National Highway System (Canada)

History

The system was first designated in 1988 by the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Council of Ministers Responsible for Transportation and Highway Safety, a council consisting of the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers of Transport. A total of 24,500 kilometres (15,200 mi) of highway were originally designated as part of the system. Highways selected for the system were existing primary routes that supported interprovincial and international trade and travel, by connecting major population or commercial centres with each other, with major border crossings on the Canada–United States border, or with other transport hubs.

The system was further expanded in 2004, with the addition of approximately 14,000 kilometres (8,700 mi) of highway that was not part of the original 1988 network. It was in this era that the current "core", "feeder" and "northern or remote" classes of route were established. Not all highways within the system are designated in their entirety, but may instead be part of the system over only part of their length; a few highways even have two or more discontinuous segments designated as part of the system. In some locations, the National Highway System may also incorporate city arterial streets to connect highway routes which are part of the system but do not directly interconnect, or to link the system to an important intermodal transport hub—such as a shipping port, a railway terminal, an airport or a ferry terminal—which is not directly located on a provincial-class highway.

Routes within the system continue to be maintained, funded and signed as provincial, rather than federal, highways. However, the federal government provides some funding assistance for important maintenance and expansion projects on designated highways through cost sharing programs. For instance, several recent maintenance projects on National Highway System routes in Saskatchewan were partly funded under the federal government's Building Canada Fund–Major Infrastructure Component, while several four-laning projects in Ontario in the 2000s accessed federal funding under the Strategic Highway Infrastructure Program.

There is no single, ongoing program for federal contributions to the National Highway System; rather, these contributions have been made through a variety of separate infrastructure investment programs of defined length and scope. Recent transportation planning proposals have identified public-private partnerships and dedicated fuel taxes as possible mechanisms for providing more stable funding, although no comprehensive program has been implemented to date.

The National Highway System has been criticized for lacking a truly comprehensive expansion plan. In many parts of the country, the system relies on two-lane highways, or expressways which are not fully up to international freeway standards; according to Lakehead University economics professor Livio di Matteo, many parts of the system, even on the main Trans-Canada Highway portion of the network, still leave "the nation’s east-west flow of personal and commercial traffic subject to the whims of an errant moose". American transportation planning academic Wendell Cox has also identified improvements to the system, so that Canada would have a comprehensive national freeway network comparable to the American Interstate Highway System, as an economically critical project for the country to undertake in the 21st century. It is faster, for example, to travel from Winnipeg or Calgary to Toronto through the United States than on Canadian highways.

Routes

In its current form, the National Highway System includes routes in all Canadian provinces and territories except Nunavut, which has no conventional road connections to any other Canadian province or territory.

Officially the system maintains three classifications of road: Core, Feeder and Northern/Remote. Within the core and feeder classes, the system's official register makes additional distinctions between conventional core or feeder routes and intermodal links or "anomalies", where a highway that does not meet the normal criteria for inclusion, or a municipal arterial road, has been adopted into the system to fill in a gap in the network. The "intermodal" and "anomaly" classes are not distinct designations, however, but simply represent an additional clarification of why the road holds "core" or "feeder" status—regardless, the tables below include "intermodal" and "anomaly" as separate classifications for clarity.

Alberta

The system includes 4,384 kilometres (2,724 mi) of highway in Alberta.

British Columbia

The system includes 7,032 kilometres (4,369 mi) of highway in British Columbia.

Manitoba

The system includes 2,093 kilometres (1,301 mi) of highway in Manitoba.

New Brunswick

The system includes 1,825 kilometres (1,134 mi) of highway in New Brunswick.

Newfoundland and Labrador

The system includes 2,469 kilometres (1,534 mi) of highway in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Northwest Territories

The system includes 1,423 kilometres (884 mi) of highway in the Northwest Territories.

Nova Scotia

The system includes 1,199 kilometres (745 mi) of highway in Nova Scotia.

Ontario

The system includes 6,007.8 kilometres (3,733.1 mi) of highway in Ontario.

Prince Edward Island

The system includes 396 kilometres (246 mi) of highway in Prince Edward Island.

Quebec

The system includes 5,649 kilometres (3,510 mi) of highway in Quebec.

Saskatchewan

The system includes 2,688 kilometres (1,670 mi) of highway in Saskatchewan.

Yukon

The system includes 2,027 kilometres (1,260 mi) of highway in Yukon.