General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

Did a quick internet search. All of the articles that I came across, including this one from 2017, reference 7.6 M. https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...hener.html

Well that is good, perhaps MTO relaxed the requirement for the span to clear 8 lanes.

I don’t think that can be the explanation. The absolute minimum length for the bridge to clear the existing 6 lanes is 37.5m (distance from barrier to barrier measured in Google Maps); adding space for 2 more lanes, assuming the same width as the existing ones, would only add 7.5m or about 20% to the length of the bridge; and of course the approach structures would be substantially identical regardless. I don’t see provision for highway widening as being related to a large difference in cost, more than maybe 10%.

The number I heard was an in person number from a staff presentation at ATAC.

Hopefully ~7M is closer to the actual number.  But I still stand by the point, 7M buys the entire downtown grid. For cycling, there are more cost effective (and frankly, in most ways better) alternatives, but those alternatives do not meet GRTs goals. This will still get described as a cycling project.

I should have mentioned, your point is well taken. If the same money was spent on related projects in the area, not including a bridge, it would go pretty far. One can imagine a high-quality path (maybe even separate pedestrian/cyclist carriageways, as in Waterloo Park, parallel to Homer Watson, from Stirling down to Ottawa and Alpine. Also connect Avalon Pl. to Homer Watson and to Westmount with high-quality paths, and parallel to Westmount under and near the expressway. It might have a bigger impact than this one bridge.