General Road and Highway Discussion

[Pheidippides]

I've been working on a map proposal for two-way Erb and Bridgeport for while, but I have been slowed by lack of experience using Q GIS having only ever used MapInfo and ArcGIS.

I didn't know what I was going to do with it when I was done though, so "how to advocate" would be a useful discussion.

I really wish the City/Region had more forethought of looking at the larger picture before putting through the current changes to Erb, Caroline, Bridgeport, and Albert.

As wide as most of Erb and Bridgeport is in many places, the right of way is astonishingly wider in some places. The only real pinch point is between King and Regina, but even there you can squeeze one EB lane, one WB lane, a turning lane, sidewalks, and 1 segregated cycling lane; and that is using the obscenely generous lane widths in the regional guidelines.

For the most of both roads there is room for at least 2 lanes in one direction, 1 lane in the opposite direction, turning lanes, 2m sidewalks, buffer (hardscape or landscape) and 1 segregated cycling lane, and pedestrian refuges. The net result is that you still have 3 lanes going EB (2 on Erb, 1 on Bridgeport) and 3 lanes going WB (1 on Erb, 2 on Bridgeport), and one segregated cycling lane EB on Erb and WB on Bridgeport, and then also have redundancy in the network for when there are crashes or road work.