(11-17-2019, 06:32 PM)YKF Wrote:(11-17-2019, 04:03 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: They should just close Lancaster at the tracks to motor vehicle traffic. Either keep a pedestrian/bicycle level crossing or build an overpass just for that traffic. With the new roads being built as part of the highway interchange to the east, and the bridge at Margaret, there is no need for Lancaster to remain as a route for crossing the tracks in motorized transportation.I don't think Lancaster would ever be closed to vehicular traffic. It's far too significant of a street to close off at the tracks. If anything, St. Leger could be a candidate for closing off at the tracks to eliminate another at-grade rail crossing. As for Lancaster, I believe it should be grade separated. It's very similar to the grade crossing of Adelaide Street/CPR in London, IMO (which is currently in the process of getting grade separated).
It can’t be that significant. It doesn’t have enough capacity to be significant. South (east) of Victoria, it’s a narrow two lane road. North (west) of Victoria, the rail crossing regularly closes for minutes at a time during rush hour.
Look at the map carefully — if somebody comes south (east) on Lancaster, they either have to continue on Lancaster, or turn left or right at Victoria.
If they would turn left at Victoria, they can use the new roads to be built as part of the highway interchange to cross under the tracks.
If they would turn right at Victoria, they can use Margaret to cross over the tracks.
If they would continue on Lancaster, we’re talking about a relatively small fraction of traffic, and they can use one of the previously-mentioned routes to cross the tracks and then Frederick, Queen, or Victoria to get back to Lancaster.
Closing the Lancaster crossing would eliminate the traffic insanity around that area while only slightly increasing traffic on mostly Margaret and the new access roads. It’s not clear to me that traffic on Wellington would necessarily much increase — when I talk about using Margaret or the new access roads, I don’t mean to use Wellington to get over to those roads necessarily; instead I’m suggesting people would re-evaluate their entire routes. Furthermore, the inability to come down Lancaster would probably reduce traffic on Lancaster south (east) of the tracks, and therefore reduce the insanity where Cedar, Krug, Lancaster, and Weber all meet.
Realistically, though, yeah, they’ll just build a grade separation without even seriously studying the idea of closing a road instead. And, it actually is possible that a serious study would reveal that closing the road would be bad for traffic, but I think it would improve traffic. I certainly don’t believe that just because it’s busy now that closing it would make things worse. We already know from real-world examples in California that entire congested freeways can be suddenly closed due to earthquakes and it doesn’t necessarily make traffic worse — it can actually make it better.
The dumb thing is that building the grade separation will run the study for real. I predict that during the construction, traffic will improve, including at the relatively distant corner of Cedar and Weber, to the extent that we will wonder why the bridge construction is being done. At a minimum, they should try closing the crossing for a few months; then only if traffic is really bad should they consider spending millions of dollars to build a bridge.