As expected, there were no way that a 8 lanes (+2 HOV) freeways could handle over 450,000 vehicles per day and being much busier than 16 lanes sections at the junctions of several major freeways in the same city.

At least we can say that this thread was useful. It helped to correct some errors.

Can anyone provide a link to a credible source for the 401 Highway AADT figures posted in this thread? I went to Wikipedia and followed the links, but was unable to access the first and found the second contained only a claim without sourcing.

Haha, nice!

I checked out the road on google maps and it certainly looked like it handled a lot with a lot of trucks, but yeah, I don't see how it could carry more than the 401.

I'm trying to find stats for Australian cities but it's hard: I'd wage that here in Sydney it's the Warringah Freeway, which is the approach road for both the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Harbour Tunnel.

https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.833...7i13312!8i6656

Probably something like 14 lanes wide at this point but not for very far.

Not sure about Melbourne either but the West Gate Freeway past the CBD seems like a good bet

https://www.google.com/maps/@-37.825...7i13312!8i6656

I have found this.
Ontario Provincial Highways Traffic Volumes On Demand
http://www.raqsa.mto.gov.on.ca/techp...umes.nsf/tvweb


They have the AADT of all proviencial highway in 2016.
The highest figure is the 401 with 416,500 between highway 400 and Weston Road in North York.

There is an other highway with a section above 400,000 in Toronto.
The 427 between Burnhamthorpe road and Rathburn road in Etobicoke with 400,700.

Looking more detailled figures, I was suprised to see that Toronto has higher figures in summer than in winter (it's maybe I'm Parisian, a city that empties out in summer) and that data including weekends have HIGHER figures than the average data excluding weekends.

Exemple for highway 401 busiest section.

-AADT : Annual Average Daily Traffic; defined as the average twenty four
hour, two way traffic for the period January 1st to December 31st.
416,500

-SADT : Summer Average Daily Traffic; defined as the average twenty four
hour, two way traffic for the period July 1st to August 31st including
weekends.
458,100

-SAWDT : Summer Average Weekday Traffic; defined as the average twenty
four hour, two way traffic for the period July 1st to August 31st,
excluding weekends.
445,600

-WADT : Winter Average Daily Traffic; defined as the average twenty four
hour, two way traffic for the period January 1st to March 31st, plus
December 1st to December 31st, including weekends.
374,800

Summer Fridays are probably the busiest traffic days of the entire year and likely skew the weekly numbers up. The highway network basically acts a funnel from the entire GTA onto the 400/404 going North to Muskoka. Leaving from Downtown Toronto at 3pm, you could realistically be in stop-and-go traffic all the way to Barrie.

It never seems as bad coming back into the city though. I drove back from Muskoka this past holiday Monday and it was smooth sailing all the way to Downtown. I think the distribution of return trips is more evenly distributed as some come back on Sunday, or extend their vacation into the week.

Thanks!