The 110 km/hr Illusion: Speed Limits Aren't a Traffic Solution
AI-generated image · Bay Street Wire
Ontario's push to accelerate highway travel is a low-cost political gesture that ignores the reality of congestion.
OPINION: Let's be clear about what is happening on our roads. As CBC Toronto first reported, the Ontario government has just finished a summer-long campaign to raise speed limits, culminating in a Wednesday push that bumped the limit from 100 kilometres per hour to 110 kilometres per hour across nine sections of provincial highways. This follows previous increases to 10 sections in 2024 and six in 2022.
Transportation Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria announced in June that the government intended to bring just under 90 per cent of the provincial highway network up to a 110 km/hr limit, targeting major arteries including highways 400, 401, 403, 407, and 417. While the government maintains these roads were designed for higher speeds, raising a limit does nothing to solve the actual problem of congestion.
A sign that says 110 km/hr doesn't move a thousand cars through a bottleneck any faster when they are bumper-to-bumper. It is a cheap, symbolic win—a way to signal 'efficiency' while avoiding the harder, more expensive work of genuine transit and traffic reform.