Ford government studied, shelved Hwy. 401 tunnel research in 2021
Ontario conducted an unreleased feasibility study, internal documents show
The Ford government studied tunneling under Highway 401 to relieve congestion but quietly shelved the unreleased work in 2021, years before Premier Doug Ford announced his controversial plan for the mega-project in 2024.
Those findings are in documents obtained by CBC News through a freedom of information request. The briefing notes for senior government officials, dated Feb. 19, 2025, lay out the history of work on the controversial proposal that Ford first floated publicly last year.
"The project was paused in late 2021 based on government direction," civil servants wrote in the briefing note.
"The planning study was not advertised, and no additional work has occurred on the project."
Ford's plan would see the tunnel built from Mississauga in the west to Scarborough in the east. In April, the government began the process of finding a firm to complete a new feasibility study into tunneling or building an elevated expressway above the current highway. That study isn't expected to be completed until 2027.
But the documents obtained by CBC News show that the government appears to have already conducted its own analysis and quietly shelved that detailed work five years ago. The planning study has not been released and it's not clear why the work was stopped.
The civil servants say in the documents that the study examined options to compare "assumptions, findings, costing, and technical design considerations."
Pair of ministries, consultant prepared the 'high-level analysis'
The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure Ontario worked on the study with the help of an outside engineering consultant. They "conducted a high-level analysis on three tunnel concepts and two elevated roadway concepts," the note says.
That work appears to have been prompted by a number of unsolicited proposals to government between 2019 and 2021 from companies pitching plans to build a 401 tunnel. The submission of such proposals is not unusual, and Ontario created a policy framework and submissions portal to streamline the process in 2019, the documents say.
"(The proposals) received by the government in 2019 led to an initial assessment of the feasibility and benefits of a tunnel or similar large-scale capital infrastructure project on the central Highway 401 corridor, which would add capacity in support of decreasing congestion," the note says.
The documents say firms Aecon, Cintra and Acciona all submitted unsolicited proposals. The note does not provide specifics about each individual plan but says one proposed two tunnels under the existing 401 from Highway 427 in the west to Bayview Avenue or Leslie Street in the east. One of the tunnel concepts consisted of two "large-diameter, five lane, double-deck" tunnels, the documents note.
Neither Premier Doug Ford nor Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria's offices responded to a request for comment in advance of publication. In a statement Tuesday afternoon, a spokesperson for Sarkaria said infrastructure needs to keep up with population growth.
"While initial proposals on the 401 tunnel offered a starting point, the landscape has shifted in the last few years. Recent studies show congestion is worsening," Dakota Brasier said in the statement. "We're exploring every option to get traffic moving, and this feasibility study will deliver critical insights directly from industry partners to help shape the path forward."
Liberals call for 'full transparency'
Ontario Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie is calling on the government to release all of the reports on the tunnel. Ontarians need to be able to evaluate the merits of what could be the single most expensive infrastructure project in the province's history should it move ahead, she said.
"I'd like to know what the economic benefits are," she said.
"I'd like to know what the environmental impacts would be. Will it meet the goal of reducing traffic and gridlock?"
Crombie said she's skeptical the tunnel would cut congestion on the highway. It's possible the government shelved the work in 2021 because the civil servants found the mega-project wasn't feasible, she said.
"That's why we ask for full transparency and an opportunity to see the feasibility study," she said.
NDP calls for release of Hwy. 401 tunnel reports
NDP transportation and infrastructure critic Jennifer French said the Ford government needs to be transparent about what it already knows about the cost and feasibility of the tunnel.
"This just speaks to the fact that everything the government does, whether it's infrastructure projects, transportation projects, we are always the last ones to know," she said.
"If the premier is drawing from the report, or if he's ignoring the report, I would like to know."
Vetting unsolicited proposals is very challenging for governments, said Matti Siemiatycki, director of University of Toronto's Infrastructure Institute. He's not surprised that after receiving the three plans from the private sector, that the government wanted to work on its own 401 tunnel analysis.
"Some of them are complete hare-brained schemes, and some of them have a kernel of truth to them," he said generally of unsolicited proposals. "It's very complicated and challenging for governments to sift through them and try to figure out the signal from the noise."
Siemiatycki said the 401 tunnel could take decades to build and cost tens of billions of dollars. For that reason, the government should release as much of its feasibility work as possible, including information in the unsolicited proposals that isn't proprietary to the firms, he said.
That also includes release of the current feasibility study planned by the province when it's completed, he added.
"It should be studied independently and impartially by the technical experts, and that's what's happening," he said. "What is important now is that that study gets done and then it's released, and so that we can all see what it says."
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