Hurontario Street

History

Hurontario Street was created by a survey in 1818 and originally called Centre Road, and a bypassed section still exists with that name. The street's name is linked to its start and end points at Lake Huron and Lake Ontario.

Route description

The street begins in Mississauga at Lakeshore Road in Port Credit. North of the Canadian National rail underpass, it enters the low-density residential district of Mineola, which extends north to the Queen Elizabeth Way. Then it enters the Cooksville neighbourhood, a higher-density area of highrises and commercial development. At Burnhamthorpe Road, Hurontario passes through Mississauga's City Centre, with the spectacular Absolute World condominium towers rising at the northeast corner. After crossing Highway 403, it passes through more suburban mid-density residential development until it approaches Matheson Boulevard, where a preserved historic farmstead, the Britannia Farm, operated by the Peel District School Board, is located. The road then enters an industrial and commercial area, still under development, which extends beyond Highway 401 all the way to the city limits near Highway 407. It then enters Brampton, where it changes name to Main Street after crossing Steeles Avenue. Main St. runs alongside the Etobicoke Creek valley until reaching Brampton's historic downtown, where it passes landmarks such as Gage Park, Brampton City Hall, and the Rose Theatre Brampton. At Bovaird Drive (formerly Highway 7), the name Hurontario resumes, and the street passes through a lengthy mixed residential/industrial rural-urban fringe zone until it reaches Highway 410 at Brampton's northern city limits. At Highway 410, the Highway 10 designation begins as the street enters rural Caledon, and it has a discontinuity of sorts through the interchange as it defaults onto Valleywood Boulevard northbound and the 410 southbound, with ramps connecting the two sections.

The road continues northward as the undivided four-lane Highway 10 until reaching Orangeville, where the highway leaves the Hurontario Street alignment to head for the City of Owen Sound, although it parallels it very closely for about 21 km. (13 mi.) as it follows First Line] WHS (West of Hurontario Street). The reason for the highway's chosen alignment was due to old Orangeville's location farther to the west and (in the case of the former Highway 24 segment to the north), difficult terrain. In Orangeville, it runs as a residential side street and breaks at the Orangeville Reservoir. In Mono, it resumes as a minor gravel sideline to Highway 89, where it breaks again. It resumes once more in Mulmur Township as a series of broken minor roads with several names (including the aforementioned Centre Rd.) north of Boyne Valley Provincial Park, passing through the hamlets of Dunedin and Glen Huron. North of Glen Huron, it joins Simcoe County Road 124 (which, along with Highway 10, carries the Orangeville-Collingwood through traffic south of this point), until its terminus in Collingwood at Side Launch Way, one block north of First and Huron Streets (Highway 26). The final block is a short one-way northbound extension built in 2009 to serve a residential redevelopment project on the site once occupied by the now-closed Collingwood Shipyards.

Vernacular

The street is colloquially referred to as "Highway 10" by traffic reporters, and even by residents in the cities of Mississauga and Brampton (with the exception of the latter's downtown area), rather than by its street names – a situation made even more peculiar by the fact that the provincial highway designation is defunct in these cities. A prime example of this is the common reference to the street's intersection with Dundas Street as "5 and 10". The most likely reason for this is that the areas along the road were developed during the suburban era after its identity as a highway was firmly entrenched. The Ministry of Transportation's traffic camera continues to identify Hurontario as "Hwy 10" as well, as does some signage at the Hurontario & 407 Park and Ride lot and transit terminal. However, the street name predominates in Collingwood.

One result of the use of the terminology is the frequent conflation of Hurontario Street as corresponding to the entire length of Highway 10 to Owen Sound, due to the highway's northern terminus being in that city, which is coincidentally also situated on Lake Huron's Georgian Bay.

Public Transit

Hurontario St. is one of the busiest transit corridors in the 905 Region of the Greater Toronto Area. Mississauga and Brampton each run separate systems, but routes cross city boundaries. In addition to local routes operated by both cities, Brampton Transit operates a rudimentary bus rapid transit line along it, branded as Züm, and Mississauga's MiWay runs a limited-stop express bus route. The MiWay express bus and the southern portion of Zűm are slated to be replaced by a proposed light rail transit line that is to be constructed along the street in Mississauga and a short distance in Brampton (see Hurontario-Main LRT). The project has received funding approval by the Government of Ontario. It is currently in the design phase and construction is projected to begin by mid-2018.

The base trunk routes serving the street are:

Mississauga (MiWay):

Brampton (Brampton Transit):

Further north:

GO Transit runs a bus route along the road to Orangeville from Brampton's downtown bus terminal.

In Collingwood, Colltrans' East Route operates along Hurontario for part of its run.

Attractions and institutions along Hurontario Street

Attractions and institutions along Hurontario Street in urban Peel Region include (south to north):

Caledon to Collingwood: