General Road and Highway Discussion

[cherrypark]

It doesn't matter, you want to make driving easier. Making driving easier increases traffic.

True, but I'm certainly not advocating that we add another lane everywhere and turn Ira Needles into a ringroad highway. I worry that we sometimes let 'perfect' get in the way of 'good enough,' and end up making our situation worse waiting for the absolute best scenario. Less congestion means that cars spend less time on the highway, and that DOES make it easier to drive, but it also A) lessens the amount of idling from thousands of cars per day, which throws pollution into our air, B) gives people extra time in their day, that they might spend walking to the grocery store instead of driving, because now they have an extra 20 minutes in their evening where walking becomes feasible, and C) ideally minimizes the sort of dangerous driving that injures and kills people because driversaren't weaving through traffic trying to get ahead of the congestion.

The only way I support a third highway lane between Wellington and Bridgeport is with the removal of the on-ramp from Lancaster. That makes Lancaster a safer road for people to walk/bike on because they don't have to navigate the sweeping on-ramp lanes, and hopefully lessens congestion on the highway. That's a win for everyone.

I am fully in support of building this city up instead of out, and building spaces to revolve around people instead of cars, but I am also aware that it's not going to come all at once, and that we can make small changes in the meantime that aren't entirely in the direction we want to go, but still creates some kind of improvement. In an ideal world, I would love to see the region's population grow over the next 30 years as our new condos fill up, but have the additional population use active transit/public transit to a degree that we never feel like we need to expand/widen our highway. But the odds are we will always have the highway, so let's at least make it flow in a logical way.

I don't really see what the argument against this would be, even if the time of day benefits are more about driver convenience than any secondary positive outcomes. This small section of an added lane between the collector and next exit is a small concession to improve safety and reduce otherwise pointless congestion with the benefits of also improving access and safety for other modes. Seems like the a good solution.