Adding lanes may make Bathurst wider, noisier and harder to cross without producing a meaningful improvement in travel times.
Opinion By Eddy Aceti
Never grocery shop when you’re hungry—and don’t take city-planning advice from a driver desperate to get somewhere.
I live in Vaughan, and for the past 15 years, getting from one part of Vaughan to another has often taken around 45 minutes. I understand the frustration. I feel it myself whenever I am stuck behind someone waiting to make a left turn or when traffic barely moves between red lights.
But adding lanes to Bathurst Street will not necessarily solve that problem. It may instead bring more traffic, noise and danger to the surrounding communities.
We have likely reached the limit of what we can accomplish by continually expanding car infrastructure. Wider roads may provide a short period of relief, but they also encourage more people to drive and use the newly available space. Before long, the road fills again.
Transportation planners refer to this as induced demand. The basic idea is straightforward: when driving becomes easier, more people drive, change their routes or travel at busier times. The new capacity is gradually consumed.
I live in Vaughan, and for the past 15 years, getting from one part of Vaughan to another has often taken around 45 minutes. I understand the frustration.
There is also a basic physical problem with treating urban roads like highways.
Highways can move large numbers of vehicles because they do not have traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, driveways and frequent intersections. Bathurst has all of those things. Making its lanes and turns wider may encourage drivers to travel faster between red lights, but it cannot make the intersections disappear.
In many cases, the real bottlenecks are at those intersections.
Adding another lane between traffic lights does not accomplish much if the same number of vehicles can pass through the intersection during each signal cycle. Drivers may spread across more lanes, change lanes more frequently and race to get ahead, only to meet again at the next red light.
We have all seen it: an angry driver speeds, weaves between lanes and cuts people off, only to end up beside you a few kilometres later.
The difference in travel time is often much smaller than it feels in the moment.
Meanwhile, widening Bathurst creates real consequences for people outside cars.
More lanes mean longer crossings for pedestrians. Left turns become more complicated, and additional lane-changing can create new points of conflict. Wider lanes and larger turning radii may also make drivers feel comfortable travelling faster, even though they are still moving through an urban area where people walk, cycle and wait for buses.
The surrounding neighbourhoods may also experience more traffic noise without receiving a meaningful improvement in commute times.
I am not suggesting that congestion is imaginary or that drivers should simply accept worsening conditions. The problem is real. But frustration should not push us toward expensive solutions that fail to address the actual bottleneck.
We should judge the Bathurst widening by measurable results.
Will average commute times remain lower several years after construction? Will the additional Transit/HOV lanes move substantially more people? Will buses become more frequent and reliable? Will crossings become safer, despite the increased width of the road? Will nearby residents experience more noise and traffic?
If the additional lanes fill quickly while the intersections remain congested, taxpayers will have paid for a larger and more expensive road without solving the original problem.
We should face the facts and focus on planning that genuinely improves people’s lives—not simply infrastructure that offers frustrated drivers the temporary feeling that something is being done.