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Kind of find it amusing how they have this and the King City ONroutes so close to the city. If you look at the ones on 401, they don’t start popping up again until when you’re well outside of the core GTA. To the west its the Cambridge ones parallel of each other and to the east its the Newcastle/Port Hope ONRoutes, and on both sides they are over an hour and 85+ km out from Toronto.
There used to be one in Mississauga between Winston Churchill and Mississauga Rd where an OPP building occupies the site now. You can see it on Google maps. Back in the days this was all farmland in the middle of nowhere.
The Barrie one is kind of silly, especially when I occasionally take the 400 to get from Mapleview to Essa and pass it by. I presume its reason for existence is so there are an equal number on each side of the highway, and the corresponding one in Innisfil is still a largely rural area.
Like you said, there must be employees accessing them which means they need to hire locals to staff them. It might be more difficult to get employ enough workers, especially when people from Barrie can't just take a bus there. A Parry Sound should be much easier. Between that is pretty rural but they can always build a simple rest stop like how other countries/states have better facilities.
I agree re ONRoute expansion. The truck stops located on the 402 near Wyoming should be converted to full rest stops. I believe the 403 could also benefit from having stops either east or west of Brantford. As for the 416 and 417, having them situated near Kemptville, Casselman, and Renfrew (along the future 417 extension to the area) are the ideal locations in my opinion. Further expansion north to Sudbury is also probably a good idea too once the twinning/extension of 400 is complete.
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This kind of development is not going to happen to Essa; the city of Barrie is fully intending to transition that street into a mid-rise corridor and the land is worth too much to do otherwise. Getting rid of the Barrie OnRoute won't push that development onto Essa and Dunlop, it will push it onto McKay Road to the south.
The point I was trying to make was that if services aren't available on the highway, motorists will, by default, have to go off the highway and in most urban areas, like Barrie, that can be problem. Hwy 401 and N. Front St./CR62 in Belleville is similar. I'll leave where they should go to the traffic engineers, but am a little surprised a NB centre didn't go in near the SB Innisfil one, simply because it seems they ten to have them in pairs.
yes, I find the lines in OnRoutes especially during busy times can kill any time savings of getting off the highway anyway. The one benefit is multiple options for groups with different tastes.
Same. The vendors are all pretty similar because they are government contract sites. The one thing I like about how Quebec does it, at least on some of their ARs, is they have simple 'rest areas' every so often. Not wide open, hot, paved commercial sites, just parking, grass and trees, where you can actually, you know, rest. Some might have a coffee or snack truck, likely under contract, but I found them quite re-charging. Ontario does have some decent rest areas but none of them are along 400-series routes, and the few service centres that have an actual picnic area are kinda grim.
Quite frankly, I've never understood the attraction of Weber's, at least not in the past 20-odd years. In the beginning, their burgers were good but now they are little different that most other fast food joints (particularly the buns). They do move people through like an assembly line, but I certainly wouldn't be sanding outside in the rain waiting for one. The one thing in their favour is most ma-and-pa, not-chain options either north or south of their, have gone.
