Northfield / 85 Exchange upgrades?

[danbrotherston]

This would have been easy if it were only a 4m swath for a platform. Unfortunately, there was also a need to provide patron parking which required a much larger piece of property.   Since the LRT was announced, most pieces of property immediately around that location were targeted for development with its own parking requirements.  As a result, there was no room for a long-term parking solution.

Personally, I have avoided the Northfield/85 ramps since the directions that I needed were the worst to get on or off.

This is one of those locations that makes the inability to share parking requirements painful, as the tourist train operates when the nearby parking will be mostly empty.

[plam]

Montreal does it for Right turn on Red, but they're obviously not governed by the Ontario Highway Traffic Act--however, it does seem to work well enough there.

As someone who grew up in Montreal, I'm still not really comfortable with right turn on red. I'd rather not do it.

But it is easy to limit no-right-on-red to the island of Montreal, because it's an island, and you can say "if you are crossing a bridge or tunnel, you're in Montreal, so no right turn on red".

[ijmorlan]

Then, closer to the Northfield bridge, I also wanted them to put a platform for the tourist train between the freight track and the LRT tracks. “No space”. But wait, the entire area is surrounded by grass. So, expropriating a 4m swath of the adjacent property would be no problem. Now, maybe it’s not worth it — maybe the Region would feel the tourist train should pay, and maybe they couldn’t afford it — but the idea that there is no space, full stop, is absurd.

This would have been easy if it were only a 4m swath for a platform. Unfortunately, there was also a need to provide patron parking which required a much larger piece of property.   Since the LRT was announced, most pieces of property immediately around that location were targeted for development with its own parking requirements.  As a result, there was no room for a long-term parking solution.

Personally, I have avoided the Northfield/85 ramps since the directions that I needed were the worst to get on or off.

The parking can be anywhere and does not influence the track layout. Whereas now that the track has been put down with no space for a platform, it would be a huge project to change it later. My thinking was that the train platform would be extremely close to the LRT platform (just cross the southbound LRT track, probably by crossings at the north and south ends of the LRT platform), encouraging use of the LRT to reach the train.

In any case, my point is that the people at the consultation immediately jumped to a bogus reason why my idea could not possibly work, not that my idea had been fully studied (which is not the case; it’s just my idea) and should obviously be accepted.

[embe]

My no. 1 pet peeve is when people don't turn into the correct lane. It make me fume!

Most people have a hard enough time keeping in their lane making a 90 degree turn.  A 180 u-turn is a different beast entirely, we're back at 3 lanes worth of turning for most drivers. 

Maybe the no-turn-on-red is a good idea?  I've personally seen some pretty long line ups when right on red is permitted so I don't see it helping traffic flow any.  Should be interesting

[Canard]

Well, U-Turns are a different beast since every car has a different turning radius. While it's a breeze for me to turn near-lane into near-lane in my smart, someone in a massive truck won't be able to do that. So in those cases I can't really fault them for going near-lane to far-lane. Where it's an issue though is if someone on the perpendicular street is turning right on red. (which I think is what you were getting at)

[tomh009]

Well, U-Turns are a different beast since every car has a different turning radius.  While it's a breeze for me to turn near-lane into near-lane in my smart, someone in a massive truck won't be able to do that. 

A "normal" full-size pickup truck (Forf F-150) has a curb-to-curb turning radius of 12-14m.  I think the LRT track width (including median) is about 8m, and two lanes of traffic (left turn lane plus the first lane to turn into) add up to about 7m, for a total of 15m.  (Someone with details please correct me if this is wrong.)  So even a full-size pickup truck (single cab with 6.5m or 8m bed, or extended cab with 6.5m -- the most common choices) should be able to make that turn.

A typical sedan turning circle is less than 12m curb to curb.

So I really do think this U-turn should work reasonably well.

[embe]

lol, I was going to mention mini-car vs. truck turning radius (really did, no lie) but decided simplify with 'most drivers'.  Seems like we've agreed that keeping to a designated lane is a concern.  If a driver cranks it to full lock when doing a 180 turn without drifting, they are probably doing better than the other 90% of the drivers that don't even think of it.  Or the pedestrians, red-light-turners that wouldn't anticipate it either

[Canard]

The problem is (even with people just turning 90 degrees) that they don't know how to do it. They pull too tight initially, ease up as they accelerate as the lateral forces increase, then have to pull tight again if they are to stay in the same lane. In reality they don't do the third step because either a) they'd have to slow down, which they don't want to do or b) have to turn tight and they don't like the increase in lateral G forces, so they just drift into the outboard lane in a pseudo-Euler spiral without a care in the world.

[tomh009]

lol, I was going to mention mini-car vs. truck turning radius (really did, no lie) but decided simplify with 'most drivers'.  Seems like we've agreed that keeping to a designated lane is a concern.  If a driver cranks it to full lock when doing a 180 turn without drifting, they are probably doing better than  the other 90% of the drivers that don't even think of it.  Or the pedestrians, red-light-turners that wouldn't anticipate it either

For most drivers, there is plenty of room: 12m needed vs 15m available, before getting into the right-hand lane.  This is MUCH easier than a typical U-turn.

[nms]

A U-turn would be fine unless the car is stopped across the LRT tracks waiting for a gap in the opposite direction of travel.

[timc]

There is a left-turn signal there, which I assume is integrated with ION. As long as you only make your U-turn during that green, you should be fine.