General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

This roundabout will definitely be a test ... There are a lot of pedestrians in the area as Chandler Mowat is quite dense and the Laurentian Hills Shopping Centre is their local destination for Groceries etc.
That intersection has always been dangerous, I lived in the area as a kid and you had to always be super aware of the left hand turners as they seemed to never pay attention to pedestrians, cyclists or even motorists. The have redone it numerous times, adding slip lanes, adding dedicated left turn lanes and more but its only become worse. Slip lanes are bad, but the left turn movements here from SB Westmount to EB Ottawa are the sketchiest.

Yeah, definitely not saying that it's not bad the way it is, nor even that it's impossible that it could be better as a roundabout. But it's clear that the top priority (even as stated by staff themselves in the very same breath as they explained they were instructed to use a different prioritization) was traffic throughput. They explained the ONLY way to achieve the traffic LOS they wanted with the volume of traffic they project was by using a roundabout.

But even if they wanted to achieve all their goals, they could still do that, but it would have been much more expensive. We have similar infrastructure in the NLs, huge roundabouts, often multi-level where pedestrians are segregated from most or all of the traffic. At least then they'd have an honest discussion with council (and ATAC).

As it is, I expect the perception from pedestrians to be that this is worse, because it is different and also less clear. Whether the data also says it is actually worse, seems like it will be a toss-up. But the perception matters more than the reality. If pedestrians don't feel safe, they will be in cars...no matter how unaffordable that is for some people.