The Macdonald-Cartier Freeway This page contains a history of Highway 401, The Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, across southern Ontario. The sources for this history are many, but the majority of the information was culled from Ontario Ministry of Transportation documents, including their "History of Ontario Highways: From Footpaths to Freeways" and two 1960s era publications titled "Macdonald-Cartier Freeway (Highway 401). As always, these pages are best viewed with Netscape Navigator. AOL browsers may produce undesireable results.

During the war, the Ontario Department of Highways (DHO) took advantage of the down-time to conduct a survey of 375,000 drivers in the province to ascetrain a "major desired line of travel," or the route most drivers would take between to points if such a route had existed. Armed with this study, the DHO's functional planners laid out a course for the highway from Windsor on the west to Quebec on the east. Evidence of the fact that the "major desired line of travel" was used can be found that Hwy 401 did not simply follow along one of the old two-lane King's Highways across the province. From Windsor to Tilbury, the route ran along then-Hwy 98, then followed then-Hwy 2 toward Chatham before dipping closer to then-Hwy 3 for most of the route into London. From there, the routing dipped away from then-Hwy 2, but still paralleled it for the most part to Woodstock. From there, the highway was run north away from then-Hwy 2 toward Kitchener, Preston and Galt (today's Cambridge) not following any established provincial route. After coming close to Hwy 7 near Kitchener, the new highway was run straight across country, aiming for the northern half of Metropolitan Toronto, again not following any one highway. From Scarborough eastward, though, the new route stayed quite close to the Lake Ontario shore and the St Lawrence River, and therefore, to then-Hwy 2 all the way to Quebec.

Immediately after the war, the DHO re-started construction on the highways which sat dormant for six years, including the QEW and Hwy 400, as well as beginning the first actual construction on the new trans-provincial freeway that would become Hwy 401.

Just over two full years later in December 1947, a 18.5 mile (28.8 km) stretch of the new highway opened between Highland Creek in Scarborough and Ritson Rd in Oshawa. This almost-30km stretch of freeway was designated Hwy 2A since it paralleled then-Hwy 2 within 2km at all times. As an interesting sidenote, when the "Toronto Bypass" was opened nine years later, a short 2.6km stretch of the original Hwy 2A freeway from Highland Creek to Port Union Rd was not used and actually retained the Hwy 2A designation until the highway downloading of 1997 and 1998!

Elsewhere in the province, other segments of the new highway were designed, built and opened as traffic warranted: first in the congested urban areas, later in the more rural regions. Also, not all of the new route was intially built as four (or more) lane divided freeway! Many of the more rural stretches were only opened as two-lane undivided segments, only to be upgraded in the ensuing years as time, funding and traffic levels warrented.

Two rather inventive construction situations presented themselves during the building of the new route. East of London, the new freeway was to be run through a marshy area known as the Dorchester Swamp, instead of taking any of the surrounding valuable farmland. On a 1.6 km stretch of the roadway, 4.5 metres of organic matter were removed from the right-of-way and 6.5 metres of fill were put in its place to be packed down and used as a base for the highway in a technique referred to as "surcharging." In this day of wetlands protection, this practice would not have seen favorable light. Also in the Lancaster area between Cornwall and the Quebec boundary, massive amounts of gravel fill had to be trucked in to overcome an 12.5 km wide band of marine clay which stood in the new highway's path. The MTO relates a story that one contractor, "who set up a gravel stockpile 25 feet high, against the advice of engineers, lost it all as the mass sank slowly into the wet clay."

According to MTO sources, 1952 was the year that this trans-provincial highway, still just underway, was officially designated as "Highway 401."

The Toronto Bypass

While there were those who disliked the northerly location of the bypass, there will still others who were appalled by the purchase of a 300-foot (100-metre) right-of-way for a mere four-lane highway in the countryside! According to the MTO, a total of 18,000 acres of land were purchased at an average of $100 per acre, which seemed altogether too high for critics of the time. Presently, the MTO states, "industrially-serviced land alongside the 401 right-of-way through Metro Toronto averages $200,000 to $275,000 an acre," and that was in 1996!

One of the first sections of the Toronto Bypass was opened in 1956 from Hwy 2A to Yonge St. Sources say that "a Toronto newspaper described this section as a 'motorists dream,' providing 'some of the most soothing scenery in the Metropolitan area.' And the eastern section of the bypass 'winds smoothly through pastures and across streams and rivers, and beside green thickets. It seems a long way from the big city.'"

As nice as Hwy 401 may have seemed in 1956, the Metropolitan area was undergoing massive changes. The population, which formerly lived much closer in to the centre of the city, began to move out and settle in new subdivisions built on those pastures, near the streams, rivers and green thickets that the Toronto newpaper reported enjoyed on his early Hwy 401 sojourn. With no prior experience in designing urban freeways, the planners for Hwy 401 placed interchanges at all the major roads across the Metro region. With the shift in population and the accessibility of the 401 as an easy commuter route, the highway which was planned to carry 48,000 cars per day was overloaded at 85,000 cars per day by 1959! The MTO reports speeds as low as 15 mph (23 km/h) were commonplace in the terrific traffic jams.

The little four-lane freeway which was meant to be a handy through route for long-distance travellers was now an urban nightmare, with daily traffic jams. Further expansion of the 401 through the Metro area, however, was made possible because of the foresight the original planners had in purchasing the 300-foot (100 m) right-of-way. After witnessing a brand-new type of urban freeway construction on the Dan Ryan Expressway (I-90/I-94) in Chicago, Illinois, designers chose the collector-distributor (or express/local) configuration as the solution to their problems.

In the collector-distributor design selected, Hwy 401 was to have its original two-lanes in each direction increased by one more each way, plus the addition of three more lanes in each direction adjacent to the existing highway to serve as collector (or local) lanes, isolating the old, interior lanes from most on- and off-ramps, effectively turning them into "express" lanes serving the through traffic the 401 was originally designed for.

Construction began along Hwy 401 in 1962 to widen the highway from four to 12 lanes total. During the entire construction, two lanes of the freeway were kept open at all times with a posted speed limit of 50 mph (78 km/h), not an easy feat with all that construction! By 1967, the new configuration of Hwy 401 was complete from Hwy 400 on the west to Yonge St on the east. In the following years, the collector-distributor system was applied to all of the 401 from the Hwy 403 & Hwy 410 interchange in Mississauga on the west to Meadowvale Ave in Scarborough in the east. In some places today, the freeway is a staggering 18-lanes wide! In the early 1990s, this configuration was extended eastward along the 401 well into Pickering with further eastward expansion in the planning stages.

For a freeway that was designed to handle only 48,000 cars per day in the mid-1950s, today's Hwy 401 provides passage for and average of more than 380,000 vehicles each and every day on its busiest section from Keele St to Weston Rd! Besides the express/local configuration, the MTO has installed variable message signs along the route to inform motorists of highway construction, accidents and other potential slow-downs in advance. The COMPASS system includes cameras trained at the freeway at points all through Toronto to provide highway traffic engineers and traffic reporters with an instantaneous view of conditions on the 401.

The "Macdonald-Cartier Freeway" and Today's 401

Even after the designation of Hwy 401 as the Macdonald-Cartier Freeway, the entire route had yet to be completed to full freeway standards. As mentioned above, in the early days of the 401, some segments were constructed with two-lanes and undivided in more rural areas. Between Gananoque and Brockville, the "original" Hwy 401 ran along today's Thousand Island Parkway close to the shoreline of the St Lawrence River. This portion was the last uncontrolled-access segment of the route to be converted to full freeway, and was done so on a new alignment halfway between the parkway and then-Hwy 2, between Exit 107 (now Exit 648) and Exit 111 (now Exit 687). The "transition" from the freeway to parkway portions at Gananoque can still be seen at today's Exit 647 when motorists can still leave Hwy 401 to travel down the Thousand Island Parkway.

The other segment of Hwy 401 that had yet to be completed to full freeway was somewhat closer to it, though. From Exit 118 (now Exit 738) at Iroquois to a point between Exits 120 and 121 (now Exits 758 and 770), the highway was a partial-freeway: two lanes, undivided on one side of the present day freeway. The westbound lanes were soon finished and Hwy 401 became four-lane divided freeway through this stretch.

With completion of the last nine miles (14.5 km) from then-Hwy 34 to the Quebec boundary in 1965 as well as the completion of the above to "less-than-full-freeway segments" in 1968, the entire length of Hwy 401 was finally complete as a full freeway, non-stop with no traffic lights from Windsor to Quebec.

As evidenced above, when Hwy 401 first recevied exit numbers, they were of the consecutive type, with the first exit at Windsor receiving the designation "1," and the second being "2," and so on through the remainder of the freeway. In the official exit listing from the DHO (now-MTO) in 1967, seven interchanges had been, or were proposed to be, inserted between existing interchanges. Due to consecutive numbering, these new or proposed exits received the letter "A" as a suffix. These exits were:

It was then decided to scrap the consecutive exit-numbering system in favour of the milemarker-based exit numbering system, being employed by increasing numbers of states to the south. Each exit received a new number based on its location in proximity to Hwy 401's mile markers. Then, in the late 1970s when the entire nation converted to Metric, Hwy 401's exit numbering was once again scrapped in favour of numbers based on the newly-installed kilometre posts. Thus, the freeway's "last" exit before Quebec began as Exit 128, became Exit 499, and now is Exit 825.

When the 401 first opened, the DHO (now-MTO) thought it wise to ban both billboards and most commercial distractions, including service stations, from the route. However, as motorists began to use the completed segments of the highway, they became increasingly vocal concerning their desire for service stations en route. In 1961, the DHO relented and today 18 Service Centres along the entire route of Hwy 401 serve travellers with popular fast-food outlets, such as Wendy's, Tim Hortons and McDonald's, gasoline stations, such as Esso and PetroCanada, auto repair and towing services. One former Service Centre has apparently been converted to what may be considered "Rest Area" standards to those in the States with removal of the restaurants and service station, since the latest MTO Highway Map shows only a "Picnic Park" on the westbound side between Exits 770 and 758 west of Cornwall.

In the early late 1980s and early 1990s, Hwy 401 underwent a major facelift between Hwy 402 at London and Hwy 403 at Woodstock. Not only was a third lane added throughout the stretch, but many interchanges were revamped and several of the original overpasses were reconstructed using newer designs. The completion of both Hwy 402 and Hwy 403 leading in from Sarnia and the Hamilton/Brantford areas, respectively, increased the amount of through vehicles using that particular stretch of highway.

In the era of highway downloading that is the late 1990s, the entire length of Hwy 401 has been retained in the provincial highway system, although many of the parallel routes, the old Hwy 2 in particular, have been lost to the cuts.

A Final Thought...

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