King's Highway 400, commonly referred to as Highway 400, historically as the Toronto–Barrie Highway, and colloquially as the four hundred, is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking the city of Toronto in the urban and agricultural south of the province with Parry Sound District in the scenic and sparsely populated central and northern regions. The portion of Highway 400 between Toronto (Highway 401) and Lake Simcoe roughly traces the route of the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, a historic trail between the Lower and Upper Great Lakes. The full route of Highway 400 is part of the broader National Highway System. North of Highway 12, in combination with Highway 69, it forms a branch of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH), the Georgian Bay Route, and is part of the highest-capacity route from southern Ontario to the Canadian West, via a connection with the mainline TCH (which connects to Winnipeg, Manitoba and Montreal, Quebec) in Sudbury. The highway also serves as the primary route from Toronto to southern Georgian Bay and Muskoka, areas collectively known as cottage country.
It was the first fully controlled-access highway (freeway) in Ontario when it was opened between North York and Barrie on July 1, 1952. On that date, it was also the first route to be designated as a 400-series highway. The freeway was extended in both directions; north of Barrie to Coldwater in 1958, and south of Highway 401 to Jane Street in 1966; thereafter the route continues as the municipal expressway, Black Creek Drive, which opened in 1982. Since the 1970s to the present, there have been numerous projects which have widened and modernized the freeway between North York and Barrie, including being expanded with a collector-express system in Vaughan to accommodate the stack interchange with the new Highway 407 Express Toll Route (ETR).
Highway 400 is the second longest freeway in the province, the trans-provincial Highway 401 being the longest. Since 1977, construction on the freeway has been snaking north along Highway 69 towards Parry Sound and Sudbury. As of 2011, a four lane freeway is opened as far north as Carling; at that point, the four lanes narrow into two and continue northerly to Sudbury as Highway 69. At the north end of Highway 69, a segment of freeway is in operation from near Highway 522 south of the French River to Sudbury; while this section will be part of the completed Highway 400 route, at present it remains signed as Highway 69. The remaining gap between Carling and Highway 522 will be opened in stages as construction is undertaken and completed.
The speed limit is , except south of Highway 401, where the speed limit is . The route is patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and maintained by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO).
Route description
While Highway 400 was originally known as the "Toronto–Barrie Highway", the route has been extended well beyond Barrie to north of Parry Sound, and is projected to reach its eventual terminus in Sudbury in the 2020s. , the length of the highway is , with an additional section planned.
Highway 400 begins at the Maple Leaf Drive overpass in Toronto, south of Highway 401. South of that, the route continues as the municipal Black Creek Drive, an arterial road or limited controlled-access expressway with at-grade intersections, originally planned as a southern extension of the highway. Alongside the expansion of Highway 401, Highway 400 had been completed to Jane Street in 1966, but a proposed southern extension of the freeway to the Gardiner Expressway faced opposition that also caused the truncation of Allen Road, so it was instead built as the scaled-back Black Creek Drive which opened in 1982 as a four-lane expressway with at-grade intersections. South of Highway 401, all on-ramps to the southbound lanes of Highway 400 are signed as Black Creek Drive (without reference to Highway 400), even though Black Creek Drive does not start until Maple Leaf Drive.
North of Maple Leaf Drive, the highway shifts northwestward as it meets Jane Street at a five-ramp parclo interchange, with the Black Creek snaking under the highway and on/off ramps. The segment between Maple Leaf Drive and Jane Street, including the bridges crossing Black Creek and the ramps to/from Jane Street, were built during the Black Creek Drive project although it is under provincial jurisdiction. The highway then turns approximately northward as it approaches the interchange with Highway 401, and although only two lanes per direction pass through that junction, the on-ramps from Highway 401 become additional lanes for the highway's northbound carriageway widening the cross-section to twelve lanes. The opposite occurs on the southbound carriageway of the highway where four lanes default to off-ramps for Highway 401 eastbound and westbound, while the rightmost lanes continue the highway through that junction (signed as Black Creek Dr. and Jane St.). The on-ramp from Highway 401 eastbound to Highway 400 northbound has rumble strips to encourage drivers to adhere to the recommended speed limit of 50 km/h.
The highway continues north, losing two lanes at the Parclo A4 interchange with Finch Avenue. Crossing Steeles Avenue and the CN Halton Subdivision and exiting Toronto as it enters Vaughan and the Regional Municipality of York, the freeway has a junction with Highway 407, which is the only four-level stack interchange in the Greater Toronto Area; unusually the entry/exit for Highway 407 are before those for Steeles Avenue even though Steeles is further south; as the semi-directional ramps connecting from/to Highway 407 require a longer approach due to the height of the junction. The section between Highway 407 and Langstaff Road in suburban Vaughan features a short collector-express system, with the collector lanes serving interchanges with Highway 7 and Langstaff Road, while the express lanes have access to Highway 407. North of Langstaff Road, the freeway passes west of Vaughan Mills shopping centre and Canada's Wonderland amusement park.
From Highway 401 to the Holland Marsh, the freeway largely parallels the arterial/concession roads Weston Road and Jane Street, passing over the height of land at the Oak Ridges Moraine. The highway passes through protected rural areas in northern York Region and encounters rolling countryside in Simcoe County south of Barrie. Between Major Mackenzie Drive and King Road, Highway 400 features HOV lanes which have acceleration/deceleration lanes at entry/exit points. Near the King City ONroute service centre located between Kirby Road and King-Vaughan Road, Highway 400 will meet the future Highway 413, and a short distance north of the Simcoe Road 88 exit, will meet the future Highway 425 (with both highways currently under construction). The section near Barrie is subject to snowsqualls as it lies near the edge of Georgian Bay's snowbelt.
Within Barrie, Highway 400 passes through a trench which places it below grade for most of its length, the route curving around downtown Barrie towards the northeast. On the outskirts of Barrie at a partial interchange, unusually, the through right-of-way continues as the start of Highway 11, which heads northeast towards Orillia and North Bay, while Highway 400 routing continues via a right-hand "exit" to a semi-directional ramp that crosses Highway 11. The split junction is also incomplete; drivers must either use the Forbes Road and Penetanguishene Road interchanges, or continue southbound into Barrie and switch direction at Duckworth Street in order to travel from southbound Highway /11 to northbound Highway 400 or from southbound Highway 400 to northbound Highway 11. After splitting off from Highway 11, Highway 400 veers 90 degrees to the northwest towards Georgian Bay (onwards this segment of freeway is colloquially known as the "400 Extension"), travelling alongside the former Highway 93 to Craighurst.
At Craighurst, the highway again turns northeast, skirting the Copeland Forest and the ski hills of the Oro Moraine, to meet Highway 12, which runs concurrently with the 400 between Exits 141 and 147, in Coldwater. From here, the highway takes on the Trans-Canada Highway designation, and follows a predominantly northwestern heading along what was the route of Highway 69, toward the planned terminus of Sudbury. In Muskoka and Parry Sound Districts, Highway 400 is in most sections a twinned four-lane highway, but several bypasses have and are being built to circumvent the communities along the way. North of the interchange with Highway 522 near Nobel, the divided freeway merges, narrows to two lanes and becomes Highway 69 which continues north to Sudbury. At Port Severn, Highway 400 meets the rugged Canadian Shield, and winds its way north through the granite, often flanked by towering slabs of rock.
History
Initial construction Highway 400, along with Highway 401 and Highway 402, was one of the first modern freeways in Ontario. Planning for the Toronto–Barrie Highway, which would become Highway 400, began in 1944. The two routes connecting Barrie with Toronto at the time, Highway 11 and Highway 27, were becoming congested. Grading on a new alignment between Weston Road and Jane Street was completed from Wilson Avenue to Highway 27 (Essa Road) by 1947. The onset of the Korean War slowed construction on the highway considerably, and it was not until December 1, 1951 that two lanes (one in each direction) would be opened to traffic. All four lanes were opened to traffic on July 1, 1952, at which point the highway was designated Highway 400. The name was the scorn of one newspaper editor, who published his distaste for using numbers to name a highway. The freeway featured a grass median.
Shortly after its completion, Hurricane Hazel struck on October 15, 1954. The torrential downpours caused catastrophic damage to southern Ontario, amongst which was the flooding of Holland Marsh to a depth of . Several bridges and sections of road were washed away by Hazel. The damaged highway and bridges were completely reconstructed after the water was pumped away.
Expansion By 1958, Highway 400 was extended north parallel with Highway 93 as a two-lane "super two" with at-grade intersections to Craighurst and construction had begun to extend it further to connect to Highway 12 and Highway 103 south of Coldwater. Both sections opened to traffic on December 24, 1959. For many years afterwards, and still today to older drivers, this portion of the highway (or sometimes even the entire stretch to Parry Sound) north of Barrie is referred to as the "400 Extension". As constructed the extension branched off from the existing highway by means of a partial interchange (since then, newer provincial construction guidelines would have mandated that the existing highway be realigned to flow directly into the extension, while providing an interchange to the section of highway that was bypassed). The extension meant bypassing a section of the original freeway that connects to Highway 11 at the Crown Hill interchange, which was then given the internal designation of Highway 400A. (Highway 400A was redesignated as part of Highway 11 on April 1, 1997, while the rest of Highway 11 south of the Crown Hill junction was downloaded to local municipalities, resulting in Highway 11's new southern terminus being at the partial interchange with Highway 400.)
Plans were also conceived to extend the freeway south from Highway 401 to Eglinton Avenue, where it would join two new expressways: the Richview and the Crosstown Expressways, and eventually terminate at the Gardiner Expressway. These plans would never reach fruition, as public opposition to urban expressways cancelled most highway construction in Toronto by 1971. Highway 400 would still open as far south as Jane Street on October 28, 1966,