Doug Ford’s Highway 401 tunnel scheme latest disconnect from environmental realities

Premier Doug Ford wants to leave a lasting mark on the province. On September 25th, he revealed his legacy project to Ontarians—a tunnel beneath the 401. 

“It will be one of the world’s longest tunnels,” Ford vowed during the announcement.

The Ontario government is now moving forward with a feasibility study to analyze the potential of digging a tunnel nearly 60 kilometres long to accommodate both automobile traffic and public transit, in an effort to alleviate gridlock on one of the busiest highways in the world.

Estimated costs have ranged from $50 billion to more than $100 billion, costs that seem out of reach for the provincial government. 

Ford claimed the tunnel will run from “Brampton and Mississauga in the west, to Markham and Scarborough in the east, connecting with major roads and highways along the way.”

The riding-rich communities he mentioned are critical to his election plans, as the PCs scramble into campaign mode, in hopes of sending voters to the polls early, ahead of an RCMP investigation report into the Greenbelt scandal.

The Premier, who has been heavily criticized for his highway plans since his election in 2018, provided little in the way of evidence to show how this tunnel would solve the GTA’s congestion woes—experts have stated it will not, warning that it actually stands to worsen traffic problems around the region for decades to come. Instead, Ford has repeatedly responded to questions about its cost, viability and potential benefits by pointing to the feasibility study. 

It’s unclear if the findings could change his stance—“we’re going to get the job done, mark my words,” he said.
 

Ontario Premier Doug Ford at an announcement on the 401 tunnel alongside Minister of Transportation of Ontario Prabhmeet Sakaria on Sept. 25.

(Doug Ford/X)

The big question is pretty simple: is it a good idea to build the Highway 401 tunnel which would impact residents in Brampton and Mississauga for decades before its completion, and decades after? 

“No, it is a bad idea,” Shoshanna Saxe, Assistant Professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, told The Pointer without hesitating. 

While Ford argues the underground highway project will help traffic move faster, Saxe says it will not work for congestion. 

She also expects construction to make congestion worse for approximately 20 years.

Making similar claims, the Conservative government previously suggested that building Highway 413 and the Bradford Bypass was essential to avoid long-term gridlock on all 400 series corridors. 

The PC government’s own expert panel on housing showed the 413 is not needed to support current urban areas and a previous task force advised the Liberal government that the highway will not help gridlock, a reality Ford is well aware of.

“Just like the 413, this announcement (the 401 tunnel) is based on the Premier’s willful misrepresentation of the relationship between population, economic growth and traffic,” Phil Pothen, Land Use and Land Development program manager, Environmental Defence, told The Pointer.

A highway tunnel under the 401 would be much wider than the one above and cost more than $1 billion per kilometre, according to transportation engineers.

(Dani Muchow/Pexels)

That’s not the only problem with building a highway tunnel. 

“If the project is completed decades from now, it would lead to severe traffic bottlenecks wherever large numbers of cars exit from the tunnel,” warns Martin Collier, Founder of Transport Futures. 

His concerns are echoed by a growing body of research that questions the effectiveness of such large-scale transportation infrastructure projects.

A study published in January 2024 found that factors such as lighting and visuals at tunnel entrances significantly impact driver behaviour. They often slow down before entering a tunnel and accelerate once inside, creating an increased risk of collisions in low-visibility situations and the lack of flow that leads to traffic snarls. 

The proposed Highway 401 tunnel, projected to run as long as 59 kilometers, could encounter significant engineering challenges. 

Saxe estimates that the construction could cost the province between $50 billion and $100 billion, with completion potentially taking “two decades, if not longer” before the tunnel is opened.

When Ford was pressed to provide an estimate on the cost of constructing the underground highway, here’s what the premier had to say: “If they’re telling me 30 kms is x, 40 kms is y, and 70 kms or 60 kms is another cost, let’s take a look at it. That will determine the length of this tunnel and that’s why we’re doing the feasibility study.”

The construction of what would be the largest provincial transportation project in Canadian history also raises significant environmental concerns. Saxe points out that constructing the tunnel underground could be up to 30 times more polluting than building on the surface, while also encouraging urban sprawl that jeopardizes valuable farmland and forests.

This summer’s torrential rains across much of Peel and other parts of the GTA led to severe flooding on major highways and tunnels, highlighting the potential risks associated with a project of this scale. 

The disregard of environmental impacts follows an alarming pattern under Ford's leadership.

Early on, after his election in 2018, it became clear that policies meant to protect Ontarians and safeguard against the dangers of climate change, would not be a concern for Ford.

He radically curtailed the mandate of conservation authorities, immediately eliminated the electric vehicle subsidy and a scathing audit by the province's auditor general released in 2020 showed emissions reduction targets were effectively being ignored.

"Our audit found the province risks its 2030 emission-reduction target, in part because climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is not yet a cross-government priority," Bonnie Lysyk, the former AG, wrote in her report.

“[T]he Environment Ministry fully met just 18% of our criteria, and the former Natural Resources Ministry, the former Ministry of Energy, Northern Development and Mines and the Municipal Affairs Ministry each fully met 45% of our criteria,” she wrote, regarding compliance with the Environmental Bill of Rights.

In hundreds of pages Lysyk laid out the mismanagement, secrecy and utter lack of regard for legislation and existing policy.

“Environmentally significant decisions are being made either by ministries that are not subject to the Act or under laws that are not subject to the Act. As a result, Ontarians do not have any EBR Act rights in relation to those decisions. We found that these issues, and other issues described in this report, stem at least in part from a lack of leadership from the Environment Ministry, which administers the EBR Act, and from a failure by individual prescribed ministries to prioritize their compliance with and implementation of the EBR Act. These findings point to a lack of commitment by prescribed ministries to not only meet the EBR Act’s requirements in a technical way, but also consistently meet those requirements in a manner that achieves the purposes of the Act and respects Ontarians’ rights.”

The impacts across Ontario and in Peel have been profound.

“Of particular concern, ministries are not notifying and consulting Ontarians about all of the environmentally significant decisions that they should be,” Lysyk wrote in her report on the province’s Environmental Bill of Rights. “Some ministries have deliberately avoided consulting the public about some proposals.”

During the pandemic, consultations for development applications and other potentially damaging moves were done in a virtual format, allowing ministries to manipulate and have more control over the process, often blatantly subverting public oversight.

One item most governments have in common is aspirational GHG emission targets to confront the warming of our world. Peel Region, its two largest cities, along with the provincial and federal governments have goals to decrease emissions. To do this, each must be on the same page and work collaboratively to prevent further climate-related catastrophes such as the flooding that devastated parts of Mississauga and Brampton this summer.

Emissions under the Ford PCs have gone in the wrong direction after a long period of reductions. Not including 2020 which was an outlier year due to the pandemic, pollution reduction has slowed significantly under Ford. For example, from 2021 to 2023, the province went from an electricity grid that was 94 percent emissions free to 90 percent, a sharp decline mostly due to Ford's rapid expansion of gas-fired power, which causes extremely heavy pollution in the atmosphere.

The Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) represents 44 percent of provincial emissions according to The Atmospheric Fund (TAF); an almost 60-kilometre 400-series tunnel would drive that figure much higher.

Lysyk made it clear, the Ford government has actively hid and prevented public input on massive projects that will alter the lives of Ontarians. During the last term, the PCs had made very little progress on 50 percent of the GHG reductions recommendations by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, responsible for ensuring the government is being transparent and engaging residents on issues of concern.

In 2020 the committee reviewed Preserving and Protecting our Environment for Future Generations: A Made-in-Ontario Environment Plan and made 19 recommendations consisting of 22 actions. This required the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to report back a year later to follow up on the audit. There has since been very little transparency on progress and the PCs have not provided detailed reports on their environmental record in more than two years.

Mississauga emergency rescue crews remove occupants from stranded cars on Highway 410 on Aug. 18, when heavy rainfall caused flooding across the GTA.

(Mississauga Fire/X)

In a report released earlier this year by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, the cost of insured damage in Canada from natural catastrophes and severe weather events, particularly floods, exceeded $3 billion for a second consecutive year.

Saxe laid out concerns over the flooding susceptibility of such a large subsurface infrastructure project, particularly in light of changing weather patterns and climate challenges.

Experts like Saxe and Collier also warn that projects such as the 401 expansion proposal incentivize more single occupancy driving and the general reliance on cars, leading to induced traffic and increased greenhouse gas emissions.

“The more car infrastructure you build, the more people are taught to drive, the more we spend all of our money on car infrastructure instead of public transit, the less choice we give them,” Saxe, who holds a PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge, reminded.

The opportunity cost also needs to be factored. Funds allocated for the tunnel could potentially be redirected to other transportation initiatives that would yield better outcomes for the province. 

Both experts recommend using the allocated funds alternatively to build multi-modal complete streets with transit priority for buses and Light Rail Transit.

Collier suggests focusing on optimizing the existing road network rather than expanding certain sections of it, and partnering with municipalities and employers to deliver policies such as:

• New Transportation Hierarchy—Prioritize telecommuting and active modes of transport (like cycling and walking), alongside public transit and goods movement, over single-occupancy vehicles.
• Subsidized Truck Tolls—Encourage the freight industry to utilize the Highway 407 corridor as a bypass around Toronto, which would alleviate some of the pressure on Highway 401.
• Mobility Pricing—Implement a pricing model where revenue is directed toward road maintenance, complete streets, transit improvements, and low-income driver rebates. This could include establishing a Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) highway toll network and designing a comprehensive road usage charge system.
• Parking Stall Tax—Introduce a tax on parking stalls and subsidize municipalities that implement demand-responsive parking pricing. This would also support businesses offering employee cash-out options.
• Gas Tax Reassessment—Collier suggests reversing the recent 10-cent cut to the gas tax, arguing that it should eventually be replaced by road usage charges due to diminishing revenue from electric vehicles.

Collier believes a combination of these policy measures could reduce regional car and truck volumes by 10 to 30 percent. Such a reduction would lead to significant improvements in traffic flow—estimated between 25 to 50 percent—across provincial highways and municipal roads.

He says these policies would also increase safety and accessibility for all modes while decreasing automobile emissions and the need for new multi-billion-dollar highway infrastructure.

“The bottom line is that Ford’s latest infrastructure scheme is a big distraction and would be a colossal waste of taxpayers' dollars". 

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