Ontario Roads - TCH 417



All photos are eastbound except two, which I'll call out.


The new beginning of Highway 417 and end of Highway 17, west of Arnprior.


After a brief completed section of dual carriageway, now the EB side is under construction in August 2012.


The new EB roadway, with new culverts and other bridges along the way.


Canada is so far north, the leaves start turning in August. That's not a Canada joke, it's actually happening. Well, that in itself is the joke, I suppose.


Remaining EB roadway photos before the dual carriageway begins for good. Despite the construction, this is very much already Highway 417 and not 17.


Starting at the Highway 7 junction (another leg of the Trans-Canada Highway) and up close to Highway 416 where capacity has already been improved, the Highway 417 median is being reconstructed in 2012 to add a lane in either direction.


This is supposed to be Exit 127, and construction has messed with the arrows on the pull-through sign. I question the utility of bilingualism when it does things like Av./Ave. and East/Est.

The first WB photo on the page. It's all to spec, but two green shields are cool.


Avenue Atwater Avenue - bilingualism TO THE EXTREME!! The first, more modern photo show the new style of exit arrow (in yellow) that Ontario is keen on and I'm much less so. The older photo, courtesy Doug Kerr, still signs the Regional Road number for Exit 121, and has a cool diagrammatic to go with it.


Yes, even though Highway 417 is an east-west freeway, it's numbered as if it runs north from the Québec border, and thus numbers decrease instead of increase as one heads east. To mimic Québec's TO/VERS plate, and follow the unique EXIT/SORTIE and ugly new exit arrow off to the right, one must use local streets like Nicholas St. to connect from this freeway to Autoroute 5. It appears there may have once been plans to connect them, but I don't think they will ever gain traction. Photos of the ghost ramp coming in from the right, which may have been from Lees Avenue or, more likely, signaled a potential southward extension to the current mini-freeway at the exit, are courtesy Lou Corsaro.


Similar but different in the westbound direction (second WB photo on the page), with another diagrammatic, courtesy Doug Kerr.


Once you're east of Ottawa proper (these towns were once part of Carleton County, which became the Ottawa-Carleton Region and is now part of the city), don't hope to escape bilingual signs. Vars and Embrun, as Francophone as the names may be, are the nearest towns in English-speaking Ontario. (Actually, there is a "line" past which French becomes the dominant language, and from what one gas station attendant told me, it's approximately at Exit 96 to the west. He referred to people on either side of Boundary Road speaking the language appropriate to that side. I assume at least part of his story is Canadian humor.) This photo is really here for the strange font used on the RR 33 shield.


In Ontario, construction colors are orange and black, in a way a lot more rigid than in the United States. The drums, therefore, are not reflective, but resemble Abraham Lincoln on Halloween. Notice that unlike American arrowboards, the Ontarian arrowboard has the arrows outlined in black against an orange sign, so that the arrow itself has to be flipped before the sign can be used.


Oh, really, these exits lead to Ontario? Gee, thanks, Ontario. Actually, these are service signs for exits that have no services. So why the signs?


There's nothing odd about a Highway turning into a County Road, but that Highway shield looks awfully wide for just two digits. I'm not sure if there is a narrower variant, though. By the way, as English-looking as Hawkesbury looks, it's actually 70% French-speaking.


No bones about which language will be spoken here. This is an Ontario-erected sign for what will be Sortie 1 on Autoroute 40 in Québec. Good job on the shield.

Continue west on Highway 17
Into Québec on Autoroute 40
Exit 118 to Autoroute 5
Into Ottawa
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