Provincial Highway Deficit

Podcast Episode: 0249
Why are Canada's Highways so different in each province?

      ​What if Canada's provinces could unite to create a seamless national highway system that rivaled the efficiency of the United States' interstate network? Join AutoLooks, as we uncover the disjointed reality of Canada's highway infrastructure, where provincial standards have led to a fragmented and often inefficient system. 

​Through a spotlight on Ontario's Highway 69 and Highway 7, we explore the consequences of short-sighted expansion policies that focus only on immediate needs, leading to gridlock and stunted economic growth.

      My whole life I've been wondering this why does Canada not have a national highway? Now, I know this is something we covered in a previous podcast, but the federal government refuses to create a national standard for highways. And if you cross the great country of Canada, you'll understand that provinces set their own rules for highway and road construction. But what defines the need for expansion? What does every province define as its need for expansion? Do they consider complete gridlock when they want to expand a road or a highway? Or do they look at it and say, hey, this is what we're going to be predicting for the next 40 years. Maybe we should build it now, because it's going to take 20 years to get this into development, so that by that time it'll be ready for the traffic that comes. Well, these are all different mentalities and across Canada, every single province has their own mentality when it comes to building roads, and today AutoLooks is going to take a look at what defines Canadian road construction.

        Welcome back to the AutoLooks Podcast. I'm your host, as always, the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay, coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net. If you haven't been there, stop by, check it out. Read some of the reviews. Check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small, we have them all. Car companies from around the globe, all available on the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed by PodBean.com. The AutoLooks Podcast is hosted by the one and only doctor to the automotive industry, Mr. Everett Jay. If you'd like to get in touch with either myself, the AutoLooks Podcast, or even Ecomm Entertainment Group, send us an email over at [email protected]. 

​       So, like I said in the beginning, Canadian road construction In the United States. All the way back in the 50s they realized they needed to create a national highway pact. But with the automobile taking hold of your average consumer and more and more product being shipped via transport being moved off of rail for light duty and light travel, transports were slowly going to take over American highways. But we can't have that. After only a few years, in some specific spots, they noticed there was more crashes, there was more deaths, there were more issues. So instead of allowing every single state to set their own standard, which they knew would cause so much chaos in a country that had nearly 200 million people, they decided at Congress to initiate a pact to create a national highway crossing every single state. Each state had to be connected to each other, every single one. North, south, east, west Doesn't matter. Some states only have an east-west tie, some states only have a northwest tie and most states have both. But they all needed to be interconnected. And so, the interstate system in the United States was built, and even in states like North Dakota and Montana hell, even Alaska all benefited from this National Highway Pact. There are interstates in every single state, all 50 of them, inclusive of Hawaii and Alaska. They all have easy, free access to government-funded, safe highways, which make it amazing to travel across the United States.
 
      So why am I talking about this when I'm talking about the Canadian highway pack? Well, in Canada, every single province sets their precedent for road expansion, and in my home province of Ontario, we're one of the worst. Next to British Columbia, we are the second worst in the entire country for highway expansion. The province of Ontario bases highway expansions hell, even main road expansions not off of what's going to happen over the next 40 years, but what's going to happen over the next five to 10. Essentially, highways in the province of Ontario are built within the four-year period that a government is in play. They only look to the four years. They don't look past that. And when they set out their standards to see if a highway needs to be expanded, they don't consider the fact of national importance, GDP growth or hell, even the gross domestic product being pushed out by select cities.
 
     Like I said in my previous podcast about the broken highway infrastructure in Canada, my home city is the third highest GDP per person in the province of Ontario and yet we don't have a limited access highway to connect us to the Southern Ontario manufacturing hubs or even the United States. We have a two-lane highway, but in the province of Ontario, both Highway 69 and Highway 17, even though both of them are part of the Trans-Canada, they don't qualify. There is no national importance put onto the Crown Highways. No, in Ontario we base it off of a 95% capacity rating before we even consider expansion. Why do you think right now, Doug Ford is so reluctant and has spent the past four years not building a shred of four-lane road on Highway 69 North? Four years, not a single shovel has hit the ground to expand a highway needed to move goods from the third highest GDP city in the entire province. But it's because Ontario bases its highway expansions off of the 95% capacity. Even in Southern Ontario this action works against it. 

​A perfect example of this is Highway 7 between the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo area, essentially between Waterloo and Guelph. Every single day that highway is congested. It's literally bumper to bumper. Now it's not slow moving, but it's still bumper to bumper. But our government looks at it and says, oh, we'll just add a few extra lanes to the 401, which is like 30 kilometers away from Highway 7. Instead of expanding Highway 7 between Guelph and Waterloo, they have chosen to add lanes to the 401 on a road that is gridlocked.
 
Highway 6 is slowly being expanded to limited access through the Guelph portion. From 401 up to Guelph it's a bypass, but then it ends on a county road. That county road becomes Highway 7, which crosses to Waterloo. Ontario, it's gridlocked. Six years ago, the province of Ontario said this is a high priority highway. We need to expand this because this area is one of the biggest tech areas of the entire province. You got to remember. Waterloo is where Research in Motion, BlackBerry, was from, and if we want more expansion in this area, we need better highway systems, a two-lane county road with people traveling between the two major cities of Guelph and Waterloo is not going to cut it. They need to expand this.
 
This is a similar context to Highway 6 running between the 401 and the 403, from Hamilton all the way to Guelph. It's a four-lane, accurate road with turning lanes in the center, but it eventually winds up being a two-lane road at the end. Well, transports moving along this roadway have to stop for traffic lights. If I choose to take Highway 6 when I leave my in-laws in Hamilton to come home, it adds 15 minutes of time to my trip, as opposed to taking the 403 going through Toronto. Even getting stuck in traffic on the 401, I still lose that 15 minute. It is an at-grade, four-lane roadway between the two cities, which causes me to lose that 15 minutes of my time. If it was an at-grade, limited access highway between the two cities, I would only lose two minutes of time. If there's bad traffic on the 401, I would gain over 10 minutes, but I don't because the 95% capacity rating for province of Ontario is in play. 

          ​And what do we mean by that? Well, I learned this a few years ago when they were doing a study on the Southwest Bypass in Sudbury, Ontario. They put out the counters to see how much traffic flows through the area within a 24-hour period. Now they don't look at what is the peak times. They don't look at the fact that highway traffic in that area reaches a 65% capacity on that highway between 7 am and 6 pm. Between 6 pm and 7 am traffic rides at 15 to 20%. So, when they merge all that together, they're looking at it going well. We're only getting about 40% capacity on the highway across a 24-hour period. It doesn't matter that for 11 hours of the day this highway is clogged and it's dangerous. I have rock chips on my RAV4 from vehicles passing me. My wife has been nearly hit. She has seen head-on collisions and has witnessed a motorcycle getting hit by impatient people on the bypass during congestion. But the province overlooks 24-hour period and sees that during 24 hours we're only at a 40% capacity maximum rating. They don't care that for 11 hours of the day we're riding 65% capacity, which warrants a need for expansion. 

      The province of Ontario wants that 95% capacity for 24 hours, want a perfect example of this Highway 400 between Toronto and Barrie. They've talked about making it 10 lanes from Toronto all the way to Barrie to decrease congestion, because building Highway 427 all the way up to 400 and bringing the 404 all the way around to Highway 11 would just create more urban sprawl. So, let's add more lanes to the existing highway. I was in college when the government said yes, we need to expand this. We're going to start investing money to doing all of these reviews in infrastructure expenditures. That was 20 years ago and they're only making it eight lanes. Now they're adding an HOV lane. That's it, and they haven't even gotten halfway. In 20 years. It moves at a crawl. 

        Province of Ontario's infrastructure is 40 years too late. When they finally reached Parry Sound with Highway 400, the highway was already riding at 60% capacity over a 24-hour period when it was built. When they built the 400 from Toronto all the way to Gravenhurst back in the 1950s on long weekends that highway ran at 100% the first year it was built. They did not look at the future, because they take into consideration what benefits Toronto the best and Toronto only needs roads to grow when they hit that 95% capacity. Why? Because they get to that 95% capacity within a year. So naturally they constantly have to be upgraded. So, they feel that everywhere in the province must abide by that. It doesn't matter if it's a national importance highway. It doesn't matter the amount of GDP that flows along it and it doesn't matter the amount of people who die on those highways. They want to hit that 95% capacity rating before they even consider expansion, which means by the time the highway is finally built 20 years down the road and opens the doors, it's still at capacity. When they opened the 403 between Ancaster and Brantford to the limited access highway four-lane section in the 90s it was already running at 95% capacity across 24-hour period and they haven't even expanded it. It's running at capacity when it was built. 

     ​Ontario waits too late to build its highways. British Columbia is actually worse than the province of Ontario. Because of their limited supply with farmland, they consider any flat area that can be farmed or turned into a ranch highly valuable, which means taking it over for a highway, even if it's needed, does not warrant the expanse. Over 10 years ago the province of BC finally stated that Highway 1, BC Highway 1, which is the Trans-Canada running from the Alberta border all the way to Kamloops Actually it goes all the way down to Vancouver, crosses over and goes onto Victoria, but it's two lanes from Kamloops to the Alberta border, which is nearly 400 kilometers of travel. 10 years ago, they said they were going to expand the entire highway to limited access 100-kilometer hour highway. In 10 years, they built about 16 kilometers. I get it, you're building it through mountains, but today's technology allows us to build this.
 
      Let's put this into perspective. The Canadian Railway, our national railway, was built in less than 100 years. We traversed from coast to coast in this country in only a few decades. But our national highway, which started in the early 1900s, wasn't complete until 1968 when the last section of highway, the Trans-Canada, opened just north of Batchewana Bay, Ontario. It took nearly 60 years. We built a railway across the country before we even had backhoes, bulldozers and even massive dump trucks to take everything away. We built this railroad in only a few decades and yet our highway took over 60 years to get a two-lane highway across this country which, by the time it was built and finished in 1968, the standards of that highway were built to the 1950s standards, so that we're already out of date. Over the next 60 years the government has widened the shoulders. They put up new barriers, they've added a few passing lanes, but the highway today, its standards, are that of the 1980s. We haven't moved into the future.
 
      So why is it taking so long to do this? Why is British Columbia waiting? Well, their government is one of the biggest problems for the entire province. Tons of people across the province of British Columbia understand that they need free-flowing highways to move all the goods across the province, because the slower your goods move, the more costly it is in the end. By having two-lane, crappy highways that get shut down in the middle of wintertime due to bad weather costs you money. 

       I'll put this into perspective for you. When I was in Barrie at Georgia College going through for my automotive product design course, I learned that the Honda Alliston plant when their trucks and parts because they do just-in-time inventory when your parts aren't there you're charged. This is 2001 pricing, $215,000 every hour. That's how much it costs them to keep that plant running every hour. Now it's 2001. Now remember that's over 20 years ago. So, think about when BC Highway 1, the Trans-Canada and British Columbia is shut down because of a death and it's shut down for 8 hours. $215,000. Let's say $250,000 by 8. That's $2 million per truck that's sitting there. See the amount of GDP that this country throws out the window for not having a national highway pact.
 
      Alberta and Saskatchewan are the only two provinces out west that have come to realize that they need to move their products on a free-flowing highway. Any highway that reaches a capacity of 65% is looked at over a 20-year forecast period to see how much it's going to increase If the increases from that 65% anywhere near 85% by increasing 20% over 20 years essentially a 1% increase every single year. Those provinces put in an order to start planning for expansion of their highways Because they know that if their goods are moving slow the province is losing money. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and even Newfoundland have realized this too. Back in the 1990s, being one of the most impoverished areas in the entire country, they wanted to find a way they could boost their manufacturing and move their goods as quick as possible. Their governments took a massive step. 

​        The entire province of New Brunswick, the entire Trans-Canada in New Brunswick, is now limited access freeway style. Their secondary highway, which runs up the coast towards Bathurst, is a two-lane limited-access highway, so you can maintain a speed of between 90 and 100 and don't have to slow down in any towns. P.E.I. has built bypasses around its two major towns of Summerside and Charlottetown to ensure the free flow of goods Even though there's no limited access highways on the island, you could still move across the island at a relatively fast pace and because it's all farmland, there's tons of alternative routes. Nova Scotia has realized this too. The entire tip of the peninsula nearly all of it, is at least a two-lane brand-new limited access highway, which means you don't have to slow down in any of the small towns. So, any of these small towns with any new manufacturing facilities, these things get on a highway and go right out. They don't have to slow down because they know by having these massive highways to move their goods at a high rate of speed, they're going to become more competitive. To build a manufacturing plant in Moncton, New Brunswick, may seem like it's so far away from everything compared to my home city in Sudbury, Ontario, but with a limited access highway and a secondary highway close by to ensure that if the four-lane highway is shut down, there is an alternative route for all transport traffic, the cost of shipping is way less. 

      ​Quebec went through a period during its massive growth stage during the 1950s, the 60s and into the 70s. Once their language laws started coming out, they started implementing new rules as their province wasn't growing as quickly, which means they didn't have enough money. They like to say they didn't have enough money, but you have to remember they're the second most populous province in the entire country of Canada and yet they get payouts from the half provinces. The second most populous province in the entire country gets money. So, in the country of Canada, I'm going to explain this we have what we call equalization payments, so it ensures that all provinces can operate with the same number of services, with the same number of services, so the impoverished East Coast can still sustain itself and have the same not the same, but very similar services as what you would find in major urban centers in Southern Ontario. Because Southern Ontario, we're a have province. We give money to the East Coast so that they can have those services. Well, the province of Quebec is the second most populous province in the entire country of Canada and yet they get equalization payments. See where BC, Alberta, even Saskatchewan now and Ontario are paying out, and for a few years their Newfoundland was because of its oil. We're all paying out to these equalization payments.
 
       They were giving Quebec all of this money, but what were they doing with it? They built a massive infrastructure, limited access, highways, how Quebec City has the greatest number of freeways for a city of its size anywhere in North America, but its public transit system sucks and that's the reason why the entire city is stuck in gridlock. Now to the province of Quebec. Like I said, during the 50s and 60s and 70s, when they were growing, were investing heavily into interstate style highways. Literally, they were looking at the United States and saying we want to create a system like this. So, they did. Unfortunately, when the language laws came out, they weren't growing as much, they weren't increasing their money and since they'd spent so much money, they were so in debt that they had to pull back and as of today, they still ride at a 70 to 85% capacity. So, they're better Ontario when they need to go into expansion, but they take a little bit longer to do that.
 
       Where before, during the 50s to 60s and 70s, anything that had a 50 capacity was considered of national importance, they would expand it and make it bigger. Now they wait a little bit longer, but they still look at what the future needs. Going up the Gasp Peninsula to Rimouski, they're looking at expanding the limited access highway up there. They're taking their time where, if it was the 1960s, that would have been done like five years ago. But now they're taking their time, they're bypassing the small towns, they're ensuring that they have the proper route laid out, even though the highway the two-lane highway that exists there right now has reached capacity in the summertime. Wintertime not so much, but in the summer, it's reached capacity and they know they need to move travelers further up because more people want to see the Gasp Peninsula, so they're looking at it. 

        ​Newfoundland, on the other hand, has essentially two main areas of limited access through it, through Cornerbrook and St John's, Newfoundland, its main hub city. But even though the island doesn't have a big population, they've still turned their national Trans-Canada Highway into limited access. At all main points You'll be out in the middle of nowhere with another main highway breaking off, and they will put in bridges and on and off ramps to ensure the easy flow of traffic. They understand how their traffic needs to move and they also understand the fact that they only have one main highway across the island. So, if something happens, they need to ensure the safety of the people traveling on that highway, and if that highway gets shut down, their GDP is literally cut off for the province. They understand this and that's why, in main areas, they've expanded to ensure that the areas are bypassed and the free flow of goods still happens. But why would you think to do this? Oh yeah, that's right, because you understand the importance of transportation goods. So, like I said in our past podcast about the broken highway system in Canada, why we need a national highway pact is that we need to ensure that all of our products stay in the country.
 
     I don't know how many people I've ever met when they're crossing the country. Even if they're crossing Ontario, they'll get as far as Sault Ste Marie. Then they'll cross over to the United States and travel on the American side until they get to Manitoba. They do this because they want to bypass one, an area with not a ton of population, and two, an area with deadly roads, especially in the wintertime. Like I said, when the highway gets shut down, your GDP literally stops.
 
       Best example of this was when they built a brand-new bridge in Nipigon Ontario. Now Nipigon Ontario is where Highway 17 and 11 meet. There is no other east-west highway in the province of Ontario except the bridge in Nipigon Ontario. When they built the brand new four-lane cable state bridge over a decade ago the first winter it was up it snapped. It literally snapped away, creating a two-foot gap. Why did this happen? Well, one, the engineers are sitting in a skyscraper in Toronto, Ontario, never knowing how cold the air coming off of Lake Superior can get along the channel along the Nipigon River. And number two, nobody understood that this is the only connection. You had to make sure you got it right. 

      ​When that literally broke apart, our province was split in two for 17 hours. They managed to get some steel plates and allow vehicles. Transport trucks didn't move for seven days. Seven days the entire country of Canada's GDP was at a standstill, unless you were able to turn yourself around, go all the way back to Sault Ste Marie, which is over six and a half hours behind you, to cross over into the United States. You had to sit there for seven days. In one week, the GDP was frozen. Well, because our province sees the fact that this national importance highway doesn't have the capacity it only runs at the maximum in the summertime of 50% capacity. Why would you ever need to build another road around that? Well, I'll tell you why Because when the bridge breaks, the province is shut down.
 
      Now we could still move stuff onto trains and I like to explain in one of our previous podcasts. Building an intermodal facility in Sudbury, Ontario or North Bay to allow trucks to deliver stuff onto trains to be shipped out west or even to the northwest, like Thunder Bay, would actually help. If they don't want to build us a highway, then at least use the train services, similar to that of bringing back the Northlander. They don't want a four-lane Highway 11 from North Bay all the way to the Temiskaming Shores, even though that area is poised to grow over the next 20 years. But they've chosen to give us a train service bring. But they've chosen to give us a train service. Bring back, essentially a train service we once had and improve it so that the free flow of people can actually move a lot better. 

      ​The territories really don't have any major traffic volumes to warrant major expansion. Hell, they finally crossed the McKenzie River with a bridge only in the past two decades. They finally built the highway to Inuvik so we can drive from coast to coast to coast in this country, which only happened in the past decade. There's not a lot of traffic to warrant this expansion, but there's tons of mining that can go into play in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon and Nunavut.
 
       Nunavut is the only area of the entire country of Canada that is not connected with a land-based transportation route. There is nowhere in the territory of Nunavut that has access to the Canadian highway systems. Easiest way to do it is to actually build a road to Churchill, Manitoba, and then up along the coast you can get to Chesterfield Inlet, which there's a pretty big mine there that you can access. You've got to remember. There's diamond, there's oil, there's rare earth, minerals, all in the territories but there's no access to it. Only in the winter can you access it, in the summertime nothing. Now the traffic volumes are low and since Yellowknife's at the end of the highway, there's no reason for expansion.
 
       But there is one area in the territories that could warrant expansion of its highway system and that is in Whitehorse. Whitehorse doesn't need a freeway style but does need an expanded four-lane at-grade surface highway. The reason why it needs this is because Whitehorse is one of the few areas in the territories that's actually growing and it's also along the Alaskan Highway connecting Canada and Alaska. Expanding that through that area would help move traffic through Whitehorse a lot easier. It would also create interest in setting up shop in Whitehorse. 

       ​You have to remember when your transportation costs decrease, your city becomes more acceptable to major manufacturing sites. We don't have automotive production facilities in my home city because we don't have an easily accessible highway system. Like I said, when there's an accident in 69, the highway shut down for about three hours with the standard accident a death up to eight hours. Could you imagine Honda sitting there waiting for their parts? Like I said, roughly $250,000. That's $2 million. Most of the suppliers that go bankrupt every single winter just shipping stuff up. As of right now they could build a facility in Parry Sound, but the province of Ontario is very tight-knit when it comes to the Golden Horseshoe area. It goes in the Golden Horseshoe or it doesn't go anywhere else. So, with each province and territory setting out their own national standard for their highway systems, it creates a massive bottleneck.
 
      When you leave the province of Ontario and you finally hit a four-lane, accurate highway system in Manitoba, you can move quicker until you get to Winnipeg. The city of Winnipeg, nearly 800,000 people, has no freeway. It's all four-lane, act-grade, traffic-light highway systems and they wonder why they can't compete with their neighbors in Saskatchewan and Alberta who have limited-access, freeway-style highways in all major cities, because their products move faster and moving faster decreases your costs. I have to pay a truck driver an extra hour to travel on a two-lane highway at a slower rate. That's an extra hour out of my pocket, that's an extra hour I have to charge the customer, that's an extra hour I need to find a way to make profit off of. 

       ​With so many goods in the country of Canada being shipped via truck, y'all have to wonder why provinces are so screwed up when it comes to their highway expansions, with Ontario and BC looking at it as a 95% capacity rating. Before they even consider expansion, they're living in the past. The highway will be congested before they can even get the construction project off the ground. Trust me, taking out a massive loan spending nearly a trillion dollars in the country of Canada to build a proper infrastructure could reap so many rewards, similar to the rewards that could come from building a north-south and even east-west tie roads into the ring of fire mineral deposits. Without proper infrastructure to transport those goods out, those mines are literally landlocked. Red tape and a backwards thinking mentality is what's killing the GDP flow of transportation goods in the country of Canada.
 
       And until we create a national highway pact, each province is going to benefit only in their select areas. Southern Ontario gets everything in the province of Ontario because it has the proper infrastructure, although that infrastructure is now becoming clogged to the point that it's going to cost a fortune to dig themselves out, when they could have expanded further out, pushing population bases further out in the province 70 years ago, but they didn't. They focused on one singular area. Same with Quebec, same with British Columbia. They all focus on one core area. Same with British Columbia. They all focus on one core area. And when you build all of your rules and regulations off of those congested areas, everyone else suffers. The Canadian highway infrastructure is broken and until each province can agree on similar standards, the GDP moving across both British Columbia and Ontario is going to suffer massively because of it.
 
      The Americans were onto something with their interstate. It wasn't just about moving people all over the place, it was about moving goods and ensuring the growth of their GDP. America knew that it didn't matter if a state didn't have enough population to warrant it. We still needed to get across the country from coast to coast with all of our goods, whether its computer chips made in Seattle being shipped to Texas to be put into automobiles, or telecommunications or aerospace being developed in California and having final assembly in Illinois. We need to move the goods and we need a proper highway system. So, in the end, what does Canada need to do, as it's looking down the barrel of a gun a 20 million more people over the next 30 years coming into this country. We need to get off our asses and build, build, build before it's too late. If you want to see a city that's too late, try and figure out how you're ever going to build a proper highway system in Kelowna, BC. That's a city that waited too long to build their proper infrastructure. 

      So, if you like this podcast, please like, share or comment about it on any of the major social feeds or streaming sites that you've found the AutoLooks podcast on. Tell us what you think about the horrible mentality that goes across the country of Canada. There are specific provinces that actually have a good idea and handle on the thing, but then there are the other areas that literally it's too little, too late all the time. It doesn't matter if it's in their main hubs or if it's in the outer lining areas. They're too little, too late. Tell us what you think If you're one of those people that's fighting for BC Highway 1 to be expanded in less than a decade, or even pushing for Highway 400 to come through to Sudbury and highway 17 to be four-laned from Batchewana Bay all the way to Ottawa. Tell us what you think and send us. We're going to send this stuff out to all government officials across the country. Tell them what we all think about our horrible, horrible highway systems.
 
     And after that, stop by the website, read some of the reviews, check out some of the ratings. Go to the Corporate Links website page. Big or small. We have them all on the AutoLooks.net website. The AutoLooks Podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group or distributed by PodBean.com. If you'd like to get in touch with us, send us an email over at email at AutoLooks.net. The AutoLooks Podcast is hosted by the one and only Mr. Everett Jay is both created, recorded and made by the Ecomm Entertainment Group. So, from myself Everett J., the Ecomm Entertainment Group and the AutoLooks.net website, strap yourself in for this one fun wild ride that a lack of proper highways is going to bring us. 

Everett J.
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