Waterloo Region Connected
General Road and Highway Discussion - Printable Version

+- Waterloo Region Connected (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com)
+-- Forum: Waterloo Region Works (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=14)
+--- Forum: Transportation and Infrastructure (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=25)
+--- Thread: General Road and Highway Discussion (/showthread.php?tid=335)



RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - tomh009 - 09-25-2015

That does make sense. Although I think the short-term impact on the traffic volumes would be fairly small.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - dunkalunk - 09-25-2015

Agree that the directional EB on-ramp at bridgeport road needs to be closed, the merge zone is far too short between the Bridgeport on-ramp and Lancaster off-ramp, and the Lancaster ramp is too useful to get rid of because of the downtown-bound traffic.

Getting rid of the directional ramp would necessitate the addition of traffic control or roundabouts at the ramp intersections in order to accomodate left-turning traffic entering the highway, but overall traffic signals would make this section of Bridgeport far safer than it is currently.

[/url][url=http://imgur.com/TA2aj3d][Image: TA2aj3d.png]

The removal of the directional ramp would similarly dovetail nicely into regional plans to put dedicated bike infrastructure on Erb/Bridgeport.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - SammyOES - 09-25-2015

I don't think it makes sense to close the EB on-ramp at Bridgeport. It's a pretty heavily used on ramp (although I don't know how it compares to Lancaster). Removing it also makes life more difficult coming from Uptown Waterloo to the highway.

Is the Lancaster exit really that much faster than continuing to the Wellington exit?


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - GtwoK - 09-25-2015

Sammy, in dunkalunk's example, EB on-ramp isn't closed. He's moved it so that it requires a left turn to get onto from Erb, which in turn allows it to meet the Highway quicker / the lane to be longer.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Markster - 09-25-2015

(09-25-2015, 03:49 PM)GtwoK Wrote: Sammy, in dunkalunk's example, EB on-ramp isn't closed. He's moved it so that it requires a left turn to get onto from Erb, which in turn allows it to meet the Highway quicker / the lane to be longer.

I believe Sammy's point is that there's a lot of volume making that movement, and that there would be quite the traffic backlog if they all needed to make the left turn.

Really the solution in this area is to just add the 1km worth of 3-laning to the highway. Bring a third lane from the 4 lane section through to the Bridgeport ramps. That would give the highway a chance to taper-down/open-up over a longer distance, minimizing the impact of any particular bottleneck.

The MTO only works in megaprojects though, so it's either 4 lanes all the way to King, or nothing. Undecided


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - GtwoK - 09-25-2015

Manitou has base asphalt down on the Courtland side of the bridge, and is open there now. The bridge hadn't been started as of a few days ago though, so Manitou is still not a through route as of yet.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Drake - 09-25-2015

I agree with closing Lancaster. Too close to Bridgeport. It's on a curve. It really bottlenecks the road at that point.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - tomh009 - 09-25-2015

(09-25-2015, 02:59 PM)SammyOES Wrote: Is the Lancaster exit really that much faster than continuing to the Wellington exit?

Faster, yes -- using the Wellington exit requires some extra distance, and then a left turn at Lancaster (if going to downtown Kitchener), or a right turn and a quite a bit of distance (if going to the hospital area).

If 85 is widened to three lanes up to Waterloo, I think the problem disappears anyway.  If it's not widened, though, eliminating Lancaster could be a low-cost option to improve southbound flow.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - SammyOES - 09-25-2015

I misunderstood dunkalunk and thought he had removed it entirely.

But if I had understood I'd have said what Markster wrote - that's a lot of traffic to make turn left there. Smile


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - tomh009 - 09-26-2015

(09-25-2015, 04:17 PM)Markster Wrote: Really the solution in this area is to just add the 1km worth of 3-laning to the highway.  Bring a third lane from the 4 lane section through to the Bridgeport ramps. That would give the highway a chance to taper-down/open-up over a longer distance, minimizing the impact of any particular bottleneck.

I agree, this is the best option, biggest benefit for the smallest cost, maybe only $10M (including rebuilding of ramps) rather than $60M for the full megaproject.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - timio - 09-29-2015

The Margaret Ave bridge is slated to open on Friday with final paving happening next week.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Pheidippides - 09-29-2015

it has been closed so long already, what's another week? Why wouldn't they just pave it to finish the job off, then re-open it instead of only partially re-opening it and having to work in the midst of traffic?


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Canard - 10-01-2015

Video about half-done painted lines on West Heights causing chaos: http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=718238


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - timio - 10-01-2015

Bike lanes were painted today. Still need to do the symbols though.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Viewfromthe42 - 10-05-2015

If all traffic EB on Erb/Bridgeport had to turn left/use a roundabout, you would gain another efficiency. Along Erb EB, people tend to crunch very tightly in the RH lane, which goes directly into the on/off ramp we're talking about. This means that you frequently see packs of multiple vehicles without any space between them trying to merge in a short, short distance. If any of them can't merge, it starts the traffic jam.

Instead, if a turn, curve, etc, forced vehicles to become more spread out, then the highway vehicles wouldn't need to accommodate as many in a pack at once (vehicles getting into that pack thanks to the final traffic light on Erb before the highway). Imagine highway cars traveling, in order, ABCDEFGH, and a pack of cars traveling, in order, 1234. The current design sees 1234 needing to merge into a new highway stream of cars A1B2C3D4EFGH, due to short merge time and car packing thanks to traffic lights as well as the lack of any speed reduction between Erb and the on-ramp (a cloverleaf is great for spreading cars out. If you spread them out, you can get them to merge more like A1BC2DE3FG4H, and each car 1234 can move up or back between easier/harder cars ABCDEFGH to merge between. When you lack flexibility, any trouble with merging creates the start of a rapidly-expanding bottleneck.