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General Road and Highway Discussion
There's no way that residential street has enough capacity for all the traffic that normally takes Sawmill. It's not even as wide as regular city street. If you want a bit of a shortcut take Peel Street in Winterbourne across the river but it's a gravel road.
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(05-09-2017, 12:40 AM)Bob_McBob Wrote: Is anyone else finding the detour for the Sawmill Rd water main construction in Conestogo rather tedious? The official detour turns a 3.2km and 3 minute drive through town into a 15.8km and 13 minute trek all the way up Northfield to Line 86 and then back down Katherine St. In July they are closing Northfield for the second phase and the second official detour adds 20km and 20 minutes to the drive! It's faster to just go all the way to Bridgeport. There is a residential street in Conestogo that bypasses the construction, but they have spotters at both ends stopping every car that enters during business hours and turning around non-residents without an official pass. Frustrating to say the least.

https://icreate3.esolutionsgroup.ca/2306...Routes.pdf

These spotters are who exactly? Residents? Police? Construction workers?
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(05-09-2017, 09:44 AM)clasher Wrote: There's no way that residential street has enough capacity for all the traffic that normally takes Sawmill. It's not even as wide as regular city street. If you want a bit of a shortcut take Peel Street in Winterbourne across the river but it's a gravel road.

I'm sure I saw a sign that says that Peel Street is closed at the bridge.
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It was closed over the weekend. I wasn't sure if it was a temporary thing because of water levels or something longer term.

I don't know much about this particular detour, but it definitely feels like the Township is too comfortable with forcing residents to take long detours. Same thing happened in the Breslau area last year. In that case, they definitely could have limited the amount of time the detour was necessary by a significant amount.
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Also... the official detour in July and August is Scotch Line? It's not even paved!
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(05-09-2017, 09:44 AM)clasher Wrote: There's no way that residential street has enough capacity for all the traffic that normally takes Sawmill. It's not even as wide as regular city street. If you want a bit of a shortcut take Peel Street in Winterbourne across the river but it's a gravel road.

Peel St is closed at the bridge for the duration of the construction. The sign doesn't say that, but I confirmed it with the township. There are large concrete barriers in front of the bridge. The don't want trucks over the load limit crossing so they just closed it completely.
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That's the sort of stuff that I find infuriating.
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If a truck that would collapse the bridge needs to be prevented from using it as a shortcut, I can understand the motivation.
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(05-09-2017, 01:40 PM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: If a truck that would collapse the bridge needs to be prevented from using it as a shortcut, I can understand the motivation.

This already happened in Wilmot.  Taxpayers are going to be on the hook for a million dollar repair.  It's a damn shame.
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(05-09-2017, 01:40 PM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: If a truck that would collapse the bridge needs to be prevented from using it as a shortcut, I can understand the motivation.

Maybe we should close every small bridge like this in the township?  We just can't take this chance!

The problem with that thinking is the tens/hundreds of thousands (edit: probably millions) of extra km that people have to drive to avoid the tiny chance we get a moronic truck driver that has the tiny chance of damaging the bridge.  

It looks like you could set up two different detours in this case.  One direction of traffic takes the residential road into the golf course area of Conestoga.  The other direction of traffic takes the peel street bridge.  And if they're really worried about the bridge, take the money they saved from needing spotters, closing the bridge, and extra road usage to put spotters (or a camera!) on the bridge with a big sign saying trucks over X weight can't take the bridge.
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(05-09-2017, 01:42 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(05-09-2017, 01:40 PM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: If a truck that would collapse the bridge needs to be prevented from using it as a shortcut, I can understand the motivation.

This already happened in Wilmot.  Taxpayers are going to be on the hook for a million dollar repair.  It's a damn shame.

It's worse in this case because it has already been decided the bridge won't be repaired or replaced once it becomes structurally unstable, so a single heavy truck crossing could mean a permanent closure. It already had barriers to prevent large trucks from crossing, but the load limit is only 3 tonnes which is not hard to exceed with detoured traffic ignoring the single vehicle limit. I have no problem with the temporary bridge closure, but I think the detour is extremely onerous for 8 months. I wonder if they could have staged it a bit differently to allow some traffic through during construction.
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To put some context on my point. If we say the extra detour (avoiding the two shorter routes available) requires an extra million km to be driven (which seems reasonable?) then using CRA numbers we're looking at a rough cost of half a million dollars in extra costs put on the people that have to take this detour. And that's just driving related costs that says nothing of their time or related costs to the economy.

But because nobody sees these costs and the majority of us don't have to bear them, people making decisions don't actually care.
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(05-09-2017, 11:16 AM)Section ThirtyOne Wrote:
(05-09-2017, 12:40 AM)Bob_McBob Wrote: Is anyone else finding the detour for the Sawmill Rd water main construction in Conestogo rather tedious? The official detour turns a 3.2km and 3 minute drive through town into a 15.8km and 13 minute trek all the way up Northfield to Line 86 and then back down Katherine St. In July they are closing Northfield for the second phase and the second official detour adds 20km and 20 minutes to the drive! It's faster to just go all the way to Bridgeport. There is a residential street in Conestogo that bypasses the construction, but they have spotters at both ends stopping every car that enters during business hours and turning around non-residents without an official pass. Frustrating to say the least.

https://icreate3.esolutionsgroup.ca/2306...Routes.pdf

These spotters are who exactly? Residents? Police? Construction workers?

Direction of traffic by police officer
134 (1) Where a police officer considers it reasonably necessary,
(a) to ensure orderly movement of traffic;
(b) to prevent injury or damage to persons or property; or
© to permit proper action in an emergency,
he or she may direct traffic according to his or her discretion, despite the provisions of this Part, and every person shall obey his or her directions.  R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8, s. 134 (1).

Highway closing
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), a police officer may close a highway or any part thereof to vehicles by posting or causing to be posted signs to that effect, or placing or causing to be placed traffic control devices as prescribed in the regulations.  R.S.O. 1990, c. H.8, s. 134 (2).

If they are not police, I wonder what gives them the authority to block your access.  [I guess if they have the STOP/SLOW sign and never change it from STOP, you might get a "Disobey Sign" ticket if and officer was watching.  I've always wondered if I went by one of these signs if it is an offence... HTA says at a stop sign I need to stop and proceed when safe to do so.  If its safe, why do I need to wait?]

Coke
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I think this is the applicable section:

Quote:146.1 (3) Where a traffic control person or firefighter displays a traffic control stop sign, the driver of any vehicle or street car approaching the person shall stop before reaching him or her and shall not proceed until the traffic control person or firefighter stops displaying the traffic control stop sign. 2005, c. 26, Sched. A, s. 23.
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I attended an interesting webinar/ESRI infomercial today on Vision Zero. They showed how various communities are using their software to work toward their Vision Zero goals.

The most interesting part was the set of free tools that ESRI has developed to help communities with low staff capacity or communities with non-interest in the initiative to crowd-source data collection and pull together open data sources to make informed decisions and advocacy.

A link to the tools:
http://solutions.arcgis.com/local-govern...sion-zero/

Demo app:
http://statelocaltryit.maps.arcgis.com/a...16ecb81b1b

The recording can be found here:
https://resources.esri.ca/webinars/impro...ision-zero
or here.

Topic: Improving Road Safety for Pedestrians with Vision Zero
Recording date: Tuesday, May 9, 2017 1:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00)
Duration: 51 minutes
Description: Pedestrian fatalities and serious injuries on our roads are at an all-time high and yet many are fully preventable. While there are many contributing factors for such incidents, this webinar will focus on how GIS technology can be used to identify where pedestrians are most at risk so municipalities can help eliminate this epidemic. 

Key Points
- Use historic pedestrian fatality and serious injury data to visualize hotspots
- Add and examine other data to determine possible influencers such as demographics, transit routes, community zoning, time of day, etc.
- Explore methods to establish quantifiable comparisons to help identify where to prioritize interventions
- Publish key information to raise awareness

Intended Audience
This webinar is intended for city planners, municipal safety and traffic staff as well as police and emergency responders who want to understand ways to use data to support key prevention activities.
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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