General Road and Highway Discussion

[ijmorlan]

I never thought about Davenport like that. I think the treatment it was given was appropriate and well-done, but you're absolutely right that it could be much like Union one day, a truly beautiful street. What a nice thought.

My understanding is that local collector is the designation for the types of streets we're talking about. I think they could be slowed, too- if a motorist is not traveling many kilometres, there's little difference in travel times between 30 and 50 km/h, but that difference is big in terms of safety and quality of life.

Edit: here is the map of road classifications City of Waterloo. I can't really see any "local roads" that need 50km/h+ speed limits preserved.

Hey, what are you doing, injecting facts into a discussion?

Seriously though, thanks for the map link. I think I mostly agree that the roads marked local on that could be significantly slowed down. Also basing speed limits on road category would provide a justification for the speed limits and make the categories more meaningful.

I think William should be a minor collector everywhere. The way it’s built and used east of King makes it not really a local road.

John obviously should be local, in the section currently marked “deferred” — I don’t know what we’re waiting for to realize this officially. And going along with this, every local road should be considered lower priority than multi-use trails (Spur Line, Iron Horse, …) when they meet.

One oddity: why is Wilmot Line a minor collector, but Wideman is local? I thought we were trying to keep traffic off of the Wilmot line, to the extent of having a quite strange design for the neighbourhood immediately east of Wilmot Line. I would make the Wideman — Wilmot — Berlett’s combination a minor collector, and pave Wilmot Line between Wideman and Berlett’s, simultaneously re-working the two intersections with Wilmot Line to prioritize this routing. It’s weird to have two paved roads ending at a gravel road less than 400m apart.