Letters to the Editor

Bypass speeds

May 29, 2025   ·   0 Comments

Sir:

I hold both Orangeville and the Ontario government responsible for the need to lower speed limits on the Highway 109 bypass.
U.S. highways are comfortable to drive because they are largely isolated from local traffic with a few easy access points via clover-leaf junctions, and shopping areas are provided with generous parking lots. Speed limits are rigidly enforced in most areas; so traffic flows smoothly.
Highway 109 should have remained Highway 9, as both ends are so designated and managed. That might have prevented encroachment of a major shopping area and retirement home on opposite sides of the bypass, resulting in frequent pedestrian and vehicular crossings over the “highway.” 
There are seven stoplights between the end of Highway 9 and the 109-Broadway junction, and now the plan is to restrict further the trans-Ontario traffic with speed zones that vary up and down.  

This is not good road design. The Orangeville area has become a Newmarket bottleneck; Highway 109 is no longer a highway.
Ontario proposes to alleviate GTA traffic on Highway 401 by building Highway 413, which merely offers a means for investors to buy up adjacent land for development, which will quickly choke 413 like the 401 and pave farmland.
Cross-Ontario traffic needs a way to avoid the GTHA. Southern Ontario desperately needs a proper divided highway of six lanes across its northern fringe, possibly in parallel to Highway 89 (which is already being choked). 

Before a spade of soil is turned, planners should drive the trans-Canada highway in Saskatchewan and Alberta, to see how roads should be constructed.

Charles Hooker

East Garafraxa

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