The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York. The QEW is one of Ontario’s busiest highways, with an average of close to 200,000 vehicles per day on some sections. It was the first intercity divided highway in North America and featured the longest stretch of consistent illumination in the world. The road was named in honour of the King and Queen’s visit to Canada in 1939.
About Queen Elizabeth Way in brief
The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York. The freeway begins at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and travels 139. 1 kilometres around the western end of Lake Ontario, ending at Highway 427. The physical highway, however, continues as the Gardiner Expressway into downtown Toronto. The QEW is one of Ontario’s busiest highways, with an average of close to 200,000 vehicles per day on some sections. It was the first intercity divided highway in North America and featured the longest stretch of consistent illumination in the world. The highway was named for the wife of King George VI who would later become known as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. 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 Ministry of Transportation of Ontario designates the QEW as Highway 451 for internal, administrative purposes. A portion of the highway is signed concurrently with Highway 403 in the Regional Municipality of Halton, between its two junctions with Highway 403 and Highway 407 in Burlington. It is sometimes referred to as the Queen E. In 1997, the provincial government turned over the responsibility for the section of theQEW between Highway 427 and the Humber River to the City of Toronto.
This section was subsequently redesignated as part of the Gardiners Expressway. The road was named in honour of the King and Queen’s visit to Canada in 1939, and received its name to commemorate the visit; it was unveiled on June 7, 1939. A monument was originally in the highway median at the Toronto terminus of the freeway, dedicated to the 1939 visit. The column, with a crown at the top and a lion at the base, was designed by L. Wyle Wyle and Florence Wyle for USD 12,000. The monument was removed in 1972 in order to accommodate widening of the original QEW, and relocated to nearby Sir Casimir Gzowski Park along the Lake Ontario side of the Humberside River. A short section of Highway 420 in Niagara Falls and its extension, Falls Avenue, had replicas of these light standards installed in 2002. In 1955, these were changed to the current design, with the lettering ‘QEW’ on the highway signs. Although the Qew has no posted highway number, it is considered to be part of Ontario’s 400- series highway network. It has a maximum speed of 100 km/h (62.5 mph) and an average speed of 80 km/hr (50 mph) It is the only highway in Ontario that is not signed as a major international route. The route is a 139 km route that travels through Niagara Falls, St. Catharines, Hamilton, Oakville, Burlington, and Mississauga en route to Buffalo.
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This page is based on the article Queen Elizabeth Way published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
