Talk:1999 Ontario Highway 401 crash

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Highway design standards

Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Looking back at older photos of Highway 401 between Windsor and London, it's painfully obvious to see why this section was named "Carnage Alley" from the 1980s to the early 2000s: The portion from Windsor to Tilbury was built in 1955 (with the first overpasses built in 1952 in preparation for the highway) and the carriageways were separated by a woefully inadequate central reservation that was less than 16 feet wide. Its steep sides were intended to stop cars from crossing into opposing traffic, but... all that did was end up launching them into the air as they crossed over, causing a series of terrible accidents with fatalities.

The portion from Tilbury to Chatham (built in stages from 1960, twinned in 1969) saw fewer (in comparison to Essex County's) collisions, because its reservation was wider (something like 25-30 feet in most spaces).

It took five years (2006-2011) for the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario to "fix" the freeway in accordance with the coroner's safety recommendations (he wanted immediate upgrades, most important being a concrete divider between the carriageways and rumble strips along the shoulders), though the MTO has stated on its annual construction reports that upgrading the freeway to six lanes with a concrete divider from Tilbury all the way to London would be very expensive an the traffic volumes taper off somewhat between Chatham and London, and therefore remain beyond their 30-year plan (so, we probably won't be seeing that until 2040 or so).

Is there a way we could work this into the article? There are many photos on sites like thekingshighway.ca and asphaltplanet.ca (i'd say link to the highway image HTML pages, not the images themselves, and not upload them to wikipedia, either) that would elaborate this further.

RingtailedFox • Talk • Contribs 21:36, 27 January 2017 (UTC)Reply

First off, I'm glad to see you back :) You got a lot started for me! Down to wiki'ing, the photos are only good for what they clearly identify, otherwise those two websites are only valuable as external links (and should be for every highway where available). There are a few existing cases where I have specifically referenced an image; Highway 404 or 400 should have one, if the 401 itself doesn't use one. As for the fix time, five years is pretty standard given the amount of utility relocations and other conflict adjustments that are required for lengthy corridor projects. Overall, I agree some degree of info is encyclopedic. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 01:00, 1 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

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