General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

That's great, and I hope you all take the time to go speak. This kind of change to transportation is the kind of thing that can make real long term changes to a city.

As for the "fact" I find it dubious that they're telling us anything we don't already know. It plays like they are starting a comprehensive multi-stakeholder review of all crossings, but if this was going on, they'd have talked about it by now. I'm betting it's still just Bridgeport they're looking at.

It's plausible they are looking for those to be precedent setting, perhaps? Doesn't mean they are necessarily starting a rebuild of all of them but establishing those as not acceptable for any future works would be a welcome change. Our highway crossings are perhaps the most failing part of the cross city network (looking at you, Fisher-Hallman).

Fair enough...

FWIW...this is a major departure from even recent regional policy, where by recently reconstructed crossings like Fischer-Hallman, Ottawa, and most famously (notoriously) Northfield are built to "TAC Standards" and regional engineers then publicly decree that they are fine and ya'll complainers are the problem.

If you're right, it's a real shame that this change of policy comes after a decade of reconstruction or enhancement of literally half a dozen of the interchanges (50%!!!) What a missed opportunity!

And in case you think I'm exaggerating...Ira Needles, Fischer Hallman, Homer-Watson/Ottawa, Ottawa again, Victoria St., and Northfield were all repaved, reconstructed, or majorly reconfigured, and King St. had the MUT added where the cyclist was killed by the driver. In all these cases no effort was made by the region to reconfigure the ramps to improve active transportation (plenty of effort was spent in several cases to reconfigure ramps to improve vehicle throughput of course).

So you can see why I'm cynical about the region on this issue...I'm glad if they've turned a corner, but it'll be another 50 years before many of those overpasses are touched again.

I am to understand that there has been some major staff turnover at the senior levels. That's probably a good thing. I hope the outgoing staff are proud of their legacy of death and destruction, fast traffic (except during rush hour).

Edit: Geez, I missed University which appears to have been repaved in 2014.