Months after he first mused about buying back portions of Highway 407 to alleviate congestion in and around Toronto, Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he hasn’t met with executives in charge of the private road.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday afternoon, Ford said he had not met with the operators of Highway 407 but admitted it was a conversation he needed to have.
“I have not yet,” the premier said, “but I think it’s time to sit down with them and really take a look at different options.”
It was September when Ford first publicly discussed the idea of buying back Highway 407, which was sold into a private lease by the provincial government in the late 1990s. In a radio interview, Ford said he had thought about making an offer for the route but decided against it.
“We’ve thought of that as well,” Ford said. “Previous government sold it off for $2.3 billion, which was the biggest mistake I’ve ever seen.”
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Ford suggested that Highway 407 is now “worth approximately $35 billion” but said the government decided not to fork out to buy it back because of studies completed internally suggesting “all the 400 series highways are going to be at full capacity” in the next quarter-century.
Later, at the end of November, the Ministry of Transportation said it had been “in conversation” with Highway 407 but didn’t disclose details of what those conversations involved.
While Ford said Thursday he wanted to meet with the toll highway’s executives he didn’t elaborate on what options might be on the table — ranging from subsidizing the fees charged to some vehicles or buying the infrastructure back entirely.
At the same time, work on Ford’s other major plan to bust congestion — an expressway tunnelled beneath Highway 401 — is getting closer to becoming a reality.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Transportation told Global News the first step in studying that project would begin within weeks.
“As we’ve said, we’ll be moving forward with a market sounding which will be happening the next couple of weeks,” they said.
Ford’s dream of tunnelling a 50-kilometre expressway under Highway 401 was announced in September, with plans to study the concept to see how much it would cost and how it could work.
The premier said Thursday the plan was not set in stone but something he wants to pursue.
“Nothing is 100 per cent but we’re pushing forward, we want to get the environmental assessments done, we want to make sure we’re working with Metrolinx because it’s not just the road, we’d love to put a rail line down the centre,” he said.
The market sounding exercise would be followed by a request for companies qualified to undertake the study to bid on it.
Eventually, that process would lead to a report that will help inform the government’s final decision.
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