Queen Elizabeth Way
The Queen Elizabeth Way is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York. The highway begins at the Canada–United States border on the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and travels around the western end of Lake Ontario, ending at Highway 427 as the physical freeway continues as the Gardiner Expressway into downtown Toronto. The QEW is one of Ontario's busiest highways, with an average of close to 250,000 vehicles per day on some sections.
Major highway junctions are at Highway 420 in Niagara Falls, Highway 405 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Highway 406 in St. Catharines, the Red Hill Valley Parkway in Hamilton, Highway 403 and Highway 407 in Burlington, Highway 403 at the Oakville–Mississauga boundary, and Highway 427 in Etobicoke. Within the Regional Municipality of Halton the QEW is signed concurrently with Highway 403. The speed limit is throughout most of its length, with the exception being between Hamilton and St. Catharines where the posted limit was raised to on September 26, 2019 as part of the government's plan to raise the speed limits across the province.
The history of the QEW dates back to 1931, when work began to widen the Middle Road in a similar fashion to the nearby Dundas Highway and Lakeshore Road as a relief project during the Great Depression. Following the 1934 provincial election, Ontario Minister of Highways Thomas McQuesten and his deputy minister Robert Melville Smith changed the design to be similar to the autobahns of Germany, dividing the opposite directions of travel and using grade-separated interchanges at major crossroads. When opened to traffic in 1937, it was the first intercity divided highway in North America and featured the longest stretch of consistent illumination in the world. While not a true freeway at the time, it was gradually upgraded, widened, and modernized beginning in the 1950s, more or less taking on its current form by 1975. Since then, various projects have continued to widen the route. In 1997, the provincial government turned over the responsibility for the section of the QEW between Highway 427 and the Humber River to the City of Toronto, which redesignated this segment as a westward extension of the Gardiner Expressway.
Name and signage
The Queen Elizabeth Way was named for the wife and royal consort of King George VI who would later become known as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. It is sometimes referred to as the Queen E.In 1939, the royal couple toured Canada and the United States in part to bolster support for the United Kingdom in anticipation of war with Nazi Germany, and also to mark George VI's coronation. The highway received its name to commemorate the visit; it was unveiled on June 7 as the King and Queen ceremonially opened the highway at a site near the Henley Bridge in St. Catharines. Originally, the highway featured stylized light standards with the letters "ER", the Royal Cypher for Elizabeth Regina, the Latin equivalent to "Queen Elizabeth." While mostly replaced with modern lighting masts like other Ontario highways, replicas of these stylized "ER" poles have been installed upon three bridges along the QEW: in Mississauga over the Credit River, in Oakville over Bronte Creek, and in St. Catharines over Twelve Mile Creek. In addition Highway 420 in Niagara Falls and its extension, Falls Avenue, has these "ER" light standards installed since 2002, as a nod to this route being part of the original QEW upon its inauguration in 1940 until being bypassed by QEW's extension to Fort Erie in 1941.
The markers identifying the QEW have always used blue lettering on a yellow background instead of the black-on-white scheme other provincial highway markers use. They originally showed the highway's full name only in small letters, with the large script letters "ER" placed where the highway number is on other signs. In 1955, these were changed to the current design, with the lettering "QEW." Although the QEW has no posted highway number, it is considered to be part of the Province of Ontario's 400-series highway network.
The Ministry of Transportation of Ontario designates the QEW as Highway 451 for internal, administrative purposes.
A monument was originally in the highway median at the Toronto terminus of the highway west of the Humber River bridges, dedicated to the 1939 visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and known as the "Lucky Lion." The column, with a crown at the top and a lion at the base, was designed by W. L. Somerville and sculptors Frances Loring and Florence Wyle for $12,000. The monument was removed in 1972 in order to accommodate widening of the original QEW, and relocated in August 1975 to the nearby Sir Casimir Gzowski Park along Lake Ontario, on the east side of the Humber River.
Route description
The QEW is a route that travels from the Peace Bridge – which connects Fort Erie with Buffalo, New York – to Toronto, the economic hub of the province. It runs as a freeway circling the western lakehead of Lake Ontario, cutting through Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Burlington, Oakville, and Mississauga en route. A portion of the freeway in Burlington is signed concurrently with Highway 403. Unlike other provincial highways in Ontario, the QEW is directionally signed using locations along the route as opposed to cardinal directions. Driving towards Toronto, the route is signed as "QEW Toronto" throughout its length. In the opposing direction, it is signed as "QEW Hamilton", "QEW Niagara", and "QEW Fort Erie" depending on the location.Fort Erie–Niagara Falls
The Queen Elizabeth Way begins at the Canada–United States border on the three-lane undivided Peace Bridge, which connects with I-190 in Buffalo, New York. A customs booth is located just west of the bridge, beyond which a toll is charged to Canada-bound drivers. West of there, access is provided to nearby Highway 3 and the Niagara Parkway. Through customs, the four-lane freeway proper begins, immediately curving northwest. Within Fort Erie, interchanges provide access to and from the QEW at Central Avenue, Concession Road, Thompson Road, Gilmore Road, and Bowen Road. While there is some urban development at the beginning of the freeway, the majority of the first are within lowland forests. Numerous creeks flow through these forests, often flooding them. The Willoughby Marsh Conservation Area lies southwest of the freeway, approximately south of Niagara Falls. After an interchange with Lyons Creek Road, the freeway turns northward.After crossing the Welland River, the original route of the Welland Canal, the freeway exits the forests and enters agricultural land surrounding the suburbs of Niagara Falls, which the highway enters north of the McLeod Road interchange. Within the city, Highway 420 meets the QEW at a large four-level junction and widens to six lanes. The opposing carriageways split at this interchange to accommodate the left-hand exit/entry of the flyover ramps accessing Highway 420, with the Toronto-bound traffic passing under these flyovers and a CN rail crossing. Exiting the northern fringe of Niagara Falls, the freeway again curves northwest and begins to descend through the Niagara Escarpment, a World Biosphere Reserve. Highway 405 merges with the QEW along the short rural stretch between Niagara Falls and St. Catharines. While there is no Toronto-bound access to Highway 405, Niagara-bound drivers can follow this short freeway to the Lewiston–Queenston Bridge, which crosses the U.S. border into Lewiston, New York. The QEW continues west into St. Catharines.
St. Catharines–Hamilton
As the Queen Elizabeth Way enters St. Catharines, it ascends the Garden City Skyway to cross the Welland Canal. This structure replaced the lift bridge south of it, one of two major bottlenecks prior to the early 1960s, and is one of two high-level skyways along the route. As the QEW was the first long distance freeway in North America, several modern engineering concepts were not considered in its original 1939 design, and although it was modernized in a recent reconstruction that concluded in 2011, further expansion of the highway is inhibited by the proximity of properties throughout most of its length. Consequently, most of the route beyond the Welland Canal is wedged between service roads which provide access to and from the QEW as well as to local businesses and residences. After passing the Ontario Street interchange, the freeway crosses Martindale Pond, which forms the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek. West of the crossing is a trumpet interchange with Highway 406, which travels south to Welland, after which the QEW crosses out of St. Catharines and into the town of Lincoln at Fifteen Mile Creek, continuing with a six-lane cross-section.Throughout Lincoln, the QEW travels along the Lake Ontario shoreline through the Niagara Fruit Belt; numerous wineries line the south side of the freeway. Interchanges at Victoria Road and Ontario Street provide access to the communities of Vineland and Beamsville, respectively. The latter encroaches upon the south side of the QEW, interrupting the otherwise agricultural surroundings of the highway in Lincoln. Immediately east of the Bartlett Avenue interchange, the freeway enters Grimsby, where it becomes sandwiched between the Niagara Escarpment and Lake Ontario. The route passes under three overpasses that have remained unchanged since the highway was built: Maple Avenue, Ontario Street, and Christie Street, all served by a single diamond interchange. South of the Fifty Point Conservation Area, the freeway exits the Niagara Region and enters the city of Hamilton.
Within Hamilton, the highway passes almost entirely within an industrial park, with interchanges at Fifty Road, Fruitland Road, and Centennial Parkway. The third of these is intertwined with the Red Hill Valley Parkway interchange, at which point the freeway widens to eight lanes. From here, the freeway curves northwest onto Burlington Beach and begins to ascend the Burlington Bay James N. Allan Skyway, the second high-level bridge along the route. As it crosses over the entrance to Hamilton Harbour, the freeway enters the Regional Municipality of Halton and descends into the city of Burlington.