• An announcement, expected today, on extending Highway 410 north to Mayfield Rd.
    • Widening Highway 404, between Highways 401 and 407, to add a carpool lane by next year.
    • Extending the 404 to Ravenshoe Rd., between Newmarket and Keswick, by 2009.Other small projects are undergoing laborious environmental assessments, including:
    • Widening the Queen Elizabeth Way through Peel and Halton regions to accommodate carpool lanes by 2009.
    • Extending Highway 427 to Rutherford Rd.
    • Widening the 401, from the 410 to the Credit River.
    • Extending the 407 east to Highway 115/35.But the projects are of such a small scale that it's unlikely they will keep up with traffic demands.It wasn't supposed to be like this.Bob Rae's New Democratic Party government built Highway 407, which opened in 1997 — the last new highway in Greater Toronto. Mike Harris's Progressive Conservatives sold it in 1999, and announced a smattering of highway extensions and widenings.But Tory intentions were by and large killed when Dalton McGuinty's Liberals took office. Their priority was transit and greenbelt protection.There are endless possibilities for pleasure seekers with cottages, campgrounds and picnic areas within 250 kilometres of Toronto.But with Ministry of Transportation statistics showing about 100,000 vehicles entering key roadway bottlenecks between 5 and 6 p.m. on spring and summer Friday nights, you can't be blamed for thinking you can't get there from here."Your typical holiday weekend is brutal," says Richmond Hill's Wendy Gibson, who has a cottage on Lake of Bays. "Highway 400 at 6:30 on a Friday night of a long weekend, that's just stupid. The May long weekend is brutal."There are an estimated 2.5 million passenger vehicles in the GTA, a number sure to rise with about 100,000 people moving to the region each year.Motorists will only get more frustrated, says the Canadian Automobile Association, which estimates 100,000 campers and 70,000 cottage owners leave the GTA every weekend to spend their time, and their money, in other parts of the province."Whether people are heading out of the city or staying in the city, congestion on long weekends is a problem," says Faye Lyons, the CAA's government relations specialist. "The existing road network is not sustainable and is not capable of supporting projected growth."We need investment and improvement to Ontario's road network."As things stand, expressway lanes are built for 2,000 cars an hour, but most around Toronto accommodate 2,200 cars an hour — a 10 per cent bulge that contributes to bumper-to-bumper traffic."It would definitely be nicer if there was another highway," says Geraldine Rounds, who operates Rounds Ranch, a theme park for kids near Elmvale.Rounds worries that traffic problems will hurt business. "The day trippers probably won't do it anymore because it just takes too long. If someone's trip is going to take three hours and it should be an hour 15 minutes, they're going to think twice about it."Based on extensive plans laid out 30 years ago, many people believed that by now:
    • Highway 404 would have been extended north through Keswick and east to Pefferlaw, with a western "Bradford Bypass" to Highway 400.
    • The 427 would run parallel to Highway 400 to Barrie.
    • Highway 410 would extend past Orangeville, easing up passage from the western GTA toward Penetanguishene, Georgian Bay and Lake Huron.
    • A Mid-Peninsula Highway, perhaps linking the 407 to Fort Erie along the top of the Niagara Escarpment, would open up access to Niagara Falls, Lake Erie and Ontario's wine country.
    • The 407 would be extended to Highway 115/35 instead of stopping abruptly at the western end of Durham Region.Brock Township Mayor Keith Shier doubts he'll ever see the 404 extended to Highway 12 south of Beaverton, something promised 30 years ago."Apparently, it's slated for some time in the next 15 or 20 years, though it's hard to find a definitive answer and the traffic keeps getting heavier every day," Shier says. "We have a lot of traffic heading up to Casino Rama, we have a great deal of traffic heading for cottage country."Even an about-face by the provincial government on highways wouldn't bring any relief any time soon. Highways simply take a long time to build."No government can build a highway in their four-year time frame," says Transportation Minister Harinder Takhar. "Right from scratch to completion, you need to go through the environmental assessment process. Depending on the size of the project, that takes three to five years. You need to acquire land. You need to design. The total highway time frame is between seven years and 10 years."The ministries of transportation, environment, infrastructure and finance have various roles to play, as do towns, cities and regions, as well as some federal departments.If land acquisition is an issue, as it was for the 410, highways can be bogged down in courts if landowners don't want to sell. There can be local opposition, which helped kill the Mid-Peninsula Highway and may doom the 427. And there are poorly executed environmental assessments, which delayed the 407 East.Those issues — especially environmental protection — aren't necessarily bad things."There needs to be an overall transportation network design and it needs to be done in the context of an overall green-space design," says Wendy Francis, director of conservation and science for Ontario Nature. "We need to protect the most valuable natural areas before we make decisions about where we put new highways."We need to design highways to minimize impact on wildlife. Highway design can't be done in isolation from other considerations."In the long term, Takhar says, carpool lanes, express bus lanes and GO Transit expansion will take vehicles off the road.But that means little in the here and now. Cottager Gibson says people will find ways to cope."Everyone kind of works it out. They find that zone," she says."But as soon as you have your beer at the end of the dock on a Friday evening, you forget about the all the time you just spent in the car."