Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[Canard]

Now I'm curious. I drive over this every single day and have never noticed the special railings. I'll have to pay more attention on my drive home tonight. I think I know what design you're talking about, but I didn't realize they were rare or were being phased out.

[JCnb]

Demolition permits now applied for:

- 1065 Guelph Street (Fritz Electric)
- 686 Victoria St. (Old Factory Shoe Location)
- 800 Victoria St. (Bell / Kitchener Glass plaza)
- 808 Victoria St. (Monarch Oil)
- 61/63 Becker St (Apartment Buildings)

[TMKM94]

Demolition has started on the Monarch oil building and the plaza.

[embe]

How does one get from Bruce street to northbound 85? from the small diagrams it looks like the northbound on-ramp at Bruce is being removed? So you'd need to go along the Bruce street extension and there will be traffic lights (presumably) at Bingemans/Shirley, go under the tracks, and then merge with (new) westbound highway 7 traffic, and that combined flow then merges onto 85 northbound?

I can tell you right now there's a bottle neck with the collectors between Wellington and Lancaster as it is, seems the additional flow from 7 is going to make that worse.

Southbound 85 from Edna, looks like the on-ramp is removed also. Is this true?

[jamincan]

Yep, that seems to be the case. Looking at the diagram, the merge between the Bruce St. Extension and the 7-85 ramp looks extraordinarily short; less than 30m in fact. I'm not sure what the engineers are thinking in that case, because that looks incredibly unsafe.

http://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/a....php?aid=8

[Canard]

While that design is terrible and dangerous, and very uncommon in Ontario/Canada, that's how nearly every American on-ramp is. ("You must merge here")

[embe]

Yep, that seems to be the case. Looking at the diagram, the merge between the Bruce St. Extension and the 7-85 ramp looks extraordinarily short; less than 30m in fact. I'm not sure what the engineers are thinking in that case, because that looks incredibly unsafe.

http://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/a....php?aid=8

Hey, thanks for the link to that diagram, very helpful to this thread and much appreciated. 

So 30m is like what, 7 cars?  Probably yielding from Bruce to westbound 7 traffic at xxkph (what is the proposed limit anyways?)  Right or wrong I'm expecting 80-100kph cars coming down the 7 ramp ...and once it gets to the collectors there are basically 5 lanes that need to merge into 2 with northbound 85.  Already a CF in this area during rush hours, so I don't see anything making it off Bruce st at all ...hear your point about unsafe.

Seems like there is plenty of space to put eastbound 7 on-ramp after Victoria st? I'm not a city planner and don't mean to offend anyone on this forum, but I joined looking for info so thanks again

[SammyOES]

A month or two ago (not sure exactly when I first noticed them), they staked the route of the new highway.  It also looks like some of the houses along the north side of the existing highway 7 (where the new highway will go) have been marked for demolition.  And at least one looks like its been torn down already.

There also use to be a driving range just north of the Shantz Station gas station. But it didn't open this year and it looks like the new highway 7 is going right through their property so I assume the land was expropriated.

[GtwoK]

The Wellington St interchange will be shutting down nightly, starting this week. Here are some specifics:

[IEFBR14]

Time to upgrade my phone and Baka Bell Store is a pile of rubble to make room for the Bruce Street Extension to Wellington Street.  Amazing how much of a building can be recycled.                  

[GtwoK]

How will the rail bridge be handled? Both it, and the Victoria, and Frederick bridges will need to be extended. The Vic and Frederick ones will be torn down to do so, but they cant exactly tear down the rail bridge, considering it services GO.

[IEFBR14]

They figured out how to do it at Weber/Victoria and again at King/Victoria so one would think they would just do it over again.

   

[GtwoK]

They had ground to shift it onto in those cases - there was no existing bridge. There's no where to shift the tracks to in this case, unless they build a second bridge, move them temporarily, then build a 3rd bridge in place of the 1st and move them back, destroying the second bridge. Seems expensive.

[kps]

The previously posted documents indicate four new cutouts under the rail line, one for new ramp section.

[Canard]

...unless they build a second bridge, move them temporarily, then build a 3rd bridge in place of the 1st and move them back, destroying the second bridge. Seems expensive.

They sometimes do exactly this! I've seen it several times in my travels over the years. It's usually a steel latticework structure.