[Uptown] Erb/Bridgeport/Caroline/Albert Reconstruction

[BuildingScout]

 There being only two lanes of capacity per direction on the two-way section in fact suggests that three lanes of capacity on the one-way sections is overkill.

(Also, there's another possibility, of having three lanes of eastbound capacity, but splitting it with one lane on Bridgeport and two on Erb. I think the other one's probably better, though.)

Yeap, I agreed long ago that three is overkill and two eastbound lanes on Erb St. E. would suffice. However,under the one lane eastbound scenario I do not see traffic on Erb St. W. naturally splitting in two at Caroline, with half going on Bridgeport and half on Erb when only Erb is eastbound traffic light synchronized and many people are going to the highway or southbound on Weber.

It's at least the third time I make the points above, and yet they are still missed. I think this discussion has outlived its usefulness.

[ijmorlan]

Claiming that a normal trip of 4-5min is now 20min longer is hyperbole.

It's funny how the two-way proponents keep on denying this fact, which is what happened during rush hour when Erb St. W. was reduced to one lane for several months in front of CIGI back in 2014.

They know that their argument cannot recover from this, so they just pretend it didn't happen.

Okaaaay, I think we are done with this argument.

As it happens I’m not a two-way proponent, although I’m not strongly opposed to the idea.

But this reference to the reduction of the street to one lane needs to be addressed. When they did that, the turn lanes were not properly configured. At one point they had the right lane closed so all traffic had to use the left lane. Which is actually the lane to use to turn onto Father David Bauer. Result: zero through lanes. They should have arranged for a left turn lane and a through lane at that intersection, even for that temporary setup. While as regular readers will know I have little respect for traffic engineers and planners, even I believe that they would get this right if a permanent re-configuration of the street were to be done. So the traffic snarls caused by the temporary lane closure cannot be assumed to be representative of what would happen with a permanent change.

[jamincan]

Yeah, I lived right near Roslin and Erb when the one lane was closed on Erb. The delay wasn't anywhere as bad as you say, BuildingScout, and there were a whole host of problems with how the lane closure was designed that caused the delays to be worse than they needed to be.

The assumption that traffic light synchronization would remain the same prioritizing east-bound on Erb is also not reasonable. Most likely there would be adjustments to the timing so that that there is more even weight to each direction on both Erb and Bridgeport. I also expect that the interface at Erb and Bridgeport near the expressway would have to be reconfigured which could alter the balance between the two streets.

What about an alternative that sees Erb become a 4-lane arterial with no bike lanes, but then Bridgeport becomes a 2 lane local collector with fully protected bike facilities? People wouldn't like their front yards becoming smaller, but that didn't stop them from expanding Columbia. I personally would favour the 2+1 + bike lane configuration for both roads, but this might be a solution that motorists might be able to live with.

[MidTowner]

All this to say the region is going to make these streets more complete at some point; the current status quo will be phased out at some point in the near future.

Pheidippides, thank you for this extremely informative post. This forum is such a great resource because of posts like this, with posters taking the time to pull data and definitions and distill them for us. Thanks for the clarification of how the Region actually sees these streets, and what that means.

Your bottom line is correct: these streets are going to be reconfigured. Who knows if they’ll be made two-way or not, but they’ll be made more complete, and that’s a good thing. And, as ever, motorists will fight it, imagining worse trip times than will happen, and will likely exaggerate the added trip time they do experience afterwards.

[BuildingScout]

What about an alternative that sees Erb become a 4-lane arterial with no bike lanes, but then Bridgeport becomes a 2 lane local collector with fully protected bike facilities? People wouldn't like their front yards becoming smaller, but that didn't stop them from expanding Columbia. I personally would favour the 2+1 + bike lane configuration for both roads, but this might be a solution that motorists might be able to live with.

This is a reasonable alternative as is two-lanes eastbound one-lane westbound on Erb St. E. Another one is two-lanes eastbound on Erb a tree line and then a nice and generous MUT on Erb.

Anybody who has been paying attention here knows that I'm a strong proponent of pedestrian oriented streets. I supported open streets on King, I've favoured making (Up|Down)town King a pedestrian zone, I support LRT, I suggested turning Gaukel into a park long ago (which CoK has recently suggested too), etc. So the fact that I'm so strongly against this one cannot be dismissed as simply a motorist complaining. 

Lastly while it is true that a better configured merge from two lanes into one would speed up things somewhat, even an unrealistic factor of two improvement would still leave us with a significantly slower connection to the highway.