General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

I'm not talking about Westmount, in fact I'm specifically not talking about Westmount pre- or post-covid...I agree, it should have 3 lanes in the future. I'm talking in general, many two lane roads never carry more traffic than Westmount does today, I'd even venture a guess that given our regions obsession with widening roads, most two lane roads never carry more traffic than Westmount does today, and today Westmount is functioning well without turn lanes. That's the point, turn lanes aren't always necessary for maintaining the flow of traffic, on higher speed roads they may improve safety, but for a low speed road like Queen (where this conversation did originate), even if turns are permitted, chances are good the only value turn lanes provide is in improving travel times, not reducing congestion or improving safety. This is doubly the case when traffic is moving slow on a road like Queen because turning left becomes easier and safer. This is already demonstrated at King/Queen intersection which has no turn lanes, yet Queen operates fine.

I agree that lots of non-busy streets and roads don’t need turn lanes. I’m talking about busy streets and roads, like Westmount and Queen. Unless you somehow disagree that Queen is a busy street?

As to the intersection of King and Queen, you might want to check on your facts, because you just made my point. At that intersection, left turns off of Queen are forbidden; left turns off of King are forbidden southbound most of the time, and are enabled northbound by an advance green arrow. So that’s why the two streets flow reasonably smoothly. If those measures were not in effect, the whole intersection would jam up hopelessly as soon as somebody needed to turn left. Now if you want to propose simply closing one or both of those streets entirely, that’s fine and in that location is actually worth serious consideration. But just designing the intersection so that even moderate levels of traffic will jam up makes no sense: you still devote just as much real estate to moving cars, except you do it in a way that doesn’t actually move cars. If you’re not going to move cars, use the real estate for something else.

Actually that last sentence is key to my approach to traffic planning. I’m totally on-board with reducing dramatically the amount of space dedicated to moving cars; but whatever space is devoted to cars should be designed to do so efficiently. To do otherwise is just bad engineering, regardless of the ideology of the designer; you pay the price but don’t get the benefit. So either don’t pay the price or re-design to get the benefit.

Empty asphault is an argument against roads frankly....but in terms of what drivers will do, I do not believe that the few angry aggressive drivers should dictate how we build our roads, and further, there shouldn't be a wide open swath of asphalt to encourage speeding anyway, and on Queen, there isn't, past the intersection with Charles, it is still very tight, and drivers would have to drive calmly.

Right, the cars should be flowing smoothly along, eliminating the alternation of large empty stretches of asphalt with congested intersections. In busy areas the whole system would be approximately uniformly congested and therefore would move at a consistent reasonable speed.

Yes, I think we disagree about how busy Queen is.  The section that was reconstructed carries between a third and a tenth the traffic of Westmount Rd according to regional and city data.

Now I know that traffic on Westmount is not a third of what it was last year, yet it is functioning well without turn lanes. So I am telling you, that roads with no turn lanes can handle more traffic than you believe. I too was surprised by this. I assumed it would be more problematic, but based on my rush hour observations, the main effect on Westmount, seems to be to slow down traffic rather than cause congestion.

Efficiency should only be the goal when moving as much traffic as possible is the goal...this isn't the goal everywhere, and I don't believe it should be the goal in our downtown core. Frankly, empty pavement in downtown is a good thing, and it is those very gaps in traffic which allow turns to proceed without turn lanes.