After months of considering buying back parts of Highway 407 to ease congestion in and around Toronto, Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he hasn’t met with officials in charge of the private road.
Speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, Ford said he had not met with the operators of Highway 407 but acknowledged those conversations needed to be had.
“I haven’t yet,” the premier said, “but I think it’s time to sit down with him and really take a look at the various options.”
It was in September that Ford publicly discussed the idea of buying back Highway 407, which had been sold for private lease by the provincial government in the late 1990s. In a radio interview, Ford said he considered making an offer for Root but decided against it.
“We’ve thought about that, too,” Ford said. “The previous government sold it for $2.3 billion, which was the biggest mistake I’ve ever seen.”
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Ford indicated that Highway 407 is now “worth approximately $35 billion” but said the government decided not to buy it back because studies completed internally indicated that “all 400-series highways will be at full capacity” in the next quarter. – century.
Later, in late November, the Department of Transportation said it was “in talks” with Highway 407 but did not release details of what those talks involved.
While Ford said Thursday it wants to meet with toll highway executives, it did not elaborate on what options might be on the table — from subsidizing the tolls charged on some vehicles or buying back the infrastructure entirely.
At the same time, work on Ford’s other major plan to relieve congestion — an expressway tunnel under Highway 401 — is getting closer to becoming a reality.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Transport told Global News that the first step in studying that project would begin within weeks.
“As we have said, we will go with the market voice that will happen over the next couple of weeks,” they said.
Ford’s dream of tunneling the 50-kilometer expressway under Highway 401 was announced in September, with plans to study the concept to see how much it would cost and how it might work.
The premier said on Thursday that the plan is not set in stone but something he wants to pursue.
“Nothing is 100 percent but we’re moving forward, we want to complete the environmental assessment, we want to make sure we’re working with Metrolinks because it’s not just the road, we’d love to put the rail line down. Centre,” he said.
The market sounding exercise will be followed by a request for qualified companies to undertake the study to bid on it.
Ultimately, that process will lead to a report that will help inform the government’s final decision.
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