W22 H TORONTO STAR H SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2010 ON ON3

WHEELS

THE BUSIEST ROADHwy. 401 at its intersection withHwy. 400 is not only the busiestroad in the province, it’s the mostheavily travelled in all of NorthAmerica. Its average annual dailytraffic volume is 432,000 vehicles —and that was in 2006, the latest fullyear for which figures are available.In the spring of 2009, a peak ofabout 455,000 vehicles per day wascounted there.

THE OLDEST ROADCounty Rd. 64 at Carrying Place isbelieved to be Ontario’s very firstroad, used for thousands of years bynatives and cutting across the top ofthe Quinte Peninsula into Pres-qu’ile Bay. Carrying Place is namedafter the portage that took placethere, linking Kingston with thecommunities to the west across thenorth shore of the lake, and the roadis also known as Kente Portage.

According to the book Gunshotand Gleanings of Historical Carry-ing Place, Bay of Quinte, producedby the 7th Town Historical Society:“Early settlers in Upper Canadafound a wilderness country with noroads. Travel was by water or foot,following existing Indian paths.Journeys from Kingston to Yorkwere often made on foot along thelakeshore. Away from the water-ways, travel was even more difficult.

“In 1793, an act was passed thatrequired each settler to clear a roadacross his lot. The Upper CanadaGovernment contracted Asa Dan-forth, an American, in 1798, to builda road from York to Kingston. Hewas to blaze a roadway 22 feet widealong the front of Lake Ontario at aprice of $90 per mile. His road en-tered Prince Edward County at theCarrying Place and then followedthe approximate route of Highway33 . . . and on to Kingston.

“It took Asa Danforth three yearsto complete the project, named theDanforth Road after the builder.”

The road was originally just amuddy track, but was improvedwhen later roads began to be grav-elled in the early 1800s.

Toronto can claim the first pavedroad, though: Lakeshore Road,from Toronto to Hamilton, waspaved in 1917.

THE MOST TECHNICALLYADVANCED ROADThe stretch of Hwy. 401 just east ofWoodstock is made of “perpetualpavement” and is being tested forits durability, to see if it really islonger-lasting. You can’t see muchdifference, though.

The entrance drive to the Water-loo dump — the regional wastemanagement facility — is a test bedfor the researchers of the Centre forPavement and TransportationTechnology. Short stretches aremade from different materials toallow comparison under identicalconditions, and under heavy loadsfrom the garbage trucks.

There’s conventional concreteand then three other sections ofconcrete that include different pro-portions of recycled curbing andsidewalk. There are four sections ofinterlocking pavement. There arefive asphalt mixes. And there’s evena stretch that includes recycledshingles.

Shingles are “very-high-qualitymaterial, and they’ve already beenenvironmentally aged,” says thecentre’s Susan Tigue, who holds theCanadian Research Chair for Sus-tainable Pavement and Infrastruc-ture Management. “About 3 percent of the mix is shingles, plus oth-er recycled asphalt materials thatwould otherwise just be discardedas garbage.”

THE LONGEST ROADYonge St. has long been famous asthe Longest Street In The World,stretching 1,896 km from its base atLake Ontario (and the Toronto Starnewsroom at One Yonge) to RainyRiver in the far northwest corner ofthe province. That’s about the dis-tance from San Diego to Seattle. It’snamed after Sir George Yonge, theformer British Secretary of War,and was laid over an Algonquinpathway in 1796 to provide a retreatto the Great Lakes if the U.S. at-tacked.

Its title was recognized by theGuinness Book of Records, but waslost in 1999 after stretches of theroad in the Barrie area were redes-ignated and portions of YongeStreet officially disappeared fromHwy. 11. But here at One Yonge, wedon’t care. We still think of it as thelongest.

THE MOST TEMPORARY ROADOntario’s 3,000-km winter road sys-tem, which usually opens in Janu-ary and runs until the end of March,is built from thick ice over the fro-zen rivers and lakes of the far North.It’s a once-a-year supply route forthe mines and camps of the area, aswell as 31 otherwise-isolated nativecommunities. Anyone can drive onan ice road, although most traffic isheavy supply trucks. The provincepays for half the construction andmaintenance, the native communi-ties pay the rest.

THE MOST ISOLATED ROADHwy. 599 at Pickle Lake, 291 kmnorth of its intersection with theTrans-Canada Highway at Ignace,must be the road that’s farthestfrom any other settlement whilestill permanently connected to therest of the province. The road wasopened in 1955 as a supply road tothe gold mines, and was linked tothe TCH in 1963.

North of town, the road continuesas a gravel highway for another 190km, intended as a link to the winterroads system. It’s in winter that thehighway is busiest, with tanker andtransport trucks, and the generalstore never closes.

It’s also the opportunity for peoplewho live in the interior to make arare visit to the town, wrote the Star’sBill Taylor when he visited in 2005.

“It’s not unusual to have someonecome in at 3 a.m. who’s been drivingfrom who-knows-where out therefor 14 or 15 hours and has anotherfour or five to go,” said the store’sLynda Schmeichel. “They need gas,sandwiches, something to drink.

You can’t not be available.” “It’s insane,” said someone pump-

ing gas at the Frontier mini-mart onthe edge of town. “They just keepcoming and coming.”

THE FASTEST ROADThere’s no record of the fastestspeed ever ticketed by police on anOntario highway, although recklessdrivers have been caught and pros-ecuted for more than 200 km/h onmany occasions. One of the better-documented cases was that of roadracer Stephane Proulx, remem-bered here by Wheels’ columnistNorris McDonald:

In the early evening of July 12,1988, on the 401near Kingston, OPPConst. Joseph Thomas Albrechtclocked Proulx’s motorcycle travel-ling at or above 200 km/h. He acti-vated his lights and siren and fol-lowed Proulx for about 25 km be-fore getting him to pull over.

Albrecht asked Proulx why hehadn’t stopped sooner.

“I didn’t know you were behindme,” the race driver replied. “Whenyou’re doing 220, you don’t look tothe rear.”

On July 26, Proulx appeared inprovincial court in Kingston beforeJudge P.H. Megginson, a no-non-sense guy. The prosecutor was an-other no-nonsense guy. Proulx didnot have a lawyer — or a chance.Some 15 minutes later, Megginsonthrew Proulx in jail for 21 days.When Proulx protested, Meggin-son said: “You committed a danger-ous criminal offence, sir. I have sen-tenced you — that’s it.”

Seven months later, Proulx wasback in court in Kingston. This wasnot an appeal of the first sentence; itwas a whole new trial.

The judge this time was J.P. Coul-son who, judging by the transcript,had an idea who he was dealingwith. Proulx was represented by alawyer from Belleville who hap-pened to be a racing fan. The prose-cutor was a no-nonsense guy likeMcKenna — but not quite.

Thirty minutes later, Coulson dis-missed the charge, urging theyoung accused to slow down on thepublic highways.

“We would be very proud to haveyou represent us and do well ininternational racing . . . We wantyou to live long enough to do it.”

Off public highways, the highestspeeds in Ontario are reached on

drag strips, such as at Toronto Mo-torsports Park near Cayuga.

The fastest speed ever achievedthere was 509 km/h, set by the jetcar “Braveheart” in May 2000, cov-ering the quarter-mile in 5.05 sec-onds.

There was a quicker pass, though,back before rocket cars werebanned from racing in 1984. Thetrack record at Cayuga is 4.57 sec-onds, set by Larry Flickenger in hisrocket car “Natural High” in Sep-tember 1981. It only reached 390km/h, but then, it shut down at justhalf the length of the track andcoasted the rest of the way. No rock-et car has ever made a full quarter-mile pass under power at any drag-strip — they’re just too fast.

THE WORST ROADEvery year, the Canadian Automo-bile Association asks its membersto vote for the worst piece of road inthe province. The current front-runner is Finch Ave., betweenYonge and Leslie Sts.

“The drive on Finch Ave. is like aroller-coaster ride, or bumper-carride,” says one voter. It is “full ofpatches, potholes, utility cracks andis bone-shaking even at 20 km/h,”says another. And a third: “Driversare tired of repairing their cars andreplacing their tires.”

Voting for this year’s winner/loseris still open (at caasco.com/wor-stroads or facebook.com/wor-stroads) until the end of September.

THE MOST GHASTLY ROADThere’s no record kept of the worstroad accident in Ontario history, orthe biggest pileup, but probably themost horrific road incident in re-cent memory took place Sept. 3,1999, on Hwy. 401 at the ManningRd. exit, just east of Windsor.

Unexpected pockets of thick fogdropped onto the highway at 8 a.m.and cars were driven blindly intothem. Eighty-seven vehiclesslammed into each other in threeseparate locations over a stretch oftwo kilometres: eight people werekilled, 45 taken to hospital andmany more injured. One of the ve-hicles was a tanker carrying morethan 20,000 litres of diesel fuel;thirty vehicles were fused togetherin the “hot zone.”

One of the dead was a teenage girl,trapped in the wreckage near her

brother and father, already dead. “Iremember feeling very guilty that Isurvived and she didn’t,” passengerUte Lawrence told the Star lastyear. “Here we are, a middle-agedcouple, and here’s a little 14-year-old girl . . . she was engulfed inflames, screaming ‘I’m only 14.’Lawrence was later diagnosed withpost-traumatic stress disorder andwent on to write a book about herexperience, called The Power OfTrauma.

That stretch of the 401 has sincebeen widened to six lanes. OPP offi-cers can alert Environment Canadadirectly about the road conditions,where fog still sometimes descendswith little warning.

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL ROADThere’s nothing official, but my votegoes to the Ottawa River Parkwayjust west of the capital. The four-lane road is maintained by the fed-eral government and patrolled bythe RCMP. It’s smooth and curvyand lined with fresh-mown grass,with a cycle path alongside theshore of the Ottawa River. Acrossthe water, the Gatineau hills riselow on the north horizon, and if youdrive to the east, the ParliamentBuildings begin to show themselvesabove the trees, offering a gentlesurge of national pride. When youdrive to the west, you’re goinghome.

A friend of mine in Ottawa, MarkBerman, commutes along thisroute each day: “Riding home onthe bus after a long day at work, Ilook around at the other passengerson the bus and I see that as the rivercomes into view, people smile andthe stresses of the day start to meltaway. When the sun’s setting, itglints in the river and you get theseamazing colours coming across theriver. You can’t help but think abouthow beautiful it is.”

Mark Richardson is the editor ofWheels. mrichardson@thestar.ca

UnforgettableOf Ontario’s 16,000 kilometres of roads,which are the most memorable, forreasons both good and bad? Wheelseditor Mark Richardson drove far and wide to compile this top 10 list.

ANDREW WALLACE/TORONTO STAREvery year, the Canadian Automobile Association asks its members to vote for their worst road. The currentleader is Finch, between Yonge and Leslie. It’s “like a roller-coaster ride, or bumper-car ride,” says one voter.

Mark Richardson offers his personalfive most memorable Ontario roadsat wheels.ca. Watch the in-car videoof his favourite road and see if you canidentify it. Look for it now on his blog.

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