General Road and Highway Discussion

[Viewfromthe42]

Where's the uproar over the destruction and horrific consequences of these 85 expropriations, akin to what Doug Craig, Cambridge councillors, and Cambridge residents put forth over the proposed ION phase 2 through Preston?

[panamaniac]

I take it you've never been on that stretch of Ottawa St ....

[darts]

Where's the uproar over the destruction and horrific consequences of these 85 expropriations, akin to what Doug Craig, Cambridge councillors, and Cambridge residents put forth over the proposed ION phase 2 through Preston?

The places on Ottawa st see the traffic and know it will happen at some point, some of the places are also rentals so the owners don't really care as much.

The people on Eagle St S weren't expecting it, before they had two maps showing the route coming up King and Turning onto Eagle, and they have low traffic going through there so they never really saw something like this coming. I think if the LRT or this construction  was on Borden or Onward Ave you would hear about it.

[curiouschair]

University Ave and Woolwich St has some new portable traffic lights up. This was not a controlled intersection before. I guess they're determining if they should add lights permanently.

I went by this intersection this morning, and it looks like they are installing less temporary signals at this intersection. They are suspended from wires instead of being attached to poles, but are they going to become permanent?

Edit: the draft EA that I found (http://www.waterloo.ca/en/contentresourc...-09-08.pdf) says that signals were not warranted at that intersection.

Edit 2: that was a draft; this is the final version of the EA: http://www.waterloo.ca/en/contentresourc...-10-28.pdf

I saw that too, the semi-permanent lights haven't been activated yet and it's been some time since they've been up.

A friend of mine in the area was noting that the school buses couldn't make it around the new roundabout at where Woolwich makes a 90 degree turn. Maybe it's just the plan for the school buses to go over the middle of the round about?

[jamincan]

How is the roundabout constructed? Part of the middle is almost always designed to be mounted by vehicles with a long wheelbase.

[Canard]

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Bottom of Shantz Hill is paved! If you're on foot or bike, it's distareous trying to get across Fountain now, though. Cc: <a href="https://twitter.com/WRConnected">@WRConnected</a> <a href="https://t.co/usCFGTEy7T">pic.twitter.com/usCFGTEy7T</a></p>&mdash; Iain Hendry (@Canardiain) <a href="https://twitter.com/Canardiain/status/895244300308684800">August 9, 2017</a></blockquote>

Just to elaborate a little on that - while they were working on the "South" side of Fountain, between Shantz Hill and... King, I guess it is... they had a construction fence set up separating the work area from traffic. A separate designated bike/pedestrian lane was set up, separated from traffic, which was excellent.

Now it's just a giant muddy mess. I'm a bit heartbroken, because for the last couple of months I have loved being able to bike to work along this route.

[Viewfromthe42]

Where's the uproar over the destruction and horrific consequences of these 85 expropriations, akin to what Doug Craig, Cambridge councillors, and Cambridge residents put forth over the proposed ION phase 2 through Preston?

The places on Ottawa st see the traffic and know it will happen at some point, some of the places are also rentals so the owners don't really care as much.

The people on Eagle St S weren't expecting it, before they had two maps showing the route coming up King and Turning onto Eagle, and they have low traffic going through there so they never really saw something like this coming. I think if the LRT or this construction  was on Borden or Onward Ave you would hear about it.

...they did build LRT on Borden, expropriations and all.

[Canard]

What was expropriated on Borden? I thought the only major change was making MTD get rid of their forklift bridge.

[darts]

The places on Ottawa st see the traffic and know it will happen at some point, some of the places are also rentals so the owners don't really care as much.

The people on Eagle St S weren't expecting it, before they had two maps showing the route coming up King and Turning onto Eagle, and they have low traffic going through there so they never really saw something like this coming. I think if the LRT or this construction  was on Borden or Onward Ave you would hear about it.

...they did build LRT on Borden, expropriations and all.

I meant the portion between weber and king where there are homes on a quieter portion of the street where any sort of street widening or lrt route would be surprising

[Canard]

embe - just load up the PDF that rob posted in the first post on this page.

In other news:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Demolition on the South side of the Fountain Street bridge has begun in Cambridge. Cc: <a href="https://twitter.com/WRConnected">@WRConnected</a> <a href="https://t.co/DAUpV3bKQI">pic.twitter.com/DAUpV3bKQI</a></p>&mdash; Iain Hendry (@Canardiain) <a href="https://twitter.com/Canardiain/status/895413111867547652">August 9, 2017</a></blockquote>

[DHLawrence]

They're putting in a median on King at Chopin in Preston. Is this to keep people from turning left or are they putting in a two-way bike route and I missed it?

[highlander]

They're putting in a median on King at Chopin in Preston. Is this to keep people from turning left or are they putting in a two-way bike route and I missed it?

I believe this is the final design (from https://icreate3.esolutionsgroup.ca/2306...endixQ.pdf).

   

[Pheidippides]

Of course, it would be far more meaningful if Queen is also improved, and would have been even more so if Highland had been improved as well, but that ship has sailed.

Sorry for the delayed response; still catching up and processing a lot of posts after being away.

I have never understood why Queen (the Blvd part from Westheights to Highland) is not targeted more as a cycling route or at least preferred to Highland (a lost cause at this point for cycling) which does have cycling lanes for a part (that go from nowhere (Fischer-Hallman) to nowhere (Westmount)).

Queen has way more capacity than it will ever need. It could easily be reduced to 1 EB, 1WB, and a centre turning lane, and still have room for physically separated bike lanes both EB and WB. The fact that on-street parking is even allowed on large stretches of it is obscene and proves that it is overbuilt and not fulfilling its designed purpose (as an city arterial road in the Kitchener road classification system its primary purpose is to, "provide mobility for people and goods through and within the City" - so by clogging an artery with parking it is unable to do its job). In fact, the recommendation is that on-street parking is "Generally None" and cycling facilities "Separated Preferred". Map of street classifications.

I am beginning to think that one way to convince more people outside of the typical bike lanes advocates about the value of cycling lanes is through their pocket-books. Make it a political issue that we can chip away the infrastructure deficit simply by building smarter (e.g. narrow roads with segregated bike lanes, 3 lane roads (1+1+turning) instead of 4 (2+2), etc.). Use that recent City of Ottawa study to illustrate that over-building a road simply to paint a line for cyclists is a waste of capital when bike lanes don't need to be built to sustain so much force (they should still be built to last though!).

[timio]

I have never understood why Queen (the Blvd part from Westheights to Highland) is not targeted more as a cycling route or at least preferred to Highland (a lost cause at this point for cycling) which does have cycling lanes for a part (that go from nowhere (Fischer-Hallman) to nowhere (Westmount)).

That's not the most ludicrous example of bike lanes from nowhere to nowhere in this city.  Franklin St in Kitchener has bike lines from Kingsway to the Freshco parking lot (  https://goo.gl/maps/CqaDFjaTk8R2), a total of 50 metres before trickling down to nothing on the one end and fully disappearing at the other.  No other road in the area has bike lanes.

[jamincan]

I think Lackner is by far the worst example of bike lanes going from nowhere to nowhere in the city. I don't know what they were thinking with that road, but there's a good argument that the bike lanes on Lackner are actually more of a hazard than an aid in their current incarnation.