General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

It just seems weird to slow down the highway 7 traffic at this spot (nothing else around) and divert traffic from the bigger roads to this small two lane section.  Because lots of people will probably start taking Shirley Drive to skip the busier turn onto Victoria if they’re heading the general Kitchener -> Guelph route.

Today I had my first opportunity to try the Eastbound Bingeman's Drive -> Shirley -> Victoria St route with the new stoplight.  It's just one data point but there was a lot more cars taking this route than I've seen before and I was tailgated the whole time while driving 55-60.  And then almost rear-ended when a person pulled out in front of me from a dealership. 

I'm not a traffic expert, but I really don't understand the overall goal here.  It makes the left turn onto Victoria much safer but at the cost of making the whole road much worse and less safe by diverting noticeable traffic from Victoria onto it.

Very interesting! I did not know they were making that change.

I speculate that there was enough traffic at Shirley/Victoria to “justify” the stoplight, so they put it in. But what they may not have remembered is that an intersection with a stoplight is more attractive for certain trips (in particular, the left turn you mention), so more traffic will be attracted, or we sometimes say induced, to use the route.

I find this especially amusing because I’ve long held that the intersections at either end of Shirley should be re-configured to make Victoria-Shirley-Bingemans Centre the primary route. Installing that stoplight may cause some traffic to re-configure itself already. If only we could have transportation engineers with foresight who know how to manage traffic demand rather than just responding to it!