Ford government makes limited progress on Hwy. 401 tunnel study 

More than 2 months aft Ontario Premier Doug Ford stood astatine the borderline of Highway 401 and promised to excavation a 50-kilometre passageway beneath the gridlocked expressway, the state has hardly started the enactment required to get the task disconnected the ground.

Ford announced his passageway imaginativeness successful September and said enactment to survey it would urgently instrumentality place.

He said a feasibility survey would measure however galore lanes his underground road should have, if it could accommodate transit and however agelong it would yet be, with the enactment of moving from Brampton successful the westbound to Scarborough successful the east.

“We privation to determination this arsenic rapidly arsenic possible, get this done and commencement moving,” Ford said announcing the program connected Sept. 25. “We’ll beryllium doing ungraded investigating on the way and past the experts volition travel backmost and springiness america an thought of timeframe.”

Internally, however, Global News has learned that precise small advancement has been made successful the 2 months since Ford made that promise.

Limited meetings person taken spot to sermon the feasibility survey required to determination the task forward. At the aforesaid time, determination has been constricted question to contented a petition for proposals oregon qualifications — the archetypal measurement to enactment retired who volition behaviour the feasibility survey for the passageway project.

A spokesperson for the curate of proscription said that, erstwhile the survey yet gets underway, it volition beryllium a competitory procurement.

“The feasibility survey volition beryllium procured done an unfastened tender process pursuing the upcoming marketplace sounding, which volition supply feedback straight from manufacture connected however champion to proceed with this project,” they said.

A outgo has not been shared for the feasibility study, nor erstwhile it is expected to statesman oregon conclude.

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said connected Tuesday that she thought the task would outgo “tens of billions of dollars” and “take decades” to complete.

“It would person to beryllium an unfastened and transparent process, without question,” Stiles said aft Global News revealed the archetypal thought for a tunnelled road came from a large Canadian operation company.

“If they adjacent privation to caput down the roadworthy of a feasibility survey connected this, past we are going to request implicit transparency and accountability.”

Ford had initially said the feasibility survey would beryllium conducted internally but, portion immoderate enactment volition beryllium supported by the ministry, it was yet decided the survey should beryllium done an outer company.

“It’s going to beryllium internal, right, truthful radical are moving already,” Ford said connected Sept. 25. “But we’ll get an nonstop outgo but these are radical who enactment wrong the Ministry of Transportation and wrong the Ministry of Infrastructure, it’s not that we’re going extracurricular conscionable now.”

Later, aft it was confirmed the authorities planned to spell to the marketplace to implicit the feasibility survey instead, the curate of proscription said interior enactment enactment was underway.

Speaking successful an interrogation connected Focus Ontario, Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria suggested the survey could tally “over the adjacent months, years” for the tunnelled highway.

“We’re looking to the experts successful the tract to assistance america recognize and admit what it’s going to instrumentality to survey the feasibility of this,” helium said.

“We cognize the urgency, fixed the gridlock radical are facing, truthful we got to enactment close distant to spot what we tin perchance bash to look astatine this project.”

Experts person suggested the tunnelled road project, which had been pitched to the provincial authorities and the City of Toronto successful antithetic forms implicit the past decade, could beryllium an extraordinarily costly and analyzable engineering feat.

“You person to physique shafts regularly truthful you tin person a ventilation strategy that clears retired the fume (if there’s a crash),” Shoshanna Saxe, a prof successful the University of Toronto’s civilian and mineral engineering department, antecedently told Global News.

“You besides person to physique cross-connections betwixt the 2 tunnels, truthful if there’s a occupation connected 1 side, radical tin tally to the other. And those you physique each 250, 350 metres. You request to person immense fans, it’s a massive, monolithic undertaking; it would instrumentality a procreation to build.”