Transport Board Needed

Cities and regional governments around Toronto have a joint board whose top priority is a seamless highway system. Given the province's decreasing role in funding roads, the London area should move to such a structure to avoid turf wars over road routing, design and cost sharing.
Case in point -Middlesex and London drivers are not convinced north and west agri-expressways fix inner-city traffic woes. Although the far west has no industries, millions would be spent on a heavy-duty high-speed stub across creek and through productive woodland and cropland from the 402 to Oxford St W; far better to avoid such disruptive mid-block corridor and join two existing roads, Westdel and Denfield; thus connecting Highway 4 at Clandeboy with the 402 .
Perspectives -In 98 the Province said there were plans for widening the 401 between Wellington Rd and the 402 intersection, but no current plans for a freeway connecting Woodstock to Strathroy. Regardless, business and political leaders in the area can best advance their NAFTA priorities by pushing for that northern 403/402 link.
Reality Check -The thru-London stretch of the 401 is not capable of handling future truck and auto volumes. Perhaps with London's ring distraction, other south-west municialities will take the lead in creating a strategic Transportation Authority.
In London Business Magazine & St. Thomas Times-Journal back in 1999

Parallel Freeway Urgent

To accommodate 50-yr build out, London vowed to protect a ring corridor even as it approved subdivisions to the north border. No problem. Just route it through the township. Result: Rather than intersect their major north/south roads with a provincially funded freeway, London and Middlesex lock horns.
Meanwhile , Dorchester, Mt. Brydges and Strathroy complain about bearing the brunt of 401 closures due to accidents and weather. When the city and its neighbours fail to see a road around such problems, the Transport Ministry naturally allocates our fuel taxes to new 400-series projects in more cohesive regions.
Queen's Park will soon legislate our region's landfills as a quick fix for GTA's trash overflow. Smart politicians might join in advancing a long-term solution -deposit residential waste in salt caverns -and use methane to generate electricity. The salt beds have remained sealed since the primordial ocean evaporated eons ago. Saline leaching never threatened our freshwater lakes. Let the finest minds in hydrology determine if aquatic life and drinking water would be at risk.
Rather than a local landfill crisis and a far-out commuter ring, better a provincially financed garbage road and trade corridor. Our NAFTA-driven economy depends on moving the freight just in time. The province knows that without a northern freeway, US gateway improvements will soon choke the sole mid-west truck route, and that for national security reasons alone a parallel freeway is imperative.
Neighbouring counties and London win big with a 403 extension sweeping by Arva over to the 402. Normally, it takes a coalition of municipalities seven years to get the province to complete a highway needs study. The garbage crisis shortens that time frame. But, as more garbage trucks pound the 401/402 and irate Michiganders quack foul, the trash coalition reacts rather than pro-acts.
In Strathroy Age Dispatch and TheLondoner in spring 2003