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 - clasher - 05-10-2017

If I understand the stuff posted earlier in the thread about the passes it seems to me the people living in Conestogo would have access to their homes with those special passes. It's the through-traffic that suffers... and I think the people that planned this whole thing knew all the things we know about it and probably had access to some numbers to justify this decision. Even if someone drove this detour every day for the whole 8 months it would add what, 5000km to their driving for that year... that seems like a lot to me but over a lifetime of driving it isn't that much.

I just don't understand what you think a good decision would be for this? Assuming the construction people aren't lying and they have to completely close the road what is your alternative?


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - SammyOES2 - 05-10-2017

If all the people living in Conestogo (or within a reasonable distance of the construction) get this pass, then I'll say that's pretty reasonable and everyone else can do the longer detours.  But, I'm willing to best that's not the case.

They almost certainly don't take this stuff into consideration, because they almost never do.  And even the people paying the cost don't realize what its really costing them.

"Even if someone drove this detour every day for the whole 8 months it would add what, 5000km to their driving for that year... that seems like a lot to me but over a lifetime of driving it isn't that much."

IMO, this is a silly argument.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Section ThirtyOne - 05-10-2017

My problem with the pass system is that it sets a dangerous precedent.

My local street is also used as a short cut by many and also a staging area for taxi cabs waiting for fares at the hospital. Where is my pass system?


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - clasher - 05-10-2017

I guess part of the issue is that doing anything but the bare minimum is gonna cost more money and usually the government seems to pick the lowest bidder. I dunno if that's a legal thing that they do or if it's just the prevailing anti-tax attitude some people seem to have.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - Bob_McBob - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 09:59 AM)SammyOES2 Wrote: If all the people living in Conestogo (or within a reasonable distance of the construction) get this pass, then I'll say that's pretty reasonable and everyone else can do the longer detours.  But, I'm willing to best that's not the case.

The construction workers said they were only issued to Conestogo residents who need to access the street to reach their homes. The weird thing is you can actually drive the full length of Sawmill Rd right now since they are maintaining "access" to the school and all the businesses. I write that with quotations because the road is so dug up even my SUV had trouble with ground clearance, so I'm not sure how most traffic would access businesses without using Flax Mill Dr (the residential street we're discussing).

A lot of people outside Conestogo rely on through access to Sawmill Rd since there are so few river crossings. My mum lives 5km away in Winterbourne and the detour adds 6.5km each way to her drive into Waterloo. For the two months with the Northfield detour it will be 10km. That's over 3500km of extra driving during the 8 months of construction.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - tomh009 - 05-10-2017

However, not everyone will be having to take the detour every day. And not all detours are the same. To north end of Waterloo it may be a 6.5 or 10 km detour from Winterbourne, but from Winterbourne to uptown the drive through Bridgeport is actually somewhat quicker (and shorter), at least according to Mr Google. Even going to north Waterloo, I presume she could take Peel St rather than driving all the way to Line 86, minimizing the detour distance.

In the end, this is no fun for residents, but neither are the downtown street closures or the 401 construction-induced traffic james. And yet the work needs to get done. I don't think anyone has a magic want to make the inconveniences go away -- even with a larger budget.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - SammyOES2 - 05-10-2017

I'm not sure what the point of this forum is if we're ok with rationalizations like:

"In the grand scheme of your life, you probably won't care"

or

"Nothing is perfect... everyone suffers sometimes... so why try?"


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - timc - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 04:32 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Even going to north Waterloo, I presume she could take Peel St rather than driving all the way to Line 86, minimizing the detour distance.

Except for that pesky Peel Street bridge closure. :-D


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - clasher - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 04:45 PM)SammyOES2 Wrote: I'm not sure what the point of this forum is if we're ok with rationalizations like:

"In the grand scheme of your life, you probably won't care"

or

"Nothing is perfect... everyone suffers sometimes... so why try?"

So what do you want us to do? You haven't even really had a grand alternatives for this situation, I dunno what else we're supposed do.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - tomh009 - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 04:47 PM)timc Wrote:
(05-10-2017, 04:32 PM)tomh009 Wrote: Even going to north Waterloo, I presume she could take Peel St rather than driving all the way to Line 86, minimizing the detour distance.

Except for that pesky Peel Street bridge closure. :-D

Ha!  Didn't know about that!  (It has been years since I was last in Winterbourne.)  But my point stands that the detour mostly affects people going to the north end of Waterloo; going to uptown or to Kitchener is largely the same drive, at least from Winterbourne.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - jeffster - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 02:43 PM)clasher Wrote: I guess part of the issue is that doing anything but the bare minimum is gonna cost more money and usually the government seems to pick the lowest bidder. I dunno if that's a legal thing that they do or if it's just the prevailing anti-tax attitude some people seem to have.

Legally they have to take the lowest "qualifying" quote. So any bidder, no matter how low they are, wouldn't win the bid automatically if they don't meet 100% of the qualifications. The lowest bid, that meets all terms, conditions, qualifications, win the bid.

They, of course, can put stuff in the tenders to make sure that only certain bidders qualify, but either way, they legally have to go cheap, and the bidders know this.

I recall a tender coming up with some company, and they only got one bidder. The bidder didn't want the job so he bid high, and got the contract. This was none-government, but the company honoured the tender.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - darts - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 05:49 AM)Canard Wrote: I get they don't want people driving through, but I really don't like the way this whole "pass" thing smells.

We wanted to drive to Boblo Island a few years back, for historic reasons. There's a small ferry that goes over to it. It holds like 10-15 cars. About 5 cars were lined up to board. When it arrived, we all went to drive on. Ours was the only one stopped by some kid in an orange safety vest.

"Uh, where are you going?"
"...across to the other side?"
"Do you live there?"
"No...?"
"Well, uh... I can't really let you go across. We don't really want people going over that don't live there."
".....?"

It just felt totally unofficial and really pissed me off (and we'd driven for like 3 hours just to check it out), so we turned around and went home. Hate stuff like this.
As I understand it the ferry is paid for and run by the resident's of the island, so just their guests and themselves can use it.

You can go there by boat yourself on the beach from the southwest.

Does that mean you didn't stay to go to Fort Malden?


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - ijmorlan - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 07:17 PM)darts Wrote:
(05-10-2017, 05:49 AM)Canard Wrote: I get they don't want people driving through, but I really don't like the way this whole "pass" thing smells.

We wanted to drive to Boblo Island a few years back, for historic reasons. There's a small ferry that goes over to it. It holds like 10-15 cars. About 5 cars were lined up to board. When it arrived, we all went to drive on. Ours was the only one stopped by some kid in an orange safety vest.

"Uh, where are you going?"
"...across to the other side?"
"Do you live there?"
"No...?"
"Well, uh... I can't really let you go across. We don't really want people going over that don't live there."
".....?"

It just felt totally unofficial and really pissed me off (and we'd driven for like 3 hours just to check it out), so we turned around and went home. Hate stuff like this.
As I understand it the ferry is paid for and run by the resident's of the island, so just their guests and themselves can use it.

You can go there by boat yourself on the beach from the southwest.

Does that mean you didn't stay to go to Fort Malden?

Interesting. If that is true, it should be clearly advertised as such — people shouldn’t drive 3 hours only to be turned away. Also I wonder who maintains the roads on the island. It seems questionable to me if the mainland municipality is maintaining roads that can’t be reached using the ferry. If on the other hand the island residents have their own municipality or something like a condo corporation that could be OK.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - darts - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 07:42 PM)ijmorlan Wrote:
(05-10-2017, 07:17 PM)darts Wrote: As I understand it the ferry is paid for and run by the resident's of the island, so just their guests and themselves can use it.

You can go there by boat yourself on the beach from the southwest.

Does that mean you didn't stay to go to Fort Malden?

Interesting. If that is true, it should be clearly advertised as such — people shouldn’t drive 3 hours only to be turned away. Also I wonder who maintains the roads on the island. It seems questionable to me if the mainland municipality is maintaining roads that can’t be reached using the ferry. If on the other hand the island residents have their own municipality or something like a condo corporation that could be OK.

I believe they all pay some sort of maintenance fees, although looking online it seems that there is ferry service for visitors. When I asked my relatives before about it they said the ferry was just for island residents and other people can't go there, I've never tried, wasn't that interested in seeing Tim Allen's house.


RE: General Road and Highway Discussion - SammyOES2 - 05-10-2017

(05-10-2017, 04:54 PM)clasher Wrote: So what do you want us to do? You haven't even really had a grand alternatives for this situation, I dunno what else we're supposed do.

There are at least 3 possible alternatives listed in this thread.