Doug Ford wants a tunnel under Ontario's Highway 401. He could learn something from Boston's 'Big Dig'

Tunnel 'not going to actually solve the problem' Infrastructure Institute Director Matti Siemiatycki says Ontario Premier Doug Ford's plan for a tunnel under Highway 401 isn't feasible.

Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford wants to dig Canada’s largest city out of its traffic woes.

The pitch is to build an expressway for vehicles, and possibly transit too, under Canada’s busiest throughfare: Highway 401.

Standing roadside speaking to reporters, Ford vowed to make his pitch a reality. “I’ll tell you one thing, we’re getting this tunnel built,” proclaimed Ontario’s Premier as traffic crawled along behind him.

Opposition critics at the provincial legislature are already calling Ford’s plan political pageantry, with Ontario Liberal Leader, Bonnie Crombie, proclaiming, “I really think this is a pipe dream of an idea.”

The tunnel, as it has been proposed, would run from the west end of the Greater Toronto Area in Mississauga to Scarborough in the east -- a distance of about 55 kilometres.

By comparison, the longest tunnel road in the world is in Norway - at 24.5 kilometers - and its only two lanes.

If Ford truly intends to see his tunnel vision through, the “big dig” in Boston, Mass. may give a glimpse into what Ontario can expect.

Boston began planning to replace its deteriorating six-lane elevated Central Artery (I-93) freeway in 1982. Initially, it was scheduled to be completed in 1998 at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion. However, the project wasn’t completed until December 2007 at a cost of over $14.8 billion.

While Toronto’s Tunnel would dwarf Boston's “big dig,” the Research Director of the Urban Analytics Institute at the Toronto Metropolitan University, Murtaza Haider, believes that shouldn’t stop the Greater Toronto Area from completing a feasibility study.

“The 401 was built as a bypass. It’s beyond capacity. You have 450-thousand vehicles pass through its busiest section on a given day,” noted Haider.

Though Ontario’s plan for Toronto and the Boston’s infrastructure project would be far from identical. Haider points out that a large portion of Boston’s tunneling was done under homes. While digging underneath an active highway like the 401 presents engineering challenges, Haider believes a Toronto tunnel could be a smoother process, “You have no one living on top, so there’s a good chance this could be done in an efficient engineering way.”

The big unknown, says Haider, is the cost. “It could be as much as $500 million a kilometre, and if you're building 60 kilometres, that could be in the range of 30-billion or higher. The question is, ‘do we have the money? Does the value of it necessitate the use of these public funds?’”

With a provincial election in Ontario on the horizon, University of Toronto planning professor Matti Siemiatycki doesn’t believe the plan will achieve the Ford government’s stated goal of reducing traffic.

Speaking to CTV News, Siemiatycki, shared his belief that “the premier is laser focused on suburban commuters,” going on to add, “that’s where you win elections in the province of Ontario, in the commuter belts and (Ford) understands their pain. There is a huge congestion problem so he’s been targeting them with all these announcements and investments. But this proposal in particular won’t solve the problem. It will be costly, and just make congestion worse.”

Haider sees it differently. With Ontario’s population skyrocketing, he agrees that a new or expanded highway won’t reduce traffic, what it will do is allow for more commuter capacity for a growing region. He says that any plan for a Toronto tunnel must include a dedicated rail and bus corridor underground.

After Boston completed its project, the city says it experienced a 62 per cent reduction in vehicle hours traveling on the I-93 and the airport tunnels.

It may take years before we know if Ford’s proposal is indeed a “pipe dream” intended to capture the imagination of voters, or a real plan to move Toronto into the future.