston’s traffic monitoring agency. 

In 2016, Houston’s then-Mayor, Sylvester Turner, admitted the mistake, explaining the expansion “clearly demonstrated that the traditional strategy of adding capacity […] exacerbates urban congestion problems. These types of projects are not creating the kind of vibrant, economically strong cities that we all desire.”

As the United States’ Bipartisan Infrastructure Law doles out large sums of transportation funding, Turner joined other US officials in rebuking endless highway expansions.

Following a 20-year, US$60 million planning-process, L.A. County officials cancelled a multibillion-dollar expansion of Interstate 710 in 2022. “We don’t see widening as a strategy for L.A.,” James de la Loza, the chief planning officer for L.A. County’s transportation agency, told The New York Times.

According to Bloomberg, then-Mayor Eric Garcetti said the region “should be past [the] time” of widening highways, unless the new infrastructure is used exclusively by zero-emission vehicles.

But on the scale of entire regions, the relationship between added capacity and induced demand remains murky. Without any substantial new infrastructure, several U.S. cities have seen increases in driving. 

Bloomberg reported that the Boston region saw a 35 per cent increase in vehicle miles travelled (VMT) from 1983 to 1993, but road capacity increased just 1 per cent over the same period. 

A Demographia study found that from 1982 to 2007, the Phoenix area saw a 205 per cent lane-miles per capita increase while VMT on highways per capita increased just 12 per cent.

This indicates that while the effects of induced demand on the added Highway 401 tunnel infrastructures may be substantial, some studies suggest that the demand induced would not significantly exceed the increased use of the highway already projected by the government.

Furthermore, some analysts argue the concern around induced demand is misplaced, since with more cars on the road, drivers have access to participate more widely in the economy.

“We know that every car on the road has someone in it who is going somewhere that is important to them [...] [I]ncreasing highway capacity leads to net economic benefits because it generates travel that wouldn’t have taken place otherwise,” Cato Institute Fellow Randal O’Toole told Bloomberg.

Wendell Cox, principal of Demographia, agrees, arguing increased vehicular mobility allows for better access to job centres.  “Transportation is not a primary activity [...] There is no ‘love affair’ with the automobile. Driving is not something we would choose to do. [...] Traffic, then, is a symptom of an economy with a mobile workforce, where workers can seek out better jobs with ease.”

However, discussing whether the tunnel will succeed in reducing congestion ignores a critical question. Is building the longest — and most expensive — vehicular tunnel in the world, under the busiest highway in North America, feasible?

The biggest unknown in the feasibility equation: cost. While Ford has said the project won’t cost “hundreds of billions” of dollars, the remaining cost-bracket appears equally astronomical without funds from the federal government.

Steven Guilbeault, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change has promised the Liberals won’t fund any new “large [road] projects.” However, Conservatives were quick to criticize his remarks, and the party continues to enjoy a lead in the polls less than 12 months before the next election cycle.

According to The Globe and Mail, the most recent comparable North American tunnelling project was the SR99 tunnel in Seattle, says Brian Garrod, a former Canadian Tunnelling Association president who has worked on several Toronto subway-tunnel projects. At a length of 3.2 km, the tunnel cost US$3.3 billion and was completed in 2019.

Based on this price, but accounting for inflation, the economics of scale created by a larger tunnel and the multiple realities of a different jurisdiction, Garrod puts the price at approximately $1 billion per km.

In a separate analysis, Shoshanna Saxe, an associate professor of civil and mineral engineering at the University of Toronto, arrived at the same conclusion. 

But the actual cost could be much higher.

Delivering sizable capacity increases on a corridor that already has 12 to 18 lanes through the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) would require a significant number of new lanes, says Dean Brox, a tunnelling engineer and consultant based in Vancouver.

The SR99 project consisted of only one tunnel with four lanes. However, Brox suspects that delivering substantial capacity increases would require two to three parallel tunnels, which would have a sizeable increase in cost, and potentially double the price-tag.

Another cost associated with a 60 km tunnel that was not applicable to the SR99 was the construction of exits, which requires employing more expensive tunnelling techniques like the use of spray concrete and cut-and-cover. Massive ventilation shafts, which often extend 30 to 40 meters above ground, would be needed to keep the tunnels safe from tail-pipe emissions. 

Additionally, the tunnels would take many long years to build. One tunnel-boring machine — which costs at least $100 million — can only bore 2.5 km per year. Therefore the tunnel would likely have to be split up into four 15 km sections that would take six years to tunnel, plus two years to install exits, roadway, electrical and sprinkler systems, plus an additional two years to prepare the launch site of the tunnel boring machine. 

All this could only happen after the lengthy process of securing political consensus for the exact alignment of the tunnel and receiving environmental approval.

The different segments of the tunnel would not be constructed concurrently, massively lengthening the time required to complete the project. If they were constructed at once, the project would easily become the largest megaproject actively under construction and would not be able to be completed by the current domestic workforce. 

Despite the project’s enormity, Premier Doug Ford remains committed.

​“I’m not walking back anything. We’re getting it done. Sooner than later, we’re getting it done,” he told reporters.“I know this is an ambitious idea and that some people will say it can’t be done or that we shouldn’t even try. But these are the same people who oppose every project ... Every proposal to get people out of gridlock and get our province moving, they say no.”

The tunnel project is the latest in a slew of multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects his government has announced, including Highway 413, which will arc around the western GTA; a new highway connection in York Region to the north of Toronto; and a $27 billion dollar deal to build and operate a new subway through downtown Toronto.