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Cancel Highway 413 (the GTA West Highway) for good.
Ontario is planning to build the GTA West Highway, a redundant and unnecessary highway that would pave over farms, forests and watersheds, cutting a destructive path through Milton, Georgetown, Caledon, Brampton and Vaughan. It will cost taxpayers billions. And it’s only 15 kilometres away from Highway 407, an existing underused east-west toll highway. In a time when Municipalities are declaring climate emergencies across Ontario, building this highway, which will increase the number of vehicles on the road, goes against efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and causes significant loss of agricultural lands and impacts to the natural environment.
We are opposed to the GTA West Highway for the following reasons:
- Transportation is currently the biggest source of carbon pollution in Ontario. Adding new highways and roads will take us farther away from meeting Ontario’s greenhouse gas reduction targets, and will make climate change worse.
- More highways means more sprawl. As people travel farther to get from home to work and other destinations, they pollute more. It’s exactly the opposite of what is needed to develop walkable, transit-friendly communities. But when people live closer to where they work, they pollute much less, or not at all if they can walk or cycle.
- The highway would cut through the Greenbelt which the government has promised to leave intact.
- Building the GTA West Highway would cost Ontario taxpayers over $5 billion. And it would mean less money is available to invest in public transit.
- The GTA West Highway would degrade parts of the Credit River and Humber River watersheds that flow into Lake Ontario – a source of drinking water for millions of GTA residents;
- There are approximately 53 river and stream crossings along the length of the proposed highway. The use of road salt in the winter will contaminate our streams, rivers and groundwater and threaten aquatic life.
- The GTA West Highway would be 50 km long and would pave over 2,000 acres of Class 1 and Class 2 farmland – among Ontario’s most productive farmland.
In the spirit of protecting clean water, farmland, biodiversity, a safe climate and healthy communities, the following organizations and individuals want to Stop the GTA West Highway.
Signators:
Burlington Green
David Suzuki Foundation
Environmental Defence
Federation of Urban Neighbourhoods
GASP Grand(M)others Act to Save the Planet
Gravelwatch
Halton Environment Network
Ontario Nature
National Farmer’s Union, Ontario
Rescue Lake Simcoe Coalition
Sustainable Vaughan
Transport Action Ontario
Wilderness Committee, Ontario
For more information about stopping Highway 413 visit stopthe413.ca