King's Highway 400, commonly referred to as Highway 400, historically as the Toronto–Barrie Highway, and colloquially as the 400, is a 400-series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking the city of Toronto in the urban and agricultural south of the province with the scenic and sparsely populated central and northern regions. The portion of the highway between Toronto and Lake Simcoe roughly traces the route of the Toronto Carrying-Place Trail, a historic trail between the Lower and Upper Great Lakes. North of Highway 12, in combination with Highway 69, it forms a branch of the Trans-Canada Highway (TCH), the Georgian Bay Route, and is part of the highest-capacity route from southern Ontario to the Canadian West, via a connection with the mainline of the TCH in Sudbury. The highway also serves as the primary route from Toronto to southern Georgian Bay and Muskoka, areas collectively known as cottage country. The highway is patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police and has a speed limit of 100 km/h (62 mph), except for the section south of Highway 401, where the speed limit is 80 km/h (50 mph).
Interchange of Highway 400 and 401, looking towards the south. The exit ramp to Highway 401 westbound is often congested.
Accidents between the distant interchanges on Highway 400 can cripple movement for several kilometres and hours
Twinning through the "Wahta Gap" in 2007
Widening work in King Township in 2020
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. The network is situated almost entirely in Southern Ontario, although Highway 400 extends into the more remote northern portion of the province.
Aerial view of the interchange between Highway 401, 403 and 410 in Mississauga
The Parclo interchange design is used throughout the 400-series network