Bill Kelly: Highway 403 expansion is long overdue

A report from city of Hamilton planning staff that calls for the widening of Highway 403 may be controversial, but it’s long overdue.

There are some urbanists who decry road expansions because they feel that it encourages vehicular traffic, and while that theory makes for an interesting debate, we also need to face some hard economic and transportation realities.

We need roads to move people and goods and ignoring that fact puts our economic future at risk.

I travel that stretch of the 403 every morning at 4:30 and it’s insanely busy even at that hour.

For most of the rest of the day, it borders on gridlock conditions because of the volume of commercial traffic.

If Hamilton wants to attract new business and new jobs, and retain the businesses we have right now, we have to be able to offer quick and efficient movement of goods from our very busy airport and port to the many markets they serve and right now, that’s not happening.

And let’s not kid ourselves, improved public transit isn’t going to alleviate traffic congestion any time soon.

Time is money in the business world and sitting in gridlocked traffic every day just doesn’t cut it.

If the province doesn’t act soon to fix the 403 problem, Hamilton’s economic future will be in peril and we just can’t allow that to happen.

Bill Kelly is the host of Bill Kelly Show on AM 900 CHML and a commentator for Global News.