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General Road and Highway Discussion
(04-03-2017, 08:51 AM)Canard Wrote: Are those not valid problems though? If the intersection is designed too tight, then what?

I think about things like this when waiting on my bike at Francis/Charles - the stop bar has to be soooooo far back because the buses can't make the turn otherwise.

They are valid concerns, but in some cases they can be solved in other ways. For example, fire trucks don’t only come in one size. So instead of saying “every street must be like a suburban thoroughfare in order to allow fire trucks to get through”, you can say “firetrucks must be smaller in order to fit into our downtown streets”. Or you can trade off speed of ambulances getting places against traffic deaths caused by other traffic speeding along the same roads — if the marginal heart attack victim dies because the ambulance takes an extra 30s to get to their location, maybe that is balanced out by the marginal collision victim surviving because they were hit at 30km/h rather than 40km/h.
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What kind of irritates me is that we rarely see that kind of data/analysis (from any position). It's often "This will save lives because of X!", which may be true, but it will also cost lives (and/or money*) in a bunch of other, often hard to predict, ways.

* And yes, while we never like it when its obvious, we always need to make tradeoffs between human life and money.
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(04-03-2017, 08:51 AM)Canard Wrote: I think about things like this when waiting on my bike at Francis/Charles - the stop bar has to be soooooo far back because the buses can't make the turn otherwise.

To me that shows that there are multiple ways of accommodating larger vehicles - we don't have to make the intersections huge to do it.
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Initial work has started on the Ottawa roundabouts - particularly near Alpine by the Ford dealership, looked like utility relcation has started.
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I was just looking through the slides from the West Waterloo Transportation Study and saw this graphic:

   

It references a transitway being built on Fischer-Hallman in 2022-2023 between 7/8 and Columbia. It's unfortunate that the study couldn't have been completed before the recent work on Fischer-Hallman south of 7/8. From the info package for Fischer-Hallman Bleams to Ottawa (7121-1stPCCInfoPackage.pdf)

   

Has anyone seen any other information on this?
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"Transitway" in this case, is just referring to Queue Jumps at intersections, and other relatively minor things. Often, that just means that the right turn lane has a "Right Turn Only; Buses Excepted" sign, with an advance green for the bus. It's plausible that the construction would already accommodate this.
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(04-10-2017, 01:30 PM)Markster Wrote: "Transitway" in this case, is just referring to Queue Jumps at intersections, and other relatively minor things.  Often, that just means that the right turn lane has a "Right Turn Only; Buses Excepted" sign, with an advance green for the bus.  It's plausible that the construction would already accommodate this.

Using the word "transitway" to describe that is a very big reason why BRT isn't as good as LRT.
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(04-10-2017, 02:02 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(04-10-2017, 01:30 PM)Markster Wrote: "Transitway" in this case, is just referring to Queue Jumps at intersections, and other relatively minor things.  Often, that just means that the right turn lane has a "Right Turn Only; Buses Excepted" sign, with an advance green for the bus.  It's plausible that the construction would already accommodate this.

Using the word "transitway" to describe that is a very big reason why BRT isn't as good as LRT.

Oh don't worry, it's easy to screw up LRT too.
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(04-10-2017, 02:02 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:
(04-10-2017, 01:30 PM)Markster Wrote: "Transitway" in this case, is just referring to Queue Jumps at intersections, and other relatively minor things.  Often, that just means that the right turn lane has a "Right Turn Only; Buses Excepted" sign, with an advance green for the bus.  It's plausible that the construction would already accommodate this.

Using the word "transitway" to describe that is a very big reason why BRT isn't as good as LRT.

Yes, I consider that an actual transitway is not too far off LRT in the level of improvement provided to the transit system; depending on local conditions it might even be better if it makes sense for routes to continue off the transitway onto regular roads. But too often “BRT” gets diluted down to almost nothing, whereas “LRT” usually stays as a really substantial change and improvement to the route.
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RFQ announced for the 401 widening from Missisagua to Milton... http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7235...ga-milton/

Whenever this is complete, I look forward to ridiculous backups coming down the escarpment. At least I can put the car in neutral and turn off the engine while stuck in traffic.
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(04-10-2017, 06:35 PM)timio Wrote: RFQ announced for the 401 widening from Missisagua to Milton... http://www.therecord.com/news-story/7235...ga-milton/

Whenever this is complete, I look forward to ridiculous backups coming down the escarpment.  At least I can put the car in neutral and turn off the engine while stuck in traffic.

Gotta get us some induced demand.
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I don't follow about the ridiculous backups. Do you mean coming home/back to the Region, because it will narrow to 3 lanes in each direction at that point?
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(04-10-2017, 10:34 PM)plam Wrote: Gotta get us some induced demand.

What do you think should be done, if anything?
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(04-11-2017, 05:58 AM)Canard Wrote: I don't follow about the ridiculous backups. Do you mean coming home/back to the Region, because it will narrow to 3 lanes in each direction at that point?

A couple things at play here:  1. Tongue in cheek reference to moving the backup with the lanes.  2. Induced demand (and transit that isn't showing itself as a viable alternative) will play a role in increasing the amount of vehicles on the road, meaning there is likely some truth in that statement.

Regardless, too many months spent commuting to North York (thankfully haven't had to for a number of years) tell me there will be a slowdown at peak times in Milton coming down the escarpment towards TO and coming west as the lanes narrow. Cynical?  Maybe, but more likely an accurate guess based on typical traffic patterns that I'm sure most of us have experienced on the 401 through TO.
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I'm doubtful that there would be backups coming down the escarpment. Most of the present backups start with all the traffic coming on at James Snow Pkwy and Trafalgar. I can't see too much induced traffic being generated beyond that due to the Greenbelt. Perhaps backups might get worse heading west from Guelph and Cambridge, but they'll still have the same bottleneck as before.

It could be useful to add a climbing lane on the 401 heading west-bound, though. Backups happen all the time there due to the one truck going 101 trying to pass another going 100. In truth, while traffic slows down there, it never really seems that terrible to me.
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