General Road and Highway Discussion

[jamincan]

I drove by the closed part of Krug last night. It is still closed, but I wonder if it may be opening shortly, as, quite frankly, it looks like it could be safely opened to traffic already. Lighting wasn't that great and I was only able to give it a quick glance, so I might be wrong.

[SammyOES]

I will have to disagree. Sweden is measuring all of the deaths on all of its roads so it makes sense to use the total national population as the denominator.

You still want apples and oranges though. Not all of their national population uses the roads. So if you include the people that don't use the roads in case 1, it makes sense to me to do the same thing in case 2.

The region is only measuring collisions that resulted in one or more death on regional roads. The actual unit of measure is different (fatalities vs. fatal collisions).

I agree this is wrong.

Also, regional roads make up 20% of the road network within the region (the rest being city, province, or private) and 60% of the total length of those regional roads is in rural areas (defined arbitrarily as being in the four townships). On top of that 11% of the region's population is rural. So they are looking at a fraction of the road total road network, and the largest portion of the regional network is used by the smallest portion of the population.

Right, but changing the population denominator doesn't address this fundamental problem. It just makes it bad in a different way (and we have no real way of knowing if the 'badness' is better or worse). The way to address it is to use a metric that actually incorporates the amount of usage.

[mpd618]

I will have to disagree. Sweden is measuring all of the deaths on all of its roads so it makes sense to use the total national population as the denominator.

You still want apples and oranges though.  Not all of their national population uses the roads.  So if you include the people that don't use the roads in case 1, it makes sense to me to do the same thing in case 2.

Emphasis mine. I mean, people driving less or fewer people driving seem like completely sensible ways to get to Vision Zero.

[Canard]

Erb/Caroline is such a disaster right now. If you want to turn Left from Bridgeport, onto Erb - good luck! Since it’s a single lane on Erb now, and there’s a stop sign at king, everyone turning right off of Caroline obviously gets to go first, so only one car at a time can (barely) turn left.

I biked through the area on Sunday and watched 3 cars in a row turn left from Caroline onto Erb (illegally). The icing on the cake was that dude in car 2 actually honked at car 1 to go through.

[SammyOES]

You still want apples and oranges though.  Not all of their national population uses the roads.  So if you include the people that don't use the roads in case 1, it makes sense to me to do the same thing in case 2.

Emphasis mine. I mean, people driving less or fewer people driving seem like completely sensible ways to get to Vision Zero.

Sure, I agree. But the point isn't whether the metric is a good one in a vacuum, just about the best way for the Region to calculate a metric comparable to the one from Sweden they're using.

You shouldn't include the total possible population in one case and not the other. In both cases you're going to have a percentage of the population that doesn't use the roads you're looking at. The fact that there are likely significantly different usage rates doesn't mean you should use a different methodology for calculating the metric. It means you should probably use a different metric altogether (or much better, a set of different metrics).

[embe]

If we're still talking about Krug street construction , it is apparently open to vehicles. What I heard.

[Canard]

I think they’ve shifted the lanes on 401 EB where 8 merged in a little to the right. The godawful jerk that happens about 100 m West of the merge is gone and you just go straight through.

Crews have been working on assembling the high mast lighting.

[jamincan]

I was trying to figure out what changed this morning. I think they shifted the ramps from 8 to 401EB to the new ramp, which moves the jog to the right west of the merge point.

[Rainrider22]

I was trying to figure out what changed this morning. I think they shifted the ramps from 8 to 401EB to the new ramp, which moves the jog to the right west of the merge point.

Yes,  it was shifted over a couple of nights ago...  Causing lots of delays as people get used to it....SIGH !!!

[DHLawrence]

They're gonna have a lot more changes to get used to before this thing's done. It looks like a lot of the eastbound work is more or less done; I wonder if they're planning to open all five eastbound lanes as soon as they're ready instead of opening the full ten at once.

When driving on the westbound lanes, I notice that there's a bit elevation difference at the Kinsman Stadium curve between the new outer lanes and the three lanes in use. Is the entire westbound curve going to have to be rebuilt?

All lanes on Fountain and Shantz Hill are open. King is still a bottleneck between the flour mill and Fountain thanks to the bridge reconstruction; they must have found a big ugly when they started digging.

[Canard]

Isn't it amazing how muscle memory or whatever takes over and you notice all these little changes, but aren't exactly certain of what it is?

[KevinT]

When driving on the westbound lanes, I notice that there's a bit elevation difference at the Kinsman Stadium curve between the new outer lanes and the three lanes in use. Is the entire westbound curve going to have to be rebuilt?

Lol, just this past weekend my wife made the same observation and asked me the same question.  My best guess answer was that perhaps new outside westbound lanes will be built higher and the traffic shifted onto them while they rebuild the central westbound lanes to the new height.

Sometimes they build the height difference associated with banking into the central tall wall, like on the curve approaching the Kelso Conservation Area (compare the height in the eastbound street view to the westbound), but the look of the new wall poured for this section makes me think that's not what they're going to do.  At least not to the extent of the current height difference.

Oh well, time will tell us...

[Canard]

It would be amazing if the drawings were available to the public, like all the details for the LRT were.

[mgregorasz]

They're gonna have a lot more changes to get used to before this thing's done. It looks like a lot of the eastbound work is more or less done; I wonder if they're planning to open all five eastbound lanes as soon as they're ready instead of opening the full ten at once.

When driving on the westbound lanes, I notice that there's a bit elevation difference at the Kinsman Stadium curve between the new outer lanes and the three lanes in use. Is the entire westbound curve going to have to be rebuilt?

All lanes on Fountain and Shantz Hill are open. King is still a bottleneck between the flour mill and Fountain thanks to the bridge reconstruction; they must have found a big ugly when they started digging.

That bridge on King by the flour mill won't be done until next year due to utility relocations that are still ongoing.

[creative]

Krug Street is now open. I drove through today.