Highways in Canada

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by CityTech

Maybe there needs to be a ferry between Toronto and Thunder Bay

T Bay to TO isn’t boring if you go on the 17. There’s reason that Lake Superior is named as such.

[jonny24]

At Christmas my fiancée and I drove Hamilton-Halifax. Stopped for dinner and to walk around Old Quebec, and slept in a Metro parking lot near the NB Border - the gas station we tried to go to was closed and we didn't want to risk getting to the next town in in the middle of the night. Woke up to the snow plow clearing the lot at 4am.

The way back we did it straight, I think it took around 18 hours , doing ~130 wherever we could.

Unrelated to Canadian highways but we just got back from NY, where we went back and forth between her dad's places in NYC and the North Fork of Long Island. The highways on Long Island are fucking terrible. On-off ramps way too short, potholes galore, very tight turns and not much extra space. And a weird amount of getting off one expressway/freeway/interstate, dumped onto a local street, only to get back on a different highway almost immediately. A real mess, that was not fun to drive on. I REALLY appreciated our 400 series highways as I did a loop to KW-Brantford-back to Hamilton last night to see a few people.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by jonny24

At Christmas my fiancée and I drove Hamilton-Halifax. Stopped for dinner and to walk around Old Quebec, and slept in a Metro parking lot near the NB Border - the gas station we tried to go to was closed and we didn't want to risk getting to the next town in in the middle of the night. Woke up to the snow plow clearing the lot at 4am.

The way back we did it straight, I think it took around 18 hours , doing ~130 wherever we could.

Unrelated to Canadian highways but we just got back from NY, where we went back and forth between her dad's places in NYC and the North Fork of Long Island. The highways on Long Island are fucking terrible. On-off ramps way too short, potholes galore, very tight turns and not much extra space. And a weird amount of getting off one expressway/freeway/interstate, dumped onto a local street, only to get back on a different highway almost immediately. A real mess, that was not fun to drive on. I REALLY appreciated our 400 series highways as I did a loop to KW-Brantford-back to Hamilton last night to see a few people.

How did you two manage to survive a harsh winter night in the parking lot?
I’m curious because I’ve slept in my car during various trips but that I’ve never done it in the middle of winter.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Cutting through Maine via Sherbrooke is about 1 hour (and 200km!) shorter than staying in Canada for Saint Johns so it's worth it. You do have to be a bit more careful in the US but I've never gone wrong with setting cruise to 8-10mph over the speed limit (compared to closer to 15mph above the limit in Canada).

Border crossings for that route are little backwater crossings with literally 0 wait time too. This is the crossing I use, it's never had more than a car or two in front of me.

https://www.google.com/maps/@45.3786211,-70.8083779,157m/data=!3m1!1e3

Coming from Niagara or the west GTA you would be crossing in upstate New York though which gets you the busy crossings. You get all freeway driving that route, which results in a better travel time, but you have to deal with suburban Boston traffic too if you time the drive wrong.

A few years ago a private company proposed a tolled interstate across upstate Maine more or less along that route, would have been nice. Doubt it would ever have had the traffic levels needed to sustain itself though.

Another common US shortcut is from Southwestern Ontario to parts of Northern Ontario through Michigan. Going from London to Sault Ste. Marie or anywhere along Lake Superior, you shave 2 hours off the driving time by taking the Bluewater Bridge, I-69 to Flint and I-75 up to the Sault. We did this drive several times when I was younger; back then there was also no 407 and the 400 ended at Hwy 12 near Coldwater so staying within Canada probably took even longer back then.

Driving from Southwestern Ontario to Vancouver (or pretty much anywhere west of Lake Superior) is also faster going through the US. A friend of mine who has driven from London to Vancouver through Canada and back to London through the US via Chicago said he shaved a whole day off driving by going through the US. Basically it's a freeway the entire way.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by esquire

A lot of businesses with a national presence often lump NWO (or at least the Kenora/Dryden area) in with the prairie region. Mainly because of that distance from Southern Ontario that you mentioned.

You sometimes see this with chain businesses as well. Safeway, for example, exists throughout Western Canada and also in Thunder Bay, but doesn't go any further east in Ontario.

[swimmer_spe]

Originally Posted by someone123

Cheaper flights and ride sharing really change the calculus. A lot of American cities have bad transit and basically require cars but have had good ride sharing for years, and lately Canadian cities have gotten ride sharing too.

Halifax to St. John's is one of those trips that sounds impressively far but it is mostly due to the transportation infrastructure and geography, not distance. It is about 900 km while the BC-WA border is about 1,900 km from the Mexican border. But there is a long ferry trip between NS and NL and then the NL highway is "U" shaped rather than direct. I would guess that eventually the discount airlines will offer $100-200 flights for this route. Flight time is about 1h45.

I've mentioned this one before but Saint John, NB is about the same distance from Montreal as Hamilton.

This makes me think that building a tunnel under the Strait of Belle Isle, and then extending the highways to QC.

Originally Posted by JHikka

Have a buddy from the Kap who doesn't drive slower than 140.

I have a buddy in Montreal that when he comes into ON, he doesn't go over 140.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

Just curious. Do you get to go along Lake Superior Shore often?

Not really. Highway 11 was more my thing.

The Lake Superior shoreline is very pretty.

[thewave46]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Have a buddy from the Kap who doesn't drive slower than 140.

Your buddy likes living dangerously and expensively.

50km/h+ over means you go in the back of the cruiser and your car is towed.

Limit plus 15-20 is where I draw the line these days. Maybe +25 if the flow of traffic is good.

[jonny24]

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

How did you two manage to survive a harsh winter night in the parking lot?
I’m curious because I’ve slept in my car during various trips but that I’ve never done it in the middle of winter.

Sleeping bags + coats on + cranked the heat for a bit before shutting the car off. And it was only ~4 hours or so.

I also don't recall it being especially cold outside, probably -5 to -10. It was dumping a lot of snow which usually doesn't happen when it's frigid.

But yeah, it wasn't really fun, I probably only slept an hour and a half.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by jonny24

At Christmas my fiancée and I drove Hamilton-Halifax. Stopped for dinner and to walk around Old Quebec, and slept in a Metro parking lot near the NB Border - the gas station we tried to go to was closed and we didn't want to risk getting to the next town in in the middle of the night. Woke up to the snow plow clearing the lot at 4am.

The way back we did it straight, I think it took around 18 hours , doing ~130 wherever we could.

Unrelated to Canadian highways but we just got back from NY, where we went back and forth between her dad's places in NYC and the North Fork of Long Island. The highways on Long Island are fucking terrible. On-off ramps way too short, potholes galore, very tight turns and not much extra space. And a weird amount of getting off one expressway/freeway/interstate, dumped onto a local street, only to get back on a different highway almost immediately. A real mess, that was not fun to drive on. I REALLY appreciated our 400 series highways as I did a loop to KW-Brantford-back to Hamilton last night to see a few people.

Long Island has an extremely old freeway network, much of it is actually pre-war, some of them are nearly 100 years old at this point. It makes sense they are terrible as they were designed and built at a time when modern highway design wasn't understood.

What Ontario did have from that era has long been demolished and replaced, but the original QEW from Toronto to Niagara was of similarly poor design. There are a handful of bridge structures on the 401 in Oshawa dating from the late 1930's still but they are scheduled to get demolished in the next few years and replaced with new structures and interchanges with modern geometry.

MTO is generally much better than NYDOT at upgrading poor geometry and general maintenance.

I've slept in below freezing temps before, albeit not in my car. You need a warm sleeping bag and just have to cover your face as much as possible more or less. Wouldn't be too much fun in a car, probably would end up just being a few hours of shuteye to bridge you over until your destination.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by thewave46

Not really. Highway 11 was more my thing.

The Lake Superior shoreline is very pretty.

I’m going to use this opportunity to slip in a meme that I made a while back:

If it’s not clear enough, here’s the link: https://i.imgur.com/LjmMDTF.jpg.
Emphasis on the deep rock cuts.

[esquire]

Somebody needs to think about this stuff!

[Tone]

.

[q12]

Nova Scotia 107 Burnside Expressway progress update:

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

Emphasis on the deep rock cuts.

Nice.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

Nice.

Actually though. I’ve been reviewing my design (see the map in my signature), and I’ve been thinking about what to do with TCH along Lake Superior Shore. In some places, deep cuts in the Canadian Shield are inevitable if we are to bring the highway to modern standard.
(And yes, sometimes, special designation like TCH may trump traffic volume as a reason for stuff.)

[SignalHillHiker]

I have two very similar highway driving memories.

One is just a couple years ago, when on a whim I decided to drive to St. Anthony one morning. I hit Deer Lake after like 7 hours and thought I was almost there. No. Oh no. It was almost midnight before I reached St. Anthony.

And the other is when I was... I think 19, when I moved to Kenora to work at the newspaper there. My father drove out with me. And it took us I think three days to reach Sudbury and both of us thought - okay, we're basically there. We weren't. Fucking torture. VERY similar to driving across Newfoundland (as in you LITERALLY have to be mindful of how much gas you have because there might not be another gas station). And it felt even more boonies than Newfoundland, oddly. Maybe it's because our boonies are in between our capital and second city? Whereas that drive from Sudbury to Kenora is just irrelevant for Ontario (If Ottawa was where Kenora is, it'd feel different, right? Am I crazy? lol)

But anyhow, yeah. I will never do it again. Never.

[Dengler Avenue]

I have an idea:
The higher the latitude, the farther apart any pair of two points that may seem close on the map.

[MonctonRad]

I'm so confused..........

[Dengler Avenue]

While we're talking about highways in Atlantic Canada... Is it easy to blast rocks in the Appalachians for road construction?
Some comparison:
A large part of Ontario and Quebec is covered by Canadian Shield, which is some of the oldest formations on Earth, so it's very hard to blast rocks there. In return, though, we get a (literally) rock solid foundation for road base. That's one extreme of the spectrum.
On the other end of the spectrum, we find the Rockies. Those are sedimentary rocks so stability is a huge issue. On the other hand, it also means that it's easy to blast rocks there (though of course one must be mindful not to blast more than planned, lol).

With those 2 comparisons in mind, where do the Appalachians stand in terms of this spectrum? I've tried to look this up but the information is surprisingly hard to come by.