Comment 52533

By John Neary (registered) | Posted December 02, 2010 at 13:56:27

@SpaceMonkey,

I don't know if a tunnel was considered, but the city did do some serious planning at one point for a Burlington St - 403 highway linkup. One of the big problems, as far as I recall, was that there is really no room around the 403 for an interchange -- unless Kay Drage Park and/or the waterfront trail along Cootes were sacrificed. Not to mention that the section of the 403 between Highway 6 and Aberdeen already has an awful lot of interchanges that cause a fair bit of weaving.

IANAE, but I think the engineering challenges of sinking a tunnel under Burlington Bay (or under the North End Neighbourhood), all the way west to Hamilton Cemetery, and under the cemetery to the 403 would be easily as difficult as up the mountain. And it would involve a fair bit of destruction of public space (Kay Drage, etc.) and rip a fault through an established neighbourhood (the North End.)

By contrast, LRT on the median of James Street could just disappear into a tunnel somewhere around St. Joseph's Hospital and emerge on Upper James, with no disruption to surrounding built-up areas.

On another note -- and I'm not trolling, either -- the city did recently spend hundreds of millions of dollars on highway projects that were supposed to relieve congestion downtown. I don't think it has worked so far.

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