Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he wants to build a tunnel for cars and transit under Highway 401 that would stretch roughly from Brampton to Scarborough.
Citing increasing gridlock and little room for highway expansion at a news conference Wednesday morning, Ford says his government will begin studying the technical feasibility of building a tunnel stretching across the GTA under the country’s busiest highway.
“This tunnel and expressway will cut gridlock, support economic growth and help get people moving faster,” Ford said.
I mean, if he can muscle his way through municipal affairs to stop some bike lanes being built, it’ll keep car dependency high enough that there would be sufficient frustrations with congestion for his car-dependent policies to look more appealing, and to also further push people who already don’t support alternative infrastructure further into his base. And to be fair, a lot of Canadians are dependent on cars, and don’t really see an alternative to cars, and it’s likely that he sees those as the base he needs to win and thus cater to. It all looks like part of the wedge politics that he’s playing.