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[MisterSG1]

It's obvious that HOV lanes have become an de-facto official policy for the MTO once a 400 series highway expands greater than six lanes nowadays. However, pushing the HOV lane through led to a sneaky drop of GPL lanes that's a small technicality but nevertheless there.

Highway 410 between Queen and Hwy 401 was recently widened to include 4 GPLs and 1 HOV. However, NB approaching Queen, they have created a disaster.


Prior to this project, Hwy 410 north of Steeles had 3 lanes NB, plus an auxilary lane which entered Hwy 410 from EB Steeles. This auxiliary lane of course exited at Clark Blvd, leaving the 410 to 3 lanes.

Now, Hwy 410 NB has 4 GPL + 1 HOV, the auxilary lane that came on from Steeles is no longer an auxilary lane, but lasts roughly half the distance between Steeles and Clark before ending. One lane drop happens at Clark, and then another lane drop happens immediately just 700m or so later at Queen St. The HOV lane ends roughly in this Queen Street area, but paying attention, only 2 GPL get through this stretch when it was 3 before.

It's not rocket science, Google Maps shows the traffic flow as burgundy during prime PM rush daily. The MTO at all costs wanted an HOV lane to Queen Street and didn't care much for altering the capacity north of there.

The confusion of these two quick lane drops which happens within a rough half mile of each other has led to plenty of collisions, I don't have to take Hwy 410 daily, but a friend of mine does, and he has been keeping score with his dashcam he got for Christmas, he's seen 2 such incidents right underneath the Clark Blvd overpass.


To make this clear for those who don't get it, before to stay on Hwy 410 if you were entering from EB Steeles, you had to simply move one lane over to the left, your lane entered the 410 as an auxilary lane. Now to stay on Hwy 410, you must move over THREE lanes to the left to stay on Highway 410 beyond Queen.

[AsphaltPlanet]

We'll have to see what they end up doing there.  They've already changed some of the lane markings approaching the Clark and Queen Street interchanges as a result of the traffic operations there.

When the HOV lane was first constructed along the Hamilton-bound QEW it terminated right at the Guelph Street overpass.  A few months after operations they pulled the HOV lane restriction back and terminated the HOV lane at the bullnose to where the Guelph Street off-ramp departs from the mainline.  If traffic operations don't improve as drivers continue to get used to the new configuration they could theoretically do something similar on the 410 as well.