Ontario Highway 401 in the context of "Grade separation"

North York is a former township and city and is now one of the six administrative districts of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the northern area of Toronto, centred around Yonge Street, north of Ontario Highway 401. It is bounded by York Region to the north at Steeles Avenue, (where it borders Vaughan) on the west by the Humber River, on the east by Victoria Park Avenue. Its southern boundary is erratic and corresponds to the northern boundaries of the former municipalities of Toronto: York, Old Toronto and East York. As of the 2016 Census, the district has a population of 644,685.

North York was created as a township in 1922 out of the northern part of the former township of York, a municipality that was located along the western border of the-then City of Toronto. Following its inclusion in Metropolitan Toronto in 1953, it was one of the fastest-growing parts of Greater Toronto due to its proximity to Toronto. It was declared a borough in 1967, and later became a city in 1979, attracting high-density residences, rapid transit, and a number of corporate headquarters in North York City Centre, its planned central business district. In 1998, North York was dissolved as part of the amalgamation which created the new City of Toronto. It has since become a secondary economic hub of the city outside Downtown Toronto.

The 400-series highways are a network of controlled-access highways in the Canadian province of Ontario, forming a special subset of the provincial highway system. They are analogous to the Interstate Highway System in the United States or the Autoroute system of neighbouring Quebec, and are regulated by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO). The 400-series designations were introduced in 1952, although Ontario had been constructing divided highways for two decades prior. Initially, only Highways 400, 401 and 402 were numbered; other designations followed in the subsequent decades. To this day, not all controlled-access highways in Ontario are a part of the 400-series highway network. The network is situated almost entirely in Southern Ontario, although Highway 400 extends into the more remote northern portion of the province.

Modern 400-series highways have high design standards, speed limits of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph), with a 110 kilometres per hour (68 mph) limit on select stretches, and various collision avoidance and traffic management systems. The design of 400-series highways has set the precedent for a number of innovations used throughout North America, including the parclo interchange and a modified Jersey barrier design known as the Ontario Tall Wall. As a result, they currently experience one of the lowest accident and fatality rates comparative to traffic volume in North America.

The local–express lane system is an arrangement of carriageways within a major highway where long distance traffic can use inner express lanes with fewer interchanges compared to local traffic which use outer local lanes that have access to all interchanges. This can also be called a collector/distributor lane system within a single interchange. One of the longest examples is Highway 401 in Toronto, where highway ramps between express and local lanes cross over one another; these are commonly known as braided ramps and in Toronto as a basketweave.

Some places may have only three carriageways on the highway instead of four, utilizing one directional express lanes. They may be permanent, or they can be reversible express lanes such as in Seattle where they alternate direction.

Car dependency is a pattern in urban planning that occurs when infrastructure favors automobiles over other modes of transport, such as public transport, bicycles, and walking. Car dependency is associated with higher transport pollution than transport systems that treat all transportation modes equally.

Car infrastructure is often paid for by governments from general taxes rather than gasoline taxes or mandated by governments. For instance, many cities have minimum parking requirements for new housing, which in practice requires developers to "subsidize" drivers. In some places, bicycles and rickshaws are banned from using road space, and pedestrian use of road space has been criminalized in many jurisdictions (see jaywalking) since the early 20th century. The road lobby plays an important role in maintaining car dependency, arguing that car infrastructure is good for economic growth.

King's Highway 407, commonly referred to as Highway 407 and colloquially as the "four-oh-seven", is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario. Comprising a tolled privately leased segment and a publicly owned segment, the route spans the entire Greater Toronto Area (GTA) around the city of Toronto, travelling through the suburbs of Burlington, Oakville, Mississauga, Brampton, Vaughan, Markham, Pickering, Whitby, and Oshawa before ending in Clarington, north of Orono and Newcastle. At 151.4 kilometres (94.1 mi) long, it is the fourth-longest expressway in Ontario's 400-series network, after Highways 417, 400, and 401. The tolled segment between Burlington and Brougham in Pickering is leased to and operated by the 407 ETR Concession Company Limited and is officially known as the 407 Express Toll Route (407 ETR). It begins at the Freeman Interchange between the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) and Highway 403 in Burlington; the highway travels 108.0 km (67.1 mi) across the urban GTA to Brock Road in Pickering. East of Brock Road, the freeway continues east as Highway 407 (referred to as Highway 407 East during development to distinguish it from 407 ETR), a route operated by the provincial government and formerly tolled, for 43.4 km (27.0 mi) to Highway 35/115 in Clarington. The route interchanges with nine freeways in Ontario: the QEW, Highway 403, Highway 401, Highway 410, Highway 427, Highway 400, Highway 404, Highway 412, and Highway 418. 407 ETR is an electronically operated toll highway; there are no toll booths along the route. Distances are calculated automatically using transponders or automatic number-plate recognition, which are scanned at entrance and exit portals.

Highway 407 was planned in the late 1950s as a freeway bypassing Toronto's segment of Highway 401, the busiest highway in North America. However, construction did not begin until 1987. During the early 1990s, the provincial government proposed tolling the highway to alleviate a revenue shortfall. The central sections of Highway 407 opened in 1997, and the remaining sections were built quickly over the following four years, with the final segment opening in mid-2001. Despite being included in the 400-series network, the Highway 407 ETR section is not considered part of the provincial highway network as it is now privately operated. The segment is operated privately under a 99-year lease agreement signed with the Conservative provincial government, which was sold in 1999 for about C$3.1 billion to a consortium of Canadian and Spanish investors operating under the name 407 International Inc. The privatization of the Highway 407 ETR section has been the source of significant criticism, especially regarding increases in tolls, plate denial, and false charges. In addition, the safety of segments built after the sale of the freeway has been called into question.

Yorkdale Shopping Centre is a shopping mall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, at the southwest corner of the Highway 401 and Allen Road interchange in the former city of North York. It spans 1,845,725 square feet (171,473.5 m) of selling space and has sales of CA$1,905 per square foot (CA$20,505.25 per square metre), making it the country's third-largest mall by area, and the mall with the highest sales per unit area. It is one of the country's busiest malls, with 18 million visitors annually, and many international retailers have entered the Canadian market at Yorkdale.

It opened in 1964 as the largest enclosed shopping mall in the world. Yorkdale is currently owned by a joint venture between the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) through its subsidiary Oxford Properties Group and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation.

Interstate 94 (I-94) is an east–west Interstate Highway connecting the Great Lakes and northern Great Plains regions of the United States. Its western terminus is just east of Billings, Montana, at a junction with I-90; its eastern terminus is in Port Huron, Michigan, where it meets with I-69 and crosses the Blue Water Bridge into Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, where the route becomes Ontario Highway 402. It thus lies along the primary overland route from Seattle (via I-90) to Toronto (via Ontario Highway 401) and is the only east–west Interstate Highway to have a direct connection to Canada. It is the longest Interstate whose route number is not divisible by 5.

I-94 intersects with I-90 several times: at its western terminus; Tomah to Madison in Wisconsin; in Chicago, Illinois; and in Lake Station, Indiana. Major cities that I-94 connects to are Billings, Bismarck, Fargo, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit.