$89 million contract awarded for widening QEW highway in Ontario
August 15, 2007
Source: Canadian Driver
Toronto, Ontario - Aecon Group has been awarded an $88.7 million contract by the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) for work on the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) highway in Oakville, between Burloak Drive and Third Line. It is the second-largest contract MTO has ever awarded.
The project will add a fourth lane in both the eastbound and westbound directions between Burloak Drive and Third Line, which will serve as High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (HOV). As part of the project, Aecon will also rehabilitate the existing QEW bridge at Bronte Road, and build a new bridge under the QEW as part of a widening and realignment of Bronte Road.
To allow for minimal traffic disruption during construction, traffic on the QEW will be diverted to a new bridge, being completed under a separate MTO contract. Once it is completed, this bridge will accommodate only eastbound traffic, while westbound traffic will use the newly-refurbished bridge completed as part of the Aecon project. Work on the project has already begun, and is scheduled to be completed in July 2011.
about time they started using their heads!
I guess it's a good start - but somewhat disappointing considering how short a distance it really is.
![[Image: oakville_2.jpg]](http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d84/ztwsquared/oakville_2.jpg)
Frost__2001,Aug 15 2007, 04:23 PM Wrote:[b]Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) highway in Oakville, between Burloak Drive and Third Line.
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Waste of money!
1 lane doesn't change the fact that from burlington to the oakville split the qew is essentially the bottleneck between 2 3 lane highways. By my math for the qew to become more efficient it would need to be 6 lanes to handle all the extra traffic.
That is the biggest bottleneck in the QEW, I drive it twice a day, 7 days a week.
It will help, because right now people have to merge onto the QEW at Burloak and off again at Bronte, and a lot of these are fuel tankers. These people merging on and off breaks the flow of through traffic and backs up traffic. A fourth "through" lane to let people get from Burloak to Bronte without merging would help. So would widening Rebecca.
For the money I'd rather see the Upper Middle Rd. bridge over Bronte creek started and completed.
OAC_Sparky,Aug 15 2007, 10:39 PM Wrote:That is the biggest bottleneck in the QEW, I drive it twice a day, 7 days a week.
It will help, because right now people have to merge onto the QEW at Burloak and off again at Bronte, and a lot of these are fuel tankers. These people merging on and off breaks the flow of through traffic and backs up traffic. A fourth "through" lane to let people get from Burloak to Bronte without merging would help. So would widening Rebecca.
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Thats exactly what I was going to say. People getting off and on in that area is the biggest problem.
OAC_Sparky,Aug 15 2007, 09:39 PM Wrote:That is the biggest bottleneck in the QEW, I drive it twice a day, 7 days a week.
7 days a week?
Cool, im happy for them. So let me get tthis right? This means theyre not only widening it for regular traffic, but also adding a HOV(A) lanes? for car pooling and 2 or more driver vehicles? if they learned anything from mississsaua, the hov(a) lanes are not widely used yet, maybe we should get some tax back for using them then i'll take them.
CanadaSVT,Aug 18 2007, 03:51 PM Wrote:OAC_Sparky,Aug 15 2007, 09:39 PM Wrote:That is the biggest bottleneck in the QEW, I drive it twice a day, 7 days a week.
7 days a week?
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That is correct. I've had 1 day off since the second week of June and haven't worked less than 60 hours/week since April.
HOV lanes are great in theory; unfortunately the only times I've tried to use them is the same day Joe Family with his Caravan wants to drive 95 and all the other lanes are doing 110+. Too bad the can't make it a faster (120kmh) lane with a minimum 100kmh limit.
There's no way that the leftmost lane on any highway should not be the passing lane and slower drivers in the HOV lane should not be impeding traffic in the passing lane (now the second from leftmost lane) by merging right to get off the highway.
OAC_Sparky,Aug 27 2007, 03:04 AM Wrote:HOV lanes are great in theory; unfortunately the only times I've tried to use them is the same day Joe Family with his Caravan wants to drive 95 and all the other lanes are doing 110+. Too bad the can't make it a faster (120kmh) lane with a minimum 100kmh limit.
There's no way that the leftmost lane on any highway should not be the passing lane and slower drivers in the HOV lane should not be impeding traffic in the passing lane (now the second from leftmost lane) by merging right to get off the highway.
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The HOV lanes here are designed with the average Ontario driver in mind I'm afraid, which means that brain dead left is the only way that the HOV lanes can work :ph34r:
That means that if you travel the HOV lanes you risk getting stuck behind someone doing "
the limit" without any regard to the flow of traffic behind them...
Then again if you qualify for the HOV lane you're already getting something more than the rest of us anyways, so don't expect me to feel all that sorry for you ;)
NefCanuck
NefCanuck,Aug 27 2007, 09:50 AM Wrote:Then again if you qualify for the HOV lane you're already getting something more than the rest of us anyways, so don't expect me to feel all that sorry for youÃÂ ;)[right][snapback]247678[/snapback][/right]
Obviously you haven't spent time driving with my 15 year old daughter in the car. <_<
OAC_Sparky,Aug 27 2007, 09:05 AM Wrote:NefCanuck,Aug 27 2007, 09:50 AM Wrote:Then again if you qualify for the HOV lane you're already getting something more than the rest of us anyways, so don't expect me to feel all that sorry for youÃÂ ;)[right][snapback]247678[/snapback][/right]
Obviously you haven't spent time driving with my 15 year old daughter in the car. <_<
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Can't possibly be any worse than with my 33 year old brother, I swear he thinks that speed limits are
starting points!
..and he wants to get his drivers license and use my car for training purposes? Um, how about a rousing
NO :ph34r:
NefCanuck