Queen Elizabeth Way

Queen Elizabeth Way
Queen Elizabeth Way highlighted in red
Route information
Maintained by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario
Length	139.1 km[1] (86.4 mi)
History	Built: 1931 – October 14, 1956
Major junctions
Fort Erie end	I-190 in Buffalo, NY
Major intersections	Highway 420 in Niagara Falls  Highway 405 in Niagara-on-the-Lake  Highway 406 in St. Catharines Red Hill Valley Parkway in Hamilton  Highway 403 / 407 ETR in Burlington  Highway 403 at the Mississauga–Oakville boundary
Toronto end	Highway 427 / Gardiner Expressway in Toronto
Location
Country	Canada
Province	Ontario
Highway system
Ontario provincial highways Current Former 400-series
← Highway 427 → Highway 502
Former provincial highways Highway 500  →

The Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York. The highway begins at the Canada–United States border on the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and travels 139.1 kilometres (86.4 mi) around the western end of Lake Ontario, ending at Highway 427 as the physical highway continues as the Gardiner Expressway into downtown Toronto. The QEW is one of Ontario's busiest highways, with an average of close to 250,000 vehicles per day on some sections.

Major highway junctions are at Highway 420 in Niagara Falls, Highway 405 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Highway 406 in St. Catharines, the Red Hill Valley Parkway in Hamilton, Highway 403 and Highway 407 in Burlington, Highway 403 at the Oakville–Mississauga boundary, and Highway 427 in Etobicoke. Within the Regional Municipality of Halton the QEW is signed concurrently with Highway 403. The speed limit is 100 km/h (62 mph) throughout most of its length, with the exception being between Hamilton and St. Catharines where the posted limit was raised to 110 km/h (68 mph) on September 26, 2019 as part of the government's plan to raise the speed limits across the province.^[2]

The history of the QEW dates back to 1931, when work began to widen the Middle Road in a similar fashion to the nearby Dundas Highway and Lakeshore Road as a relief project during the Great Depression. Following the 1934 provincial election, Ontario Minister of Highways Thomas McQuesten and his deputy minister Robert Melville Smith changed the design to be similar to the autobahns of Germany, dividing the opposite directions of travel and using grade-separated interchanges at major crossroads. When opened to traffic in 1937, it was the first intercity divided highway in North America and featured the longest stretch of consistent illumination in the world. While not a true freeway at the time, it was gradually upgraded, widened, and modernized beginning in the 1950s, more or less taking on its current form by 1975. Since then, various projects have continued to widen the route. In 1997, the provincial government turned over the responsibility for the section of the QEW between Highway 427 and the Humber River to the City of Toronto, which redesignated this segment as a westward extension of the Gardiner Expressway.