Highways in Canada

[vid]

Four lanes would probably be overkill for the small (and dwindling) amount of traffic the region sees.

A super-two highway with wider or buffered medians and frequent opportunities for passing would more than serve the needs of the rural parts of the highway network here. If you made a 3 lane highway with wide shoulders, where the middle lane alternates directions and has a couple feet of buffer (like rumble strips or a concrete barrier) that would quell a lot of the safety concerns. Keep in mind that in this region, we don't want a twinned highway "because big cities have it and they're faster". We want a twinned highway because the division between the directions of traffic are safer.

If it is going to be four lanes I see no problem with building it the way Highway 1 is built in Eastern Manitoba. If the two directions of highway end up being located over a mile apart from each other, that's really no big deal, because there's nothing along the highway in the first place. Part of the highway to Nipigon is going to be like this, with a truck stop in a very wide median at the intersection of another highway.