Highways in Canada

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Andy6

We should do highway numbering schemes in each province.

Manitoba saves 100-series numbers for freeway-ish roads, of which there really aren't any, although 100, 101 and 110 are used for the Winnipeg and Brandon bypasses and supposedly the new semi-freeway in the northwest part of the city will be 190.

At one point after World War II, Manitoba renumbered some of the main north-south routes to match the U.S. Federal Routes of which they were continuations (59, 75, 83 and formerly 29, which was a very short continuation of I-29). This was probably for business and tourism reasons, as creating north-south trade routes has always been a preoccupation in Manitoba. Most of the original low-numbered "Provincial Trunk Highways" (or "P.T.H.") -- 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 -- radiated in sort of a clockwise order out of Winnipeg. Provincial Roads are secondary highways that are numbered from 200 upward, with different initial digits predominating in various regions (e.g. 3xx in the north). The numbers of some lesser two-digit highways, and a few of the three-digit ones, appear to be combinations of the numbers of the major highways that they connect, or originally connected (e.g. 13 = 1 and 3 and 68 = 6 and 8).

Good idea. Ontario's system I have never been able to figure out except for the fact that some of the 400-series numbers are just the numbers for old two lane highways with a 4 added to the front.

Quebec's autoroutes are sometimes related to the nearby two-lane highway, sometimes the same number or sometimes rounded to the nearest multiple of 10:

A-5: Route 105

A-50: Route 148

A-40: Route 148

A-73: Route 173

A-85: Route 185


Also, Quebec main highways (two-lane non-autoroute) are numbered in the 100s. They follow the same logic as the autoroutes: generally ascending numbers from west to east and south the north.

Route 101 (westernmost N-S) is along the Ontario border in Abitibi-Témiscamingue.

Route 199 (easternmost N-S) is the Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Magdalen Islands) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Secondary highways are numbered in the 300s, again following the logic described above.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Metro-One

Very nice! Thanks for posting!

2 questions though.

Do you guys in Quebec have all the environmental crazies come out and protest these highway expansions like we do in Vancouver?

There is some opposition to highways in Quebec where they are perceived as a sprawl-inducing luxury - Autoroute 5 which is being extended north of Gatineau in or near Gatineau Park is an example of this.

But as for Autoroute 30 no one really perceives it as a luxury. So there has been very little real opposition.

It will greatly alleviate an untenable situation where basically *every single* truck or car from Ontario and all points west that is destined for anywhere in Quebec east of Montreal and all of Atlantic Canada, has to pass through central Montreal.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by leftimage

I happened to be going to Vaudreuil yesterday so I took my cam along. This is literally within the first hour the A30 was opened ! Here's an integral tour, non-stop drivelapse from around LaPrairie to Vaudreuil.

Enjoy this first look! Watch in HD ;-)

• Video Link

Thanks for that! I enjoyed the tour.

[kirjtc2]

Originally Posted by Andy6

We should do highway numbering schemes in each province.

Alrighty then, here's New Brunswick:

There are 3 classes of highways here.

*The main routes have 1- or 2-digit numbers, but there are only about a dozen. Not really much of a numbering scheme, except that 95 connects with I-95 at the border. Most (but not all of them) simply kept their old numbers from the original number plan used til the 60s, and there wasn't much of a scheme there either.

*The secondary routes are in the 100s. Again, no real scheme, except that the last 2 digits of many of them match their original #s (114 used to be 14, 120 used to be 20, etc).

*The tertiary routes are in the 200s and above. They generally increase in order from NW to SE, so from 200s around Edmundston up to 900s around Moncton. Most #s end in either 0 or 5 for some reason.

[ConundrumNL]

Originally Posted by Andy6

We should do highway numbering schemes in each province.

Let me take a stab at the NL number scheme, I think it may be unique to Canada . Road numbers in NL are based on a zone system. Specific regions are assigned a zone number (0-5), and all numbered routes within a regions start with it's zone number. The Majority of route numbers are three digits (eg. Route 430), but roads on the Avalon Peninsula can be one or two digits; this is because the majority of the Avalon is zone 0.

Rough Zone numbers:
Zone 0, 1 - Avalon Peninsula
Zone 2 - Avalon, Burin, and Bonavista Peninsulas
Zone 3 - Kittiwake Coast, Fogo Island, Twillingate, Exploits River Valley, Bay d'Espoir, Baie Verte
Zone 4 - Baie Verte, Northern Peninsula, Westen Newfoundland
Zone 5 - Labrador

Primary route numbers always end in 0 (eg. Route 10), spur route numbers are based on the primary route they branched from and can end in any number between 1-9 (eg. Route 13 is a spur of Route 10).

Some route numbers can have an "A" at the end, my best guess is this normally identifies an alternate route. However, St. John's newest freeway, the "Team Gushue Highway" is currently numbered as 3A and will eventually connect to Route 3 in Goulds; In this case, I'm not sure if the 3A indicates a spur of Route 3, or a temporary number to avoid confusion and the whole route will be numbered 3 when completed.

There is also an extensive system of numbered local roads. These numbers are based on the intersecting highway, with another number following a hyphen (eg. 210-1)

There is no specialize numbering or classifications for road types (Freeway, Bypass, Super2, etc..).

Route numbers are rarely used by locals, as almost every road in NL has a name. In fact, the majority of people seem unaware of the numbers.

[ConundrumNL]

Originally Posted by ConundrumNL

Let me take a stab at the NL number scheme, I think it may be unique to Canada . Road numbers in NL are based on a zone system. Specific regions are assigned a zone number (0-5), and all numbered routes within a regions start with it's zone number. The Majority of route numbers are three digits (eg. Route 430), but roads on the Avalon Peninsula can be one or two digits; this is because the majority of the Avalon is zone 0.

Rough Zone numbers:
Zone 0, 1 - Avalon Peninsula
Zone 2 - Avalon, Burin, and Bonavista Peninsulas
Zone 3 - Kittiwake Coast, Fogo Island, Twillingate, Exploits River Valley, Bay d'Espoir, Baie Verte
Zone 4 - Baie Verte, Northern Peninsula, Westen Newfoundland
Zone 5 - Labrador

Primary route numbers always end in 0 (eg. Route 10), spur route numbers are based on the primary route they branched from and can end in any number between 1-9 (eg. Route 13 is a spur of Route 10).

Some route numbers can have an "A" at the end, my best guess is this normally identifies an alternate route. However, St. John's newest freeway, the "Team Gushue Highway" is currently numbered as 3A and will eventually connect to Route 3 in Goulds; In this case, I'm not sure if the 3A indicates a spur of Route 3, or a temporary number to avoid confusion and the whole route will be numbered 3 when completed.

There is also an extensive system of numbered local roads. These numbers are based on the intersecting highway, with another number following a hyphen (eg. 210-1)

There is no specialize numbering or classifications for road types (Freeway, Bypass, Super2, etc..).

Route numbers are rarely used by locals, as almost every road in NL has a name. In fact, the majority of people seem unaware of the numbers.

One fact I forgot to mention. The Trans-Canada, Newfoundland's primary east/west highway is numbered as Route 1 for it's complete length (across the 4 zones used on the island). They may be because it officially starts in St. John's (Zone 0), or done solely for simplicities sake.

[dmuzika]

Originally Posted by sa230e

I always wondered why A-20 lies between A-40 and A-30. Doesn't that violate the numbering system?

East of Montreal, where the origional A-30 was constructed, the alignments follow the numbering system. A-40 runs along the north shore of the St Lawrence, A-30 runs along the south shore of the St. Lawrence, and A-20 locted further south of the St Lawerence and heads due east towards Drummondville.

[Andy6]

Actually -- on the subject of numbering -- the City of Winnipeg, perhaps uniquely, has an internal numbering system in the form of "Metro Routes" introduced about 50 years ago when arterial routes were fashioned out of what were sometimes 5 or 6 separate streets. The numbers appear on all city advance turn and overhead directional signs. As this was extremely confusing for out of towners looking for actual street names, the city has started to put the street names on the signs as well, as in this example in which Marion Street is Route 115 (a designation it shares with Goulet St.):


Norwood Bridge and sculpture by wintorbos, on Flickr

East-west routes are odd numbered from north to south, 17 to 165. North-south are even numbered from east to west, 20 to 96 (although there is also a Route 180, which theoretically was meant to join up with Route 80, which would have required a bridge across the Assiniboine River that was never built). The numbers usually go up by 5 or 10, except that in the pre-metric days routes in the 30s to 60s were made to end in 2 or 7 (rather than 0 or 5) so that their numbers wouldn't be confused with speed limit signs. Route 96 is new and is probably that rather than Route 100 for the same reason.

The only route numbers that are used in common speech are "Route 90" (very commonly used) and "Route 165" (less so). The rest are never used colloquially, and yet, even though most people wouldn't likely have a clue what the numbers were if they were asked, most drivers just sort of know in their deep brains somewhere that "42" means Pembina Highway and "85" means Portage Avenue.

[Dmajackson]

Nova Scotia's highway system is pretty standard. We have arterial highways (controlled, up to 110km/h posted), trunks (uncontrolled, up to 90km/h), secondary & tertiary (uncontrolled, up to 80km/h), and local unnumbered roads maintained by NSTIR which are commonly unpaved and use common sense as the speed limit (though 50km/h is standard design IIRC).

Arterial highways are the high-speed backbone of Nova Scotia. They mostly interconnect town/cities and transportation hubs (Yarmouth Ferry, Pictou Ferry, NFLD Ferry, NB). They are called the '100 series' (100-199) and there's twelve of them (+1 planned). They range from two to twelve lanes wide and are the highways that get the major upgrades (twinning, interchanges, collector-express, ect). The Trans Canada runs solely in this category using Hwy's 104, 105, and 106. Most of these highways were built as "express" versions of a parallel trunk (ie 1 & 101, 2 & 102, ect) or another route where trunks were not present or were reclassified (ie 118 & 318). In a couple of cases the "expresses" completely replaced their trunk counterparts (ie 5 & 105).

Trunk highways are the original main routes in Nova Scotia. They interconnect towns/cities and many have been used for centuries. They are uncontrolled and commonly act as the main streets of communities. Quite a few are "tourist highways" and have scenic names ("6" is the 'Sunrise Trail). They are numbered 1-99 and as mentioned before usually have a arterial paralleling them where traffic counts warrant. Numbers 1-7 are the original main roads that traverse the provinces. 8, 10, 12, and 14 are N-S parallels connecting the South Shore to the Annapolis Valley. 16 - 30 connect the remaining (or previously) large communities. 32 and 33 are Halifax area major collectors with limited access though both are unsigned.

The remaining highways are "Collector Highways" and are secondary and tertiary in natures. Numbered in the 200-399 range they cover almost every community in no particular order. However some line up to parallel their counterparts (ie the 1, 101, and 201). These are usually backcountry highways which while paved are very hilly and windy in nature.

As for terminology the numbers are commonly known but names are more often used in conversations especially where there are multiple options. Also 100 series are referred to as highways, trunks are simply their number, and collectors are "Routes". For example in the Annapolis Valley Hwy 101 is the "new" road, the 1 is the "old" road and Route 201 is the "back" road. This is very common to hear because of Hwy 101's accident rate;

"Remember to take the old road to Kingston today. The new road's closed cuz of an accident!"

Some highways also have names. These are either "scenic routes" (ie Lighthouse, Sunrise, ect), nicknames (ie the TCH for Hwy 104), or names usually based on a government decision (ie the Bi-Hi for Hwy 102).

[manny_santos]

Ontario's whole system today defies logic...

Originally, the primary King's Highways were numbered between 2 and 169, Secondary Highways were 5xx and 6xx, and Tertiary Roads were 8xx (only 12 or 13 were ever designated). A few of the 1xx highways were derived from other highways:

- Hwy 169 was the original routing of Hwy 69, which took over the routing of Highway 103 in the 1970s
- Hwy 148 was a continuation of Quebec Route 148
- Part of Hwy 144 was originally Hwy 544, which was incorporated into Hwy 144 when it was built
- I don't know for sure, but I suspect Hwy 133 was derived from nearby Hwy 33

Where things get really messed up in Ontario are the County Roads, Regional Roads, District Roads, and numbered roads in certain municipalities. In many cases, the numbers change at the county/regional boundary, or are duplicates of nearby King's Highways. For example, Waterloo Regional Road 5 changes to Wellington County Road 12 when crossing the county line into Wellington. Another example involving Wellington County is County Road 6 west of Mount Forest, which runs parallel to Highway 6 and connects it with Highway 89. The numbers are often duplicated in different counties on roads with no relation to each other - for example, in addition to County Road 6 in Wellington County, there is also an unrelated County Road 6 in Oxford County that meets Highway 401, and there have been occasions where that has erroneously been referred to as "Highway 6" (which itself meets the 401 about 75km to the east). Oxford's County Road 6, to make things more complicated, changes to Perth Line 113 when it crosses the county line into Perth County, south of Stratford. Most counties have a County Road 6, a County Road 5, and so forth.

There was a very large proliferation of these County/Regional roads when King's Highways were "downloaded" in the 1990s, and in many cases the old numbers were changed (e.g. Regional Road 107 for the old Hwy 7 in Peel Region, or an unnumbered road for the old Hwy 14 in Hastings County).

The county road numbers are generally not used, unless it is the sole name of the road. For example, County Road 42 in Essex County has no other name so that is the name used, but in Middlesex County, County Road 14 is normally called Glendon Drive today. However they are still very useful for those who don't know an area well, as maps often do indicate these numbers without the road names. I find they're more confusing for the average motorist than "road geeks" like myself, as the average motorist tends to have trouble distinguishing between a crown-topped shield and a flowerpot shape for some reason.

[MonctonRad]

How do emergency responders keep all this straight?

[Innsertnamehere]

And don't even get me started on the freeway system names.

[eemy]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

How do emergency responders keep all this straight?

Emergency responders are typically only responding within a single county, so cross-county differences aren't an issue. Most jurisdictions now have named roads anyway for that very reason.

[go_leafs_go02]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

Ontario's whole system today defies logic...

Originally, the primary King's Highways were numbered between 2 and 169, Secondary Highways were 5xx and 6xx, and Tertiary Roads were 8xx (only 12 or 13 were ever designated). A few of the 1xx highways were derived from other highways:

- Hwy 169 was the original routing of Hwy 69, which took over the routing of Highway 103 in the 1970s
- Hwy 148 was a continuation of Quebec Route 148
- Part of Hwy 144 was originally Hwy 544, which was incorporated into Hwy 144 when it was built
- I don't know for sure, but I suspect Hwy 133 was derived from nearby Hwy 33

Where things get really messed up in Ontario are the County Roads, Regional Roads, District Roads, and numbered roads in certain municipalities. In many cases, the numbers change at the county/regional boundary, or are duplicates of nearby King's Highways. For example, Waterloo Regional Road 5 changes to Wellington County Road 12 when crossing the county line into Wellington. Another example involving Wellington County is County Road 6 west of Mount Forest, which runs parallel to Highway 6 and connects it with Highway 89. The numbers are often duplicated in different counties on roads with no relation to each other - for example, in addition to County Road 6 in Wellington County, there is also an unrelated County Road 6 in Oxford County that meets Highway 401, and there have been occasions where that has erroneously been referred to as "Highway 6" (which itself meets the 401 about 75km to the east). Oxford's County Road 6, to make things more complicated, changes to Perth Line 113 when it crosses the county line into Perth County, south of Stratford. Most counties have a County Road 6, a County Road 5, and so forth.

There was a very large proliferation of these County/Regional roads when King's Highways were "downloaded" in the 1990s, and in many cases the old numbers were changed (e.g. Regional Road 107 for the old Hwy 7 in Peel Region, or an unnumbered road for the old Hwy 14 in Hastings County).

The county road numbers are generally not used, unless it is the sole name of the road. For example, County Road 42 in Essex County has no other name so that is the name used, but in Middlesex County, County Road 14 is normally called Glendon Drive today. However they are still very useful for those who don't know an area well, as maps often do indicate these numbers without the road names. I find they're more confusing for the average motorist than "road geeks" like myself, as the average motorist tends to have trouble distinguishing between a crown-topped shield and a flowerpot shape for some reason.

The 1997/1998 downloads created the most confusing highway route network possible. and easily the worst in North America.

If they could have just said that a highway marker should represent a route, and NOT who's maintaining it, we could have left the signed network up and simply had maintanance downloaded over to the municipalities and the like.

And besides, the crown-topped shields are such a great sign too, much better than the flowerpots.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by go_leafs_go02

The 1997/1998 downloads created the most confusing highway route network possible. and easily the worst in North America.

If they could have just said that a highway marker should represent a route, and NOT who's maintaining it, we could have left the signed network up and simply had maintanance downloaded over to the municipalities and the like.

And besides, the crown-topped shields are such a great sign too, much better than the flowerpots.

If we count Mexico as part of North America, their network is the most confusing, more so than Ontario. Highway numbers are barely used, and often can have multiple long names that are only known locally and are not posted on any signs. Where numbers are actually posted, a quarter of the time the number is wrong; I was once on a highway outside Mexico City where three different numbers were posted in the space of a couple of kilometres. There are also a lot of green signs with blank (!) highway shields on them. Highway navigational aids are an afterthought there, but the government makes sure there's no shortage of "Obey the signs" signs.

[vid]

Originally Posted by go_leafs_go02

If they could have just said that a highway marker should represent a route, and NOT who's maintaining it, we could have left the signed network up and simply had maintanance downloaded over to the municipalities and the like.

We do that in Northern Ontario. Highway 102 is signed in the city proper, but it doesn't actually come anywhere near the built up area. Heading east after Dog Lake Road, it's a city-maintained street.

I do agree that Ontario's highway numbering scheme is the least logical in Canada and the US. There is no real pattern to it at all.

[harls]

I once read (or overheard somewhere) that the 4 for the 400 series highways in Ontario was meant to signify 4 lanes.

[harls]

Originally Posted by Andy6

The only route numbers that are used in common speech are "Route 90" (very commonly used) and "Route 165" (less so). The rest are never used colloquially, and yet, even though most people wouldn't likely have a clue what the numbers were if they were asked, most drivers just sort of know in their deep brains somewhere that "42" means Pembina Highway and "85" means Portage Avenue.

I don't think I've ever heard someone say "165", but I've been away from Winnipeg a long time. Usually it's just "Bishop".

Route 90 I hear all the time.

I don't think there is another city in N. America that uses this city route system, is there? It's very unique.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by harls

I once read (or overheard somewhere) that the 4 for the 400 series highways in Ontario was meant to signify 4 lanes.

I have heard this too.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by harls

I don't think I've ever heard someone say "165", but I've been away from Winnipeg a long time. Usually it's just "Bishop".

Route 90 I hear all the time.

I don't think there is another city in N. America that uses this city route system, is there? It's very unique.

Ottawa does, similar to the Ontario county road system. It is probably because Ottawa is both a city and a county, and has a large rural territory.

Blair Road is Ottawa Road 29.

Eagleson Road is Ottawa Road 49.

Montreal Road is Ottawa Road 34.

Walkley Road is Ottawa Road 74.

Hunt Club is Ottawa Road 32.

And of course the Queensway from the split to Orleans and Cumberland is Ottawa Road 174. This last one is the only one that is used in everyday speech.