Автомагистраль 7 провинции Онтарио: маршрут и особенности

Ontario provincial highway
The two highways travel east concurrently for , passing through the town of Shakespeare as it travels in a straight line through farmland. Southwest of New Hamburg, the route curves northeast into Waterloo Region, eventually widening into the four lane Conestoga Parkway east of Nafziger Road. It follows this divided freeway past interchanges at Waterloo Regional Road 51 (Foundry Street) south of Baden, Waterloo Regional Road 12 (Queen Street/Notre Dame Drive) south of Petersburg, and Waterloo Regional Road 70 (Trussler Road) north of Mannheim, where it enters Kitchener and becomes surrounded by residential subdivisions. Within Kitchener, Highway 7 encounters interchanges at Waterloo Regional Road 58 (Fischer Hallman Road)(at which point it widens to six lanes), Waterloo Regional Road 28 (Homer Watson Boulevard), Waterloo Regional Road 53 (Courtland Avenue), Waterloo Regional Road 15 (King Street)/Highway 8 (at which point it widens to eight lanes), Waterloo Regional Road 14 (Ottawa Street) and Waterloo Regional Road 55 (Victoria Street). The Highway 8 concurrency ends at the King Street interchange, with it diverging southeast onto the Freeport Diversion. Highway 7 exits at Victoria Street (four lane arterial) while the parkway continues north into Waterloo as Highway 85. Highway 7 exits Kitchener after crossing the Grand River, where it enters farmland again for the brief journey to Guelph along Victoria Street and Woodlawn Road. Midway between the two cities, the route enters Wellington County. Within Guelph, it meets Highway 6 at the northern end of the Hanlon Expressway. The two routes travel southeast along the expressway to Wellington County Road 124 (Wellington Street, former Highway 24), where Highway 7 branches northeast into downtown Guelph. It exits the city along York Road after crossing the Speed River, travelling parallel to and south of the Goderich–Exeter Railway. At Rockwood, the highway enters Halton Region and begins to zig zag through several communities in Halton Hills. These include Acton, where the route intersects former Highway 25, and Georgetown. Just east of Norval, the western section of Highway 7 ends at the Halton–Peel boundary. The road continues into Brampton as Peel Regional Road 107 (Bovaird Drive). ), stub of the old road exists today west of Markham Road that was a result of re alignment of Highway 7. The Toronto Star ran a series of articles in 2013 depicting the urbanization of the downloaded Highway 7 in the Greater Toronto Area, including a proposed name change to "Avenue 7".

The eastern segment of Highway 7 runs from Donald Cousens Parkway (York Regional Road 48) in Markham to Highway 417 in Ottawa, a length of Between Brooklin and north of Sunderland, Highway 7 assumes a north–south routing and is concurrent with Highway 12. The section from Sunderland to the eastern terminus of the highway is designated as part of the Central Ontario Route of the Trans Canada Highway. Travelling east from Donald Cousens Parkway, Highway 7 exits the urbanized portion of Markham and enters the Greenbelt, a large tract of land north of the GTA restricted from development. It curves north at the community of Locust Hill along an alignment that eliminated a jog, then curves back to the east as it crosses into Durham Region. It travels north of and parallel to Highway 407 to Brougham, curving to cross the former eastern terminus of the freeway near Brock Road (Durham Regional Road 1). East of the Highway 407 overpass, Highway 7 widens to four lanes and curves around the community of Greenwood and the hill that it stands on. The route crosses the northern end of Pickering, entering Whitby at Lakeridge Road (Durham Regional Road 23). Between Lakeridge Road and Highway 12, the route was rebuilt for the new Highway 407E and West Durham Link, with an overpass constructed at Cochrane Road. East of that, the route enters Brooklin and meets Highway 12. On April 27, 1921, the route was extended east to the Wellington–Halton boundary. Several days later, on May 4, the highway was extended further east to Hurontario Street in Brampton. The Great Northern Highway, as it was known at the time, was numbered as Highway 7 during the summer of 1925. Assumptions on June 22 and July 2, 1927 extended Highway 7 from Brampton to Peterborough. A portion of the original routing of Highway 12 between Sunderland and Lindsay was renumbered in this process and a concurrency established between Brooklin and Sunderland. During the early 1930s, the DHO decided that Highway 7 would ultimately serve as the most direct route between Toronto and Ottawa; at that time the only option was via Highway 2 and Highway 16. The first step in this undertaking was to extend Highway 7 as far as Madoc along existing settler routes. This section was assumed on September 17, 1930. On November 18, 1931, construction was accelerated between Madoc and Perth as a major depression relief project when eight contracts were set to build the new route. Over 2700 men blasted rock, dredged muskeg and endured a constant barrage of blood sucking insects in order to construct this new link. The majority of it followed along a Canadian Pacific right of way (now abandoned past the town of Havelock) which had been cleared in 1881, deviating at times to provide a better alignment, avoid large muskeg or to lessen excavation work, most of which was performed by hand. On February 10 and February 17, the route, still incomplete, was surveyed and assumed as an extension of Highway 7. The new highway was opened to traffic on August 23, 1932. Between the 1930s and 1960s, Highway 7 connected Sarnia with Perth; Highway 15 continued from Perth to Ottawa. By the mid 1950s, the well established highway network had changed travel characteristics, and the numbering of Highway 15 between Perth and Ottawa was confusing motorists. The Ottawa Board of Trade petitioned the Department of Highways to renumber several highways surrounding the city. The department performed a series of renumberings similar to these recommendations following the extension of Highway 43 on September 8, 1961. Highway 15 was rerouted between Smiths Falls and Carleton Place to travel concurrently with Highway 29; Highway 7 was extended along the former routing from Perth to Carleton Place and signed concurrently with Highway 15 eastward to Ottawa. This brought the highway to its peak length of
At an at grade intersection with Highway 40 (Modeland Road, formerly Lucasville Road), Highway 7 transitioned into Highway 402, inaugurated in 1953, which continued westwards to the Bluewater Bridge at the American border. In 1957, the DHO announced that Highway 402 would be extended east of Sarnia to London, starting with the construction of an interchange at Modeland Road to replace the at grade intersection in 1963 64, although Highway 402 would continue to default to Highway 7 for the near future as the rest of the extension was still being planned. This interchange would serve as the terminus for a new bypass of Sarnia, as in 1980 a second overpass was built at this interchange during the twinning of Highway 40 to Wellington Street. The extension of Highway 402 involved a new alignment east of Murphy Road to a new interchange with Highway 40, just north of the existing Highway 40 interchange with Highway 7, while Highway 7 would continue to a redirected Exmouth Street (causing a section of the latter to be bypassed and renamed as Old Exmouth Street). Highway 402 was completed between Sarnia and Highway 401 in 1982, and with traffic shifting to the newly completed freeway, this resulted in the redundancy of Highway 7 west of London. Nonetheless, Highway 7 remained provincially maintained until the segment west of Highway 4 was transferred to county jurisdiction on January 1, 1998; a process referred to as downloading. The former highway is now known as Lambton County Road 22 (London Line) and Middlesex County Road 7 (Elginfield Road). The section from Thedford to Elginfield was transferred to Lambton and Middlesex counties on January 1, 1998. As the construction of Highway 407 progressed across the northern end of the Greater Toronto Area, the MTO transferred sections of Highway 7 to the regions of Peel and York. On June 7, 1997, the section between Highway 410 and Highway 404 was transferred to the regions of Peel and York; but renumbered as Peel Regional Road 107 on March 26, 1998. To make the former highway easier to follow through Brampton, the Bovaird Drive portion of the route was subsequently also numbered Regional Road 107, after the highway was transferred to the Region of Peel on November 28, 2001. The non Highway 7 portions of Queen Street and Bovaird Drive west and east of Highway 410 are designated as Regional Roads 6 and 10 respectively. In the Peterborough area, Highway 7 was rerouted from travelling through the city to bypassing it along Highway 115. This situation took over six years to set in place. On April 1, 1997, the sections of Highway 7 entering the western edge of Peterborough along North Monaghan Parkway and Sir Sanford Fleming Drive were transferred to the county and city, creating a gap between Springville and the Peterborough Bypass. This situation was rectified on May 1, 2003, when the section of Highway 7A that until then was a continuation of the road south from Springville to Highway 115 was renumbered as Highway 7. The concurrency with Highway 115 was extended southwest to remove the discontinuity entirely.

In 2005, Highway 7 was made the second main arterial for York Region's Viva Rapid Transit service (after Yonge Street), leading to the expansion of the CN MacMillan Bridge and Highway 400 overpass.

On March 23, 2007, the Government of Ontario announced the approval of an Environmental Impact Assessment for a four lane controlled access highway between Kitchener, and Guelph, as traffic on Highway 401 is growing steadily and approaching capacity, along with the current two lane alignment of Highway 7. This would connect to the Conestoga Parkway via an expansion of the existing Wellington Road half cloverleaf interchange, with additional semi directional flyover ramps above making it a four level interchange. The eastern end of the proposed Highway 7 freeway would terminate at, and interline with, the Hanlon Expressway (Highway 6), which is also scheduled for upgrades to a full freeway beginning in June 2015. Combined with plans to extend the Conestoga Parkway westward to Stratford, this would result in the Highway 7 route following a continuous freeway all the way to Guelph. As one of the prerequisite projects, on the Conestoga Parkway the Victoria Street overpass was demolished overnight on February23–24, 2018, and was replaced with a new structure that reopened to traffic on October28; the new bridge is longer and has a higher elevation to accommodate the future ramps between the Kitchener Guelph freeway and the Conestoga Parkway. In July 2020, the Ford government announced that it would fund the highway project linking Guelph and Kitchener and building a new bridge for the highway over the Grand River. It is expected to cost 764 million dollars for the 18 kilometre freeway.