User:Blue william/NS-104

Highway 104 in Nova Scotia runs from the New Brunswick border near Amherst to St. Peter's. Except for the portion on Cape Breton Island between Port Hawkesbury and St. Peter's, it is part of the Trans-Canada Highway.

Highway 104 mostly supplants the former route of Highway 4. In 1970, all sections of Highway 4 west of New Glasgow were renumbered, although the number was added back in the Mount Thom and Wentworth Valley areas in the 1990s when new alignments of Highway 104 opened to traffic.

Route
The route is 320 kilometres (199 miles) long, of which the western 177 km (110 miles) is a 4-lane divided freeway. From Amherst, the highway runs east to Oxford, then southeast on a tolled section through the Cobequid Pass that opened in 1997. Tolls for this section is $4 for cars and $3.50 per axle for commercial vehicles. It meets Highway 102 near Truro then turns back northeast past Mount Thom to the New Glasgow and Stellarton areas.

East of New Glasgow, the highway becomes 2 lanes and undivided, and portions have no controlled access. There are traffic lights in the Antigonish area, although construction on a four-laned bypass is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2008. This bypass will keep traffic moving at 110 km/h (70 mph), and eliminate the various bottlenecks between Antigonish and Heatherton, including stretches of road with a posted speed limit of 60 km/h (40 mph). Beginning at Heatherton (19 km to the east), Highway 104 is a two-lane freeway to Aulds Cove, where several gas stations and motels are located. The highway then crosses the Canso Causeway to Cape Breton Island. The highway is unsigned as it follows Route 4 through the town of Port Hawkesbury. From there, another 37 km (20 mile) two-lane freeway segment follows the southern coast of Cape Breton Island to its end at Highway 4 in St. Peter's. An extension of Highway 104 to Sydney has been proposed in the past.

The Nova Scotia provincial government has designated the entire length of Highway 104 from Amherst to St. Peters as a "strategic highway" to qualify for federal cost-sharing of maintenance and future upgrades. This designation has also been applied to the remaining Highway 4 corridor in Cape Breton along the south shore of Bras d'Or Lake from St. Peters to Sydney. It is eventually envisioned that the Trans-Canada Highway will follow the entire length of Highway 104 from Amherst to Sydney as a 4-lane freeway, upgraded from the existing two-lane freeway and uncontrolled access sections of the highway.

List of interchanges
Kilometre distances are approximate.