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[ghYHZ]

Justin is here in Antigonish today to announce a $90 million federal contribution for twinning the 38km stretch of Highway 104 between Sutherlands River and the Antigonish Bypass. There’s been a lot of preliminary work started but the completion date not until 2024.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ottawa-federal-government-trudeau-twinning-infrastructure-funds-highway-104-1.4749770

[MisterSG1]

Justin is here in Antigonish today to announce a $90 million federal contribution for twinning the 38km stretch of Highway 104 between Sutherlands River and the Antigonish Bypass. There’s been a lot of preliminary work started but the completion date not until 2024.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ottawa-federal-government-trudeau-twinning-infrastructure-funds-highway-104-1.4749770

How typical, Justine shows up to announce federal monies going towards a highway to nowhere, while not defending our border and those “refugees” further piling up in the GTA. Yet Justine doesn’t want to spend a cent here in the GTA for further uncontrolled population growth further choking our transportation infrastructure.

[AsphaltPlanet]

I'm sure the people of Antigonish really appreciate your assertion that the highway that leads to it actually goes to nowhere.

[Stephane Dumas]

Some posters on Skyscraperpage forum think it's smells like a buying vote.

[ghYHZ]

How typical, Justine shows up to announce federal monies going towards a highway to nowhere..............

Highway to nowhere? I'm sure Newfoundlanders would appreciate that! Did you take the time to look at a map to see where Highway 104 is? This is the Trans Canada Highway.....handling all traffic to Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland.

[AsphaltPlanet]

It's not like Ontario hasn't ever gotten federal funding for twinning it's portion of the TCH either:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/highway-twinning-update-1.4292170

On Friday, Ottawa announced it would contribute $83 million towards work to twin three sections of the highway:

• Coughlin Road westerly to Highway 582, with work beginning in 2019
  
• Coughlin Road easterly to Red Rock Road 9, with work beginning in 2019
  
• Highway 587 to Pearl Creek, with work beginning in 2018
  

Those stretches amount to about 26 kilometres of the Trans-Canada Highway.

[MisterSG1]

How typical, Justine shows up to announce federal monies going towards a highway to nowhere..............

Highway to nowhere? I'm sure Newfoundlanders would appreciate that! Did you take the time to look at a map to see where Highway 104 is? This is the Trans Canada Highway.....handling all traffice to Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland.

I’m well aware of where Antigonish is, prior to the bypass there were a couple of lights and speed limit drop to 50km/h.

I’m just looking at the big picture, the GTA has a transportation crisis on its hands, while the feds don’t make individual decisions on roads, they have arguably laid the seeds for the mess to occur, and this all started when Daddy Trudeau was in power.

Just tell me this, what are the AADT values of Hwy 104 and 105 for that matter beyond New Glasgow. You’ve heard me constantly stress in the past on these forums how I thin a good portion of NB-2 widening was a waste of money as well. Specifically between Grand Falls and Woodstock.

[AsphaltPlanet]

Toronto doesn't have a transportation crisis.

Pull your head out of your ass and look at other major North American cities.  They're all the same.  Traffic sucks everywhere.  It's not just here.

The fact that traffic sucks in Toronto doesn't mean other roads in other places shouldn't be improved.

More than that, there are really no easy solutions to deal with traffic in Toronto.  It's not as if a lane could simply be added on the 401 between the 400 and 404 and all the traffic would go away.  More than that, because so much of Toronto's expressway network is at or near capacity that when even additional lanes are added, traffic congestion is more often than not just moved around rather than actually alleviated in any serious way.

[ghYHZ]

The problem with this section of the TCH is a disproportionate number of trucks. The railway has been abandoned or out of service east of Port Hawkesbury and most goods for Newfoundland and Cape Breton move by truck now.

[1]

there are really no easy solutions to deal with traffic in Toronto.

Remove the tolls on 407.

[AsphaltPlanet]

^ That's not a realistic solution.  I don't know what the current value of the remaining 407 contract is, but it was estimated at $6 billion about 15 years ago.  It'd probably be $10 billion now.  Plus, there is a reason so many cities are adding tolled capacity.  There is a real relationship between transportation supply and demand.

[MisterSG1]

The problem with this section of the TCH is a disproportionate number of trucks. The railway has been abandoned or out of service east of Port Hawkesbury and most goods for Newfoundland and Cape Breton move by truck now.

If that is the case, then why don't we just bite the whole bullet now and build a freeway right to the boat? I always envisioned such an extension would use Trunk 4 once on Cape Breton and then use Hwy 125 to Hwy 105 to reach North Sydney.

It's been quite a time since I've taken Hwy 104, is the section between Sutherlands River and Antigonish the non-controlled access section, or does that happen after? I recall a bunch of driveways for instance along Hwy 104 either before or after Antigonish when heading east.



As for you AsphaltPlanet, give me some time to work up a rebuttal.

[AsphaltPlanet]

^ Save your energy, I’m not interested in debating transportation policy with you.

You might fair better by writing posts that are more constructive in tone.  There are some legitimate criticisms with the funding issues around refugees now living in the GTA, however, AAroads is not the place to discuss them, nor is that funding at all related to federal TCH funding in another province.

Don’t write posts like a Fox News correspondent, it doesn’t lead to fruitful discussion.

[MisterSG1]

^ Save your energy, I’m not interested in debating transportation policy with you.

You might fair better by writing posts that are more constructive in tone.  There are some legitimate criticisms with the funding issues around refugees now living in the GTA, however, AAroads is not the place to discuss them, nor is that funding at all related to federal TCH funding in another province.

Don’t write posts like a Fox News correspondent, it doesn’t lead to fruitful discussion.

Fine then, if you don't want to, be that way.

But in my original post, oddly enough, it wasn't roads that was in my original train of thought for transportation infrastructure expansion. I was thinking more on rapid transit and regional rail. Yes, the freeways may be packed, but certain sections of the subway are completely maxed out as well, the Yonge Line is busier than the 4/5/6 services in NYC.

[ghYHZ]

The problem with this section of the TCH is a disproportionate number of trucks. The railway has been abandoned or out of service east of Port Hawkesbury and most goods for Newfoundland and Cape Breton move by truck now.

If that is the case, then why don't we just bite the whole bullet now and build a freeway right to the boat? I always envisioned such an extension would use Trunk 4 once on Cape Breton and then use Hwy 125 to Hwy 105 to reach North Sydney.

Yes….that would be the plan eventually. But like the other TCH twinning projects….the worst areas: traffic volumes or accident prone are being done as the money becomes available.

Did you even read the newspaper article linked at the top here? This portion of the highway has seen a disproportionate number of accidents: 

"Ottawa chips in for Highway 104 twinning along deadly stretch of road"
"Since 2008, there have been more than 400 accidents between Sutherlands River and Antigonish"

Sure there’s an election coming but this section has long been designated for twinning and was one of the proposed toll roads in this article from 2015:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/tolls-proposed-for-8-sections-of-4-busiest-nova-scotia-highways-1.3120344

Again….Sutherlands River – Antigonish is mentioned specifically.  Great to sit back at your home in Brampton ON and comment on highways you know nothing about…even applying they go nowhere!  I drive this section nearly every day. I’ve seen those crashes but luckily have avoided them myself.

In winter it can be sunny in New Glasgow and sunny in Antigonish but you can encounter a snow storm through the gorge at Marshy Hope with its twists and turns and cars all over the road. (This section will be by-passed completely and not just twinned)

I don’t complain about my tax money going for projects elsewhere in the country…..and you mention rail:  VIA Rail Canada which my taxes support serves Brampton. They once served Antigonish. We’re a University Town…..St.F.X. (St. Francis Xavier) and those students that once took the train are now all out on the 104!

Even our bus service has been cut back and now western Canada will see this with the discontinuance of all Greyhound routes…..so more people on the road!   

[MisterSG1]

^ Excuse me?

You have probably seen me say on these forums plenty of times in the past that both of my parents are from Newfoundland, and while it was a yearly drive for me from around 2006 to 2014, I haven't done it recently, but I do remember the road in question quite well.

Highway 104 in Nova Scotia may be a deadly road as they say, but they say the exact same thing about Quebec's Route 185. I thought that was a very deadly road?

Realistically speaking, you and I are in completely different worlds within Canada. Here's just a few interesting tidbits. While it's often said that one state in the US, California, has a larger population than all of Canada, that is definitely true. Ontario has a population that is larger than 45 of the states. Where I live, Brampton, it has a population of close to 600,000. It is part of Peel Region which contains Brampton, Mississauga, and Caledon, just Brampton & Mississauga alone have a population of 1.4 million. This means that these two cities are larger than SIX of the provinces of Canada. Mississauga also has a population very close to all of New Brunswick. City of Toronto itself, let's not even get the GTA into the picture, has a population larger than all of Atlantic Canada combined.

Proportionally speaking, Atlantic Canada receives a lot more federal money than they pay in. cbeach40 put up a figure on another thread that suggests that New Brunswick's per capita's highway budget is twice that of Ontario.


Again, I'd like to know the AADT of this stretch.

If it were mentioned that the feds were gonna throw a billion into building a "Downtown Relief Line" in Toronto, I'm sure you'd hear strong objection from your neck of the woods.

As for VIA Rail, that's not important to this discussion, I was talking about regional rail, which is maintained by the Province of Ontario known as GO Transit. The fact remains that even with the huge population increase, it is still not possible to take a train from Mississauga on the Milton Line into downtown Toronto outside of rush hours whilst Oshawa and Aldershot are served by trains with 30 minute headways 7 days a week. Honestly, Brampton doesn't even need VIA service, and I highly doubt many passengers are traveling to London or Windsor from Brampton.

[AsphaltPlanet]

I don't recall there being street protests in Antigonish when the federal government contributed $697 million to build the 8km Toronto York Subway extension that opened last year.

Maybe there would have been more media attention if the street protests hadn't happened in the middle of nowhere.

[MisterSG1]

I don't recall there being street protests in Antigonish when the federal government contributed $697 million to build the 8km Toronto York Subway extension that opened last year.

Maybe there would have been more media attention if the street protests hadn't happened in the middle of nowhere.

Maybe not protests but a lot of whining and anger. That being said, I think you and I can both agree that the subway extension was a complete waste of money...we don't agree on much.

[AsphaltPlanet]

I bet most people in Antigonish had no idea that the federal government contributed money for the subway extension, or helped Toronto finance their new Toronto Rocket subway cars.  Most people around the country probably just go around their day to day lives rather than worry about Toronto.

[ghYHZ]

^ Excuse me? 

There’s really no excuse when you make a comment such as a highway to nowhere. If you have family ties to Newfoundland you should be well aware this highway is that provinces life-line to the ferry now that the railway is gone.

So you drove it a couple of times from ’06 to ’14 but haven’t recently. I drive it nearly every day between Antigonish and New Glasgow and DO know the conditions.

Maybe not protests but a lot of whining and anger……..

Another ridicules comment! You're the one that's whining about NS getting a section of highway that's badly needed.........and as AsphaltPlanet said:

”I bet most people in Antigonish had no idea that the federal government contributed money for the subway extension………..Most people around the country probably just go around their day to day lives rather than worry about Toronto”

And that’s the way I see it. If a Downtown Relief Line is needed in Toronto...…so be it. It would be highly unlikely you would ever hear a protest from here. I'm well aware of the population of Ontario and also the Brampton area...having family in Bramalea. I'm there regularly (just 3 weeks ago) I also use your road and rail infrastructure.

GO Regional Rail provides a very good service. My closest train is in Truro….3 day a week to Montreal but still my tax dollar funds VIA Rail’s multiple trains per day  throughout the Ontario/Quebec Corridor but I’m not complaining.

All I'm saying is look after  our need too and we’ll be happy!

[Alps]

Cool your jets, both of you.

[vdeane]

Highway 104 in Nova Scotia may be a deadly road as they say, but they say the exact same thing about Quebec's Route 185. I thought that was a very deadly road?

Completing A-85 is also one of Québec's major priorities.

[brucester4]

If that is the case, then why don't we just bite the whole bullet now and build a freeway right to the boat? I always envisioned such an extension would use Trunk 4 once on Cape Breton and then use Hwy 125 to Hwy 105 to reach North Sydney.

There isn't enough traffic in Cape Breton to justify building a freeway.  I imagine there won't be a 4 lane freeway any further than the Canso Causeway in the foreseeable future.  There was a 1 lane bridge in St Peter's on Truck 4 until recently.  At least that highway is in good shape now.

It's been quite a time since I've taken Hwy 104, is the section between Sutherlands River and Antigonish the non-controlled access section, or does that happen after? I recall a bunch of driveways for instance along Hwy 104 either before or after Antigonish when heading east.

There are a few driveways in Marshy Hope, all the other heavily build up areas are now bypassed.  The present highway between Sutherland's River and Barney's River isn't really that bad.  It is a super 2 with lots of passing lanes, but it is hilly. There have been lot of accidents, and I think the issues are related to bad drivers more than a bad highway.  I have driven that section hundreds of times, and the only issue I have seen is dangerous passing - not a good feeling when you are in the "suicide lane" passing a large truck.   

[ghYHZ]

The Province of Nova Scotia has awarded the contract that will twin the 38 km section of Trans Canada Highway 104 between Sutherlands River and Antigonish to the Dexter Nova Alliance. Included is 28 km of twinning and 10 km of new divided highway.  And to sweeten the pot.....they also get a 20 year contract to maintain the new highway along with another 25 km of existing highway: the 104 from New Glasgow to Sutherlands River + the recently completed Antigonish Bypass.   

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/twinning-highways-antigonish-104-dexter-nova-alliance-1.5446635





And clearing and logging was started this winter with nearly the entire 38 km now cleared: 

Looking east....the new Exit 29 Interchange at Barneys River will be located at the top of the hill in the distance...





And looking west from the top of that hill:





Exit 29 is where the totally new 10 km section of divided highway leaves the existing alignments and heads east towards Antigonish.





The area around Exit 30 is cleared and a new overpass will be added to the right of the existing structure:

[Rothman]

That's a heckuva project.