Meredith Macleod
The Hamilton Spectator
(Jan 9, 2010)
As congestion continues to trudge outward from Toronto, Hamilton is now the western front.
Morning rush hour drivers cruising into Hamilton, either on the QEW from Niagara or the 403 from Brantford, find their speeds dropping 15 to 20 kilometres an hour upon hitting the city limits.
When commuters hit Burlington, it gets much worse, with speed dropping another 30 km/h.
Traffic on the Toronto-bound QEW slows to 57 km/h on the QEW, from Fairview Street in Burlington to Royal Windsor Drive in Oakville, and then to 52 km/h from Erin Mills Parkway to Hwy. 427 in Mississauga.
The drive home is worse.
Speeds drop to 43 km/h from Royal Windsor to Fairview, before picking up again past Hwy. 20.
Drivers on the 403 heading east from Brant County are moving at an average of 105 km/h in the morning until they hit Wilson Street in Ancaster. As a crush of cars from the Lincoln Alexander Parkway inch onto the highway, mean speed drops to 86 km/h from Wilson Street to the QEW/407 split, hitting as low as 40 km/h at the Linc.
The story during the evening commute is almost exactly the same, only in reverse.
The Travel Time Study by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, a mammoth 1,700-page document that helps guide planning for the province's major highways in the Golden Horseshoe, found that generally, congestion is getting worse, travel times are growing and drivers can count on long commutes more of the time.
That's no surprise to local commuters who say they are leaving earlier to get to work.
"It's slowly gotten longer," said Marshall Craft, who has been driving to Toronto from Hamilton and now Grimsby for 10 years.
It leaves commuters like Craft looking for that sweet spot -- a quasi-scientific formula of latest departure time without running the risk of arriving late.
He heads out the door at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday to Thursday but at 7 a.m. on Mondays and Fridays when he says traffic is lighter.
That generally gets him to work at 8:15 a.m., 45 minutes early. But if he leaves any later, he doesn't have a hope of sitting at his desk at 9 a.m.
In MTO jargon, Craft is building in buffer time -- the extra minutes needed to consistently arrive on time. The ministry's study found that commuter trips in 2008 could be expected to take 13 to 24 per cent longer than the same trip in 2002.
Craft, a graphic designer for a Toronto newspaper, says the biggest change he's noticed is heavier traffic heading west through Oakville and Burlington in the morning.
MTO data bears that out. Gone are the days of watching jammed lanes pouring into Toronto in the morning and out at night from free-flowing lanes in the opposite direction.
Bustling development and job growth all across the Golden Horseshoe means rush hour now cuts both ways.
For instance, a stretch of the Niagara-bound QEW in the morning takes 15-20 minutes to travel. The same stretch heading to Toronto takes 16 to 25.
Goran Nikolic, head of traffic planning for the MTO's central division, says given the huge tracts of housing built around Burlington and Hamilton, local commute times are staying relatively stable.
"We're talking minutes here or there ... There are problems on the QEW during peak hours but that's not new for anybody," he said.
"There has been phenomenal development and it's phenomenal we're still moving."
The MTO study included 4,270 kilometres along 13 major 400-series highways and 92 arterial roads in the GTA.
Nikolic says about 61 per cent of the studied highways didn't see a significant change in travel times and average speeds between 2006 and 2008.
But those that did, including segments of the QEW, Hwy. 404 south, the 410, and 401 eastbound, got markedly worse.
The biggest drop in speed came in the 401 collector lanes between Mississauga Road and Dixie Road, which fell from an average of 95 km/h in 2006 to 50 km/h in 2008 during the morning rush.
The eastbound QEW between Erin Mills Parkway and Hwy. 427 gained speed, from 48 to 52 km/h between 2006 and 2008, but the stretch is still considered the fifth slowest 400-series segment.
Overall, the survey, which used a fleet of GPS-equipped "probe" vehicles covering 141,000 kilometres, found congestion is a problem in the core GTA but is growing in outlying areas as well.
Marilyn Walden of Hamilton has racked up a sizable 407 bill thanks to her long commute to Oakville and Brampton.
The drive to two campuses of Sheridan College where she works as an IT technician is taking longer all the time.
"It's chaos anytime ... if I try to leave here after 3 p.m., I'm stopped on the QEW."
The hike to Brampton where she works two or three days a week takes 3 1/2 to 4 hours daily. And that's with $160 a month in highway tolls. According to Mapquest, it should take her more like 90 minutes two ways using the 407.
"I dread those days... the drive is just brutal."
On the plus side, improvements on the QEW, 401 and other highways boosted average speeds between 2006 and 2008. As well, high-occupancy vehicle lanes cut travel times by as much as 43 per cent in morning rush hours on the eastbound 403.
But Nikolic acknowledges that when capacity in those lanes is reached, the benefit will be cut.
905-526-3408
Commuters
* Total number of workers (over 15) in Hamilton, Burlington, Grimsby census metropolitan area: 324,650
* Number working in own municipality: 180,815
* Number working in CMA: 13,970
* Percentage travelling outside CMA: 30 per cent
* Percentage of Ontarians leaving CMA to work: 20 per cent
* Number in local CMA travelling to work by private vehicle: 274,705
* Number taking public transit: 28,340
* Number walking or biking: 19,010
Source: Statistics Canada, 2006 Census
Where Hamiltonians are going to work:
Hamilton: 145,480
Burlington: 24,270
Oakville: 7,090
Toronto: 6,925
Mississauga: 6,810
Brantford: 1,925
Milton: 1,860
Cambridge: 1,850
Guelph: 1,105
Haldimand: 1,070
Brampton: 1,055
When is a high speed train viable?
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