Ontario Premier Doug Ford says a new highway linking the 400 to the 404 through the Bradford area will not be tolled, but his government still will not provide any details on how much it will cost or how long it will take to construct.

Ford said Monday that the new 16.2 kilometre highway is needed to relieve congestion in the greater 905 area, and said local constituents have been asking for it for “decades.”

“Past governments, our opponents, they side with ideological activists who oppose any and all highways over hard-working families,” Ford said.

The planned highway would connect Highway 404 south of Holborn Road, running west with interchanges planned at Leslie Street, Bathurst Street, and County Road 4 (Yonge Street).

Bradford Bypass

“We need this link, we’ve asked for it for over 30 years,” Bradford West Gwillimbury Mayor Rob Keffer said.

He said the lack of a controlled access east-west route through the area leads drivers to take small rural concessions instead.

“We need to divert traffic away from our rural farmers, or they will get so frustrated they will just leave.”

The Ford government announced its intention to build the highway in last week’s Fall Economic Statement.

But asked a combined six different times, Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy and nonpartisan senior bureaucrats would not provide any figure for how much the highway and a second much larger one dubbed Highway 413 would cost.

Officials said funding to complete design work on both routes will come from a $2.6 billion annual fund devoted to overall highway maintenance.

Bethlenfalvy said an exact figure was “commercially sensitive information” that could not be made public.

Bethlenfalvy's spokesperson, Emily Hogeveen, told CP24 "putting a dollar amount on the aspects of the project now undermines the bidding process."

She said only provincial money was earmarked to the project so far.

The Ontario Liberals opposed the project in the 15 years they were in power between 2003 and 2018.

Current Liberal Leader Steven Del Duca has repeatedly vowed to cancel the highways should he win the 2022 election.

Reporters in Bradford on Monday asked Ford how new highway construction will almost certainly increase greenhouse gas emissions.

He replied with the widely disproven theory that highway congestion, with lanes full of idled cars, is even worse for climate-harming emissions than free-flowing expressways.

“It doesn’t help (the climate) when things are bumper to bumper, we need to get traffic moving,” he said.

The current plan for the roadway anticipates preliminary design work will be complete sometime in “early 2023,” with no details on how long construction may take.