General Road and Highway Discussion

[timio]

Adding an extra lane would require relocating Kingsway and rebuilding the freshly rebuilt Franklin overpass.. I was thinking adding an additional left lane to the on-ramp to replace the right lane from King, everything else remaining the same.

[ijmorlan]

Adding an extra lane would require relocating Kingsway and rebuilding the freshly rebuilt Franklin overpass..  I was thinking adding an additional left lane to the on-ramp to replace the right lane from King, everything else remaining the same.

D’oh! I wasn’t thinking about the overpass. A slight relocation of Kingsway probably wouldn’t be too bad, but extending the overpass probably moves it into the realm of being infeasible.

Even without maintaining 5 lanes through the area, I think your idea has merit. King St. can’t provide more than one lane’s worth of traffic volume anyway.

[Viewfromthe42]

It is definitely worse in the leftmost lane, as someone who drives this daily and has done both sides. Worse than being in the line when someone cuts in, forcing you to break from 30 to 50 down to near zero, is being in the left lane, and someone thinks a gap is forming and their last stop, and you go from 70-90 down to zero as they stop to nose in. The left shoulder has saved people ahead of me many times.

I suspect that the 85 to 8 flyover and the narrowness of 8, combined with the elevation of 85 and of 8, make it very tricky to consider doing a flyover.

Getting rid of the rockway-gifted lane of king, where you have no turns, and are about to be speeding up (hence fewer lanes needed for same vehicle count), makes perfect sense, with the only caveat of a truck at the stoplight slowly speeding up. We would have to wait, and maybe we should, and maybe that truck could have a disappearing right lane instead of the 7 on ramp being the disappearing one, but we definitely don't need two continuing lanes.

[ijmorlan]

Getting rid of the rockway-gifted lane of king, where you have no turns, and are about to be speeding up (hence fewer lanes needed for same vehicle count), makes perfect sense, with the only caveat of a truck at the stoplight slowly speeding up. We would have to wait, and maybe we should, and maybe that truck could have a disappearing right lane instead of the 7 on ramp being the disappearing one, but we definitely don't need two continuing lanes.

So I just took a closer look at the southbound traffic, and finally realized that the second lane comes from Charles St. combining into King. In principle that could provide enough traffic that 2 southbound lanes are actually needed. I think your suggestion of having the second lane merge in before the ramp from the 7 merges is probably good. Alternately, given that in the northbound direction the second lane simply disappears, rather than splitting off onto Charles St., it might still be OK to have the lane from Charles St. either become the right turn lane at Dixon St., or just have Charles St. meet King, with a right turn at the existing intersection with Jackson Ave. The current slip lane doesn’t have to stay that way.

[Viewfromthe42]

I have seen the flow at all hours of the day and never more than 4 vehicles at the red light. I'd be very comfortable taking the lane away as a through to 8 option at minimum.

[GtwoK]

Sidewalks are now in along one side of the King St reconstruction uptown, forms are in for the other side

[welltoldtales]

Yesterday I went to the Lancaster Smokehouse around 5PM and my goodness, what is with all the cars using Lancaster here? Is it because of Bridgeport? Folks from factories on that side of town going back to downtown? It definitely felt like there should be more than enough demand for more transit considering only 1 bus seems to really work that route.

[MidTowner]

Lancaster seems busy to me both ways both morning and afternoon rush, but when I take the 6 it seems underused.

It's the route into town for motorists coming from Elora and Fergus, and maybe some from Guelph- Bloomingdale Road and Bridge Street are often busy at that hour.

[curious_look]

Lancaster seems busy to me both ways both morning and afternoon rush, but when I take the 6 it seems underused.

It's the route into town for motorists coming from Elora and Fergus, and maybe some from Guelph- Bloomingdale Road and Bridge Street are often busy at that hour.

Definitely plenty are to/from Guelph. When I had that commute that was my preferred route, easy access to 85 and less chance for an accident or chaos that you get on the 7/Victoria strip.

[MidTowner]

Kitchener has passed its pilot program to lower speed limits to 40km/h on about a dozen streets in three wards.

We are pretty far behind. Hamilton has had entire swaths of the city with 40km/h speed limits, and 30km/h in school zones, for a few years. They're not exactly at the vanguard of road safety.

The province's changes a few years ago mean that it is now as cheap as a handful of signs to reduce speed limits in a large area.

And, of course, without changes to road design, will drivers who exceeded the previous 50km/h limit obey the new 40km/h? Well, I guess the pilot might tell us.

[welltoldtales]

Kitchener has passed its pilot program to lower speed limits to 40km/h on about a dozen streets in three wards.

We are pretty far behind. Hamilton has had entire swaths of the city with 40km/h speed limits, and 30km/h in school zones, for a few years. They're not exactly at the vanguard of road safety.

The province's changes a few years ago mean that it is now as cheap as a handful of signs to reduce speed limits in a large area.

And, of course, without changes to road design, will drivers who exceeded the previous 50km/h limit obey the new 40km/h? Well, I guess the pilot might tell us.

Sadly I don't think the pilot will help at all. I think the region has once again blocked things here. My understanding is most of council and the majority of staff were onboard for doing this change 2 years ago but then the region found out and now... we get a piecemeal pilot. Disappointing to the say the least.

[SammyOES]

And, of course, without changes to road design, will drivers who exceeded the previous 50km/h limit obey the new 40km/h? Well, I guess the pilot might tell us.

Anecdotal evidence from one fairly long 40km stretch of road I drive often on is that average speeds are 45-55km/h. I highly suspect if it was 50km/h average speeds would be 55-65 km/h. So that's something?

Although this stretch of road has pretty frequent police presence (I see them 1-2/month) and that might have something to do with it.

[GtwoK]

The last few missing pieces of sidewalk were poured uptown on one side of King, as well as the last stretch of bike lane on that side. With any luck they could reopen this to pedestrian traffic by Monday!

[plam]

More roll curbs eh. I saw pictures of the new bollards on the older section though.

[Spokes]

I thought roll curbs were out moving forward?