General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Nah, don't worry, they do accomplish that, they absolutely have turn lanes lol. More lanes is always better or so the Regional engineering mantra goes.

Not always. There are lots of places around the Region where there are 4 lane roads without turn lanes; many intersections would operate more smoothly if they were 2 lanes plus turn lanes than the way they actually are. I agree they want more lanes than are appropriate; I even agree that there is a pro-motor-vehicle bias; but it’s not a very smart pro-motor-vehicle bias. Even if one takes the position that motor vehicles must move smoothly they’re not doing a very good job of spending the road money.

Yes, but on the expanded Highland Rd., the road we were speaking about, DOES have turn lanes at every intersection.

And yes, it's frustrating how our regional engineers aren't even good at building roads for cars. That was one of the more shocking realizations. And I think it comes from a fear of actually implementing and enforcing restrictions. Like in many things, our "freedom" is self defeating.

That being said, I'll give them credit, bus bays are bad for transit riders because buses are often delayed getting into traffic, and our regional engineers don't seem keen on implementing those. But I can only imagine it's because of institutional inertia, not because of any thoughtful consideration of the situation...or at least, that's what I assume based on all their other decisions that seem rooted in inertia.

And yeah, the signal issues are big time problematic for everyone. I think this is why I say it's inertia, none of their decisions seem to be based in careful consideration, just blindly applying rules, and those rules are derived from car dependent policies.

Not sure how far back your memory of the Region goes, but some years ago they removed a number of bus bays. For example, there used to be one on King northbound at the highway interchange / Manulife entrance. I remember that they specifically adopted a policy of removing them because of the trouble buses had getting back into traffic. So at this point it’s institutional inertia, but it was deliberately adopted as an intentional policy at one time.

I do remember the one at King and Manulife so I know they used to exist, but I don't think they were particularly ubiquitous.  At least as long as I've been in the region, they've had a policy of no bus bays.

And yes, all their policies were at one point an intentional policy. And their policies do change...but unreasonably slowly. Basically a superficial change, which has zero impact on any traffic operations, and merely serves to legalize an existing practice and one that matches provincial standards (e.g., marking a crossride on an intersection with a MUT) might take 5 years or more for regional staff to accept. How is that at all a reasonable timeframe. And think about how long it will take them to make real changes which actually impact traffic operations.