Hwy. 417 crash caused chaos across Ottawa: ‘Five hours to get home’

A police cruiser closing Metcalf following a two-vehicle collision on Highway 417 Thursday, June 19, 2025. (Peter Szperling/ CTV News Ottawa)

An Ottawa councillor is calling for Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) to explore “more effective uses of technologies” to investigate collisions faster and reopen highways, after drivers spent hours in traffic on the Queensway Thursday afternoon.

Police closed a section of the eastbound lanes of Hwy. 417 at Metcalfe Street for over two hours for the investigation into a two-vehicle crash that left a man with life-threatening injuries. The crash occurred just before 12 p.m., and the OPP fully closed the highway just before 2 p.m.

Driver Anthony Vieni tells CTV News Ottawa he was struck in traffic for nearly five hours during the closure, which forced traffic onto city streets.

“We were in the west end going eastbound and then sat there for, I don’t know, 40-45 minutes to an hour,” Vieni said Friday afternoon. “Then we tried to leave on Bronson Avenue southbound (and) that took another 45 minutes. And then eventually, we managed to get moving. (It) took five hours to get home and all from the west end.”

Vieni said he saw the crash while travelling on the westbound lanes of Hwy. 417 but didn’t realize the highway would be closed for an extended period when he attempted to return to the east end.

Closure ‘unavoidable’: OPP

OPP Const. Michael Fathi said police understand the frustration of drivers, but the highway needed to be closed due to the extent of the injuries to the driver.

• Eastbound lanes of Highway 417 reopen after 2 vehicle crash in Ottawa

One photo sent to Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron showed vehicles driving on a multi-use pathway at the Central Experimental Farm as cars waited in traffic on Fisher Avenue.

“We know that the gridlock was terrible yesterday; it was, unfortunately, unavoidable,” Const. Fathi told Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa at Work with Patricia Boal.

“It was just the area in which the collision happened, and it had to be shut down.”

Fathi says the Ottawa OPP aims to provide information to drivers about possible highway closures in advance. He added the OPP speaks with the City of Ottawa’s Traffic Control office ahead of closing a highway.

“We do consult with the local traffic control, and before we shut down the highway, we do want to make sure we have the alternate routes in place,” Fathi said.

“However, that doesn’t happen immediately, so we do put out the notices along the MTO boards.”

“Effective use of technologies,” councillor suggests

Cou. Tim Tierney, the chair of Ottawa’s public works and infrastructure committee, is calling for changes to the way police manage traffic during collisions and extended closures. Tierney spoke with Ontario Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria on Friday.

“With all respect to them, when there’s no tragedy on the highway, they’re going to have to look at using more effective use of technologies,” Tierney told CTV News Ottawa.

Tierney is recommending police use drones to investigate collisions and reopen roads sooner to avoid traffic gridlock in Ottawa.

“With people that have left the site, (police) should be quicker, using drone technology, high-definition cameras that can go down to the millimetre and let’s be quicker,” Tierney told Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron.

The City of Ottawa says it deploys traffic management strategies, including adjusting traffic signal timing to accommodate vehicle movement when collisions and other traffic incidents force road closures.

“We go through the central controls to make sure we start changing some lights,” Tierney said. “But you can see when you take the major artery out of the entire city, it creates a much larger issue.”

The city’s manager of Traffic Operations says the city is committed to ensuring “public safety and minimizing impacts for all road users” during road closures.

“The City of Ottawa’s Traffic Services Team works closely with our partners on both sides of the provincial border including the Ottawa Police Service, OC Transpo, Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO), Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), the City of Gatineau, Quebec Ministry of Transportation (MTQ) and the Société de transport de l’Outaouais (STO) to manage the City’s transportation network in real time, and coordinate the response to major traffic incidents,” Stu Edison, manager of Traffic Operations, said in an email to Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Emma Kelly.

“This includes monitoring traffic conditions, deploying traffic management strategies such as traffic signal timing changes, installing detour routes, and communicating road impacts to the public.”

With the federal government exploring building a new interprovincial bridge in Ottawa’s east end, Tierney suggests another use to keep traffic moving.

“Instead of investing $3 billion for an interprovincial bridge, it’s high time we have to look at the ring road option yet again for the city to take a lot of that traffic from the inner area and move it to the south,’ Tierney said.

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Natalie van Rooy