ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

River Road, Frederick, Benton

Haha! Shocking that I of all people forgot about Frederick and Benton .

Also, Homer-Watson north of Ottawa.

And I mean, this list is only the clearly overbuilt roads...like roads which would see LOS A or B when reduced to 2 lanes. This is to say nothing of slightly more radical opinions like, not using only LOS to measure congestion, or *gasp* arguing that completely free flowing traffic 100% of the time achieved by having more road capacity than the free market will consume even when priced at 0 dollars should not necessarily be a societal goal.

I've said many times, "government waste" people usually fake...we've got literally billions of dollars of government waste all over the region and these same anti-waste folks would throw a tantrum if you tried to stop that waste.

It reminds me of when they reduced the garbage collection schedules and people would...in the same breath...complain about taxes and object to a more cost effective garbage plan being put in place.

</rant>

[ijmorlan]

River Road, Frederick, Benton

Haha! Shocking that I of all people forgot about Frederick and Benton .

Also, Homer-Watson north of Ottawa.

And I mean, this list is only the clearly overbuilt roads...like roads which would see LOS A or B when reduced to 2 lanes. This is to say nothing of slightly more radical opinions like, not using only LOS to measure congestion, or *gasp* arguing that completely free flowing traffic 100% of the time achieved by having more road capacity than the free market will consume even when priced at 0 dollars should not necessarily be a societal goal.


</rant>

This is the bit I really don’t get. I understand someone thinking that cars are the best and we need to cater to people who want to drive them; but I don’t understand a so-called “engineer” who deliberately overbuilds things at massive expense, thus incurring further increased maintenance expenses. I mean the first person is wrong, but the second person just makes no sense at all.

[danbrotherston]

Haha! Shocking that I of all people forgot about Frederick and Benton .

Also, Homer-Watson north of Ottawa.

And I mean, this list is only the clearly overbuilt roads...like roads which would see LOS A or B when reduced to 2 lanes. This is to say nothing of slightly more radical opinions like, not using only LOS to measure congestion, or *gasp* arguing that completely free flowing traffic 100% of the time achieved by having more road capacity than the free market will consume even when priced at 0 dollars should not necessarily be a societal goal.


</rant>

This is the bit I really don’t get. I understand someone thinking that cars are the best and we need to cater to people who want to drive them; but I don’t understand a so-called “engineer” who deliberately overbuilds things at massive expense, thus incurring further increased maintenance expenses. I mean the first person is wrong, but the second person just makes no sense at all.

I don't know how to describe it...but I think I've experienced it.

Before I became...for lack of a better term, radicalized...I too dreamt of networks of perfect wide roads connecting every part of the city easily and efficiently. I mean, we do the same thing here with transit networks. I suspect that is the same reason engineers want to do it for roads.

[Bytor]

Haha! Shocking that I of all people forgot about Frederick and Benton .

Also, Homer-Watson north of Ottawa.

And I mean, this list is only the clearly overbuilt roads...like roads which would see LOS A or B when reduced to 2 lanes. This is to say nothing of slightly more radical opinions like, not using only LOS to measure congestion, or *gasp* arguing that completely free flowing traffic 100% of the time achieved by having more road capacity than the free market will consume even when priced at 0 dollars should not necessarily be a societal goal.


</rant>

This is the bit I really don’t get. I understand someone thinking that cars are the best and we need to cater to people who want to drive them; but I don’t understand a so-called “engineer” who deliberately overbuilds things at massive expense, thus incurring further increased maintenance expenses. I mean the first person is wrong, but the second person just makes no sense at all.

Because those engineers were taught that such road s were *not* over engineered. They were taught that it was *necessary* to be that big and that wide and that straight for roads to be safe, and all across North America the standards to which they must adhere to were written in that same era even though anybody with an ounce of keeping current knows how much stuff like that has been shown to do the opposite of keep things safe. 

Even if an civil engineer is young enough to have been taught the new data, they still have to adhere to those standards or what they design will just get thrown in the trash. Also, plenty of them are just unimaginative pencil pushers who just accept what the manuals say without questioning why they haven't been updated with the new data, which is kinda odd because engineering is supposed to be a culture of continuous learning for your entire career, why you need to under go regular testing to keep your certifications "current".

[danbrotherston]

This is the bit I really don’t get. I understand someone thinking that cars are the best and we need to cater to people who want to drive them; but I don’t understand a so-called “engineer” who deliberately overbuilds things at massive expense, thus incurring further increased maintenance expenses. I mean the first person is wrong, but the second person just makes no sense at all.

Because those engineers were taught that such road s were *not* over engineered. They were taught that it was *necessary* to be that big and that wide and that straight for roads to be safe, and all across North America the standards to which they must adhere to were written in that same era even though anybody with an ounce of keeping current knows how much stuff like that has been shown to do the opposite of keep things safe. 

Even if an civil engineer is young enough to have been taught the new data, they still have to adhere to those standards or what they design will just get thrown in the trash. Also, plenty of them are just unimaginative pencil pushers who just accept what the manuals say without questioning why they haven't been updated with the new data, which is kinda odd because engineering is supposed to be a culture of continuous learning for your entire career, why you need to under go regular testing to keep your certifications "current".

I think two things are being conflated here...over-engineered roads are different from overbuilt roads as we are discussing here.

Roads that are too wide, with too large corner radii are "over-engineered". Roads that are overbuilt have too many lanes for the traffic they carry. Like Westmount Rd. is extremely narrow...it is definitely not "over-engineered" but it is over built because it has four lanes.

Most of our roads are both however, and both cause problems and wasteful spending.

But your argument is true for road engineering--the standards the region sets are excessive.

But the choice to build four lane roads where they are not necessary is a policy choice...not an engineering choice--there are no standards requiring Highland Rd. to be four lanes. Engineers do have guides and standards that they use to try justify these decisions it is even more vague and handwavey than road standards, and if council directed them to, no engineer would put up an engineering fuss about building narrower roads like they do about deviating from "engineering standards".

Even more however, even by the standards the engineers use for roads the road we are discussing are actually still over built. Even by the most aggressive traffic modelling Highland Rd. does not justify four lanes. The choice to build four lanes is a policy choice from engineers who like building four lane roads.

[bravado]

 The choice to build four lanes is a policy choice from engineers who like building four lane roads.

I'm definitely not an engineer or involved in this at all but I am curious about this:

Do engineers just design things with outdated doctrine and pass that on to politicians?

or: 

Do politicians make lazy demands for wide roads that engineers just go along with, and leave the costs to future politicians/generations?

If it is option 2, what's the point of having professionals that we are supposed to respect for their expertise? A politician might personally like a wasteful left-turn lane (or whatever), but I expect professionals to explain why it is a bad idea and for that to be adopted over the whims of a councillor.

[Bytor]

Because those engineers were taught that such road s were *not* over engineered. They were taught that it was *necessary* to be that big and that wide and that straight for roads to be safe, and all across North America the standards to which they must adhere to were written in that same era even though anybody with an ounce of keeping current knows how much stuff like that has been shown to do the opposite of keep things safe. 

Even if an civil engineer is young enough to have been taught the new data, they still have to adhere to those standards or what they design will just get thrown in the trash. Also, plenty of them are just unimaginative pencil pushers who just accept what the manuals say without questioning why they haven't been updated with the new data, which is kinda odd because engineering is supposed to be a culture of continuous learning for your entire career, why you need to under go regular testing to keep your certifications "current".

I think two things are being conflated here...over-engineered roads are different from overbuilt roads as we are discussing here.

Roads that are too wide, with too large corner radii are "over-engineered". Roads that are overbuilt have too many lanes for the traffic they carry. Like Westmount Rd. is extremely narrow...it is definitely not "over-engineered" but it is over built because it has four lanes.

Most of our roads are both however, and both cause problems and wasteful spending.

But your argument is true for road engineering--the standards the region sets are excessive.

But the choice to build four lane roads where they are not necessary is a policy choice...not an engineering choice--there are no standards requiring Highland Rd. to be four lanes. Engineers do have guides and standards that they use to try justify these decisions it is even more vague and handwavey than road standards, and if council directed them to, no engineer would put up an engineering fuss about building narrower roads like they do about deviating from "engineering standards".

Even more however, even by the standards the engineers use for roads the road we are discussing are actually still over built. Even by the most aggressive traffic modelling Highland Rd. does not justify four lanes. The choice to build four lanes is a policy choice from engineers who like building four lane roads.

I understand the differentiation that you are trying to make, but the source is still the same—adherence to manuals and standards that are out of date, through either being required to adhere by the employer or by pencil pushers unable to think independently. Whether that is "An AADT of 20,000 requires 4 lanes" (overbuilt) or "a residential road needs to be 50k/h and thus 13m from curb to curb with 2x3.5m travel lanes and 2x3m parking lanes" (over-engineered), the cause is the same.

[ijmorlan]

This is the bit I really don’t get. I understand someone thinking that cars are the best and we need to cater to people who want to drive them; but I don’t understand a so-called “engineer” who deliberately overbuilds things at massive expense, thus incurring further increased maintenance expenses. I mean the first person is wrong, but the second person just makes no sense at all.

I don't know how to describe it...but I think I've experienced it.

Before I became...for lack of a better term, radicalized...I too dreamt of networks of perfect wide roads connecting every part of the city easily and efficiently. I mean, we do the same thing here with transit networks. I suspect that is the same reason engineers want to do it for roads.

But you then you grew up and learned things, including but not limited to the fact that big wide roads are expensive. Engineers are supposed to be all about tradeoffs: in modern engineering, every component of every bridge is built just strong enough (plus a safety factor) to support the loads that particular component will experience. We don’t just pile up huge amounts of stone so that there is no possible way the bridge will collapse. If an engineer insisted on using 8 gauge wire everywhere in a house, they wouldn’t get very far. But apparently putting in 4-lane roads all over the place even where the traffic doesn’t come close to justifying it is just A-OK.

Why are road engineers allowed to be 12 year olds? (no disrespect intended to 12 year olds; but thinking that is perfectly fine in a 12 year old isn’t necessarily OK for an adult)

And yes, I remember being similar: on at least one occasion I drew up a subdivision plan which just had a whole bunch of houses connected to a freeway interchange. And at one time I thought office buildings should have one parking spot per employee, too. I was just thinking of the convenience when driving, not about the costs. So it’s not just you.

[danbrotherston]

I think two things are being conflated here...over-engineered roads are different from overbuilt roads as we are discussing here.

Roads that are too wide, with too large corner radii are "over-engineered". Roads that are overbuilt have too many lanes for the traffic they carry. Like Westmount Rd. is extremely narrow...it is definitely not "over-engineered" but it is over built because it has four lanes.

Most of our roads are both however, and both cause problems and wasteful spending.

But your argument is true for road engineering--the standards the region sets are excessive.

But the choice to build four lane roads where they are not necessary is a policy choice...not an engineering choice--there are no standards requiring Highland Rd. to be four lanes. Engineers do have guides and standards that they use to try justify these decisions it is even more vague and handwavey than road standards, and if council directed them to, no engineer would put up an engineering fuss about building narrower roads like they do about deviating from "engineering standards".

Even more however, even by the standards the engineers use for roads the road we are discussing are actually still over built. Even by the most aggressive traffic modelling Highland Rd. does not justify four lanes. The choice to build four lanes is a policy choice from engineers who like building four lane roads.

I understand the differentiation that you are trying to make, but the source is still the same—adherence to manuals and standards that are out of date, through either being required to adhere by the employer or by pencil pushers unable to think independently. Whether that is "An AADT of 20,000 requires 4 lanes" (overbuilt) or "a residential road needs to be 50k/h and thus 13m from curb to curb with 2x3.5m travel lanes and 2x3m parking lanes" (over-engineered), the cause is the same.

But this simply isn't true.

There are no manuals no standards at the region, at the province, at a national level that require a road like Highland Rd. to have four lanes. This was fully acknowledged by regional staff. They said they prefer four lanes without any justification beyond a preference for four lane roads.

[danbrotherston]

 The choice to build four lanes is a policy choice from engineers who like building four lane roads.

I'm definitely not an engineer or involved in this at all but I am curious about this:

Do engineers just design things with outdated doctrine and pass that on to politicians?

or: 

Do politicians make lazy demands for wide roads that engineers just go along with, and leave the costs to future politicians/generations?

If it is option 2, what's the point of having professionals that we are supposed to respect for their expertise? A politician might personally like a wasteful left-turn lane (or whatever), but I expect professionals to explain why it is a bad idea and for that to be adopted over the whims of a councillor.

I think it is largely the first. Although you might want to be clearer about "doctrine".

But FWIW...council isn't pushing back either.

Leaving aside the original discussion of road expansion and overbuilding, and looking at higher level policies, we built a transportation plan and so did the city of Waterloo recently, and despite climate emergencies, climate plans, and a full awareness of the issues, no staff member, no council member, and few members of the public were willing to even mention let alone question the underlying assumptions of those plans...that VMT increases over time. It is treated as a universal law of the world, as much as geometry or physics.

The next battle to fight with the region and council will be to accept that VMT increasing is not a natural law that policy must work around, but instead is a direct result of that policy, and can be changed by choosing different policy.

Ultimately, we could fight and force the region to be more fiscally responsible with road building and that wouldn't be a bad thing. The way we build roads is incredibly wasteful, even in a world where you plan for increasing VMT. But to me, it isn't worth fighting anymore, because its a "win the battle, lose the war" situation. The thing that must change to meaningfully change our policy is the underlying VMT assumption.

[danbrotherston]

I don't know how to describe it...but I think I've experienced it.

Before I became...for lack of a better term, radicalized...I too dreamt of networks of perfect wide roads connecting every part of the city easily and efficiently. I mean, we do the same thing here with transit networks. I suspect that is the same reason engineers want to do it for roads.

But you then you grew up and learned things, including but not limited to the fact that big wide roads are expensive. Engineers are supposed to be all about tradeoffs: in modern engineering, every component of every bridge is built just strong enough (plus a safety factor) to support the loads that particular component will experience. We don’t just pile up huge amounts of stone so that there is no possible way the bridge will collapse. If an engineer insisted on using 8 gauge wire everywhere in a house, they wouldn’t get very far. But apparently putting in 4-lane roads all over the place even where the traffic doesn’t come close to justifying it is just A-OK.

Why are road engineers allowed to be 12 year olds? (no disrespect intended to 12 year olds; but thinking that is perfectly fine in a 12 year old isn’t necessarily OK for an adult)

And yes, I remember being similar: on at least one occasion I drew up a subdivision plan which just had a whole bunch of houses connected to a freeway interchange. And at one time I thought office buildings should have one parking spot per employee, too. I was just thinking of the convenience when driving, not about the costs. So it’s not just you.

This is a good question.

Although one possibly relevant thing I've learned in the past 2-4 years or so...traffic engineers are far from the only or most egregious examples of people not growing up. Look no further than the tantrums around vaccination to find truly toddler-esque adults.

It is easy to set standards for say...structural engineering. You can model a building or a bridge, estimate the dead and live loads, see the transfer of forces. It all follows a natural model.

The same is much harder, or even untrue for roads. You are modelling human behaviour, which unlike the forces of our universe, respond to our policies. If you build a bridge under strength, the force of gravity will not reduce to compensate. If you build a road with "too narrow" lanes the humans operating vehicles on it will slow down to compensate.

I'd argue that most fields of engineering lack a focus on human factors engineering--one only needs to try and use my washer to understand this, but few other fields have such a devastating impact on people and cities because of that lack of focus.

It's interesting, you look at the cockpit of an airplane, and you see ugly switches and dials everywhere, it looks like no designer has ever looked at a plane. It certainly is not as sleek and beautiful as the interior of a Tesla. And yet, the airplane controls are designed extremely intentionally and extremely carefully in order to minimize user errors. Down to things like buttons which felt too similar and caused crashes when pilots actuated the wrong ones, are redesigned to be different. But rarely is that attention paid in automobiles, the Tesla with it's screens being a prime example.

So...not just traffic engineers. Heck, since this is the ION thread, go look at the driver's cab of the ION.

[neonjoe]

The widths of our roads are as much a planning exercise as an engineering exercise. The planners have a large impact on whether the road can suffice as a two lane road or needs to be four lanes. One decision like allowing a Costco at the edge of town an impact traffic significantly. One recent memory of a new road that was built with the right capacity but quickly was overwhelmed was Ira Needles. It started as a two lane roadway and in less than 5 years was rebuilt as a 4 lane road.

[danbrotherston]

The widths of our roads are as much a planning exercise as an engineering exercise. The planners have a large impact on whether the road can suffice as a two lane road or needs to be four lanes. One decision like allowing a Costco at the edge of town an impact traffic significantly. One recent memory of a new road that was built with the right capacity but quickly was overwhelmed was Ira Needles. It started as a two lane roadway and in less than 5 years was rebuilt as a 4 lane road.

"Planning exercise"....

You mean land use planning? The thing is, that's not how it's planned. At least at a regional level--I don't think the cities do any better. The region's transportation plan was developed in isolation. They took what they believed would be the development pattern, and used that as gospel. Engineers were very explicit, the scope of work did not include asking about the land use plan. Which is insane, because now we are developing a regional plan that...god willing...will not align with the transportation plan that they are implementing.

The Ira Needles incident was...unfortunate. I think an overreaction, or rather, reaction to complaints. They widened a road without widening the intersections. This does not increase the road capacity, all it does is permit impatient drivers to recklessly filter around slower drivers. The road was built as four lanes, but was only paved 2 wide to save money. That's why widening it was so easy. They claim development happened faster than expected but realistically I think the novelty of the roundabouts, the unusual traffic patterns they general (slow down at every intersection) was foreign to people, they perceived it as "excessive congestion" and complained to council, who then demanded that staff "fix" the non-problem, which they did by spending money widening pavements for no value, and then were angry and bitter about it after that.

I have no doubt that this kind of thing is what leads them to have a "preference" for four lanes, because unlike building unsafe, deadly infrastructure which kills people, the environment, and our city, this kind of apparent "blunder" is the thing that makes heads roll in the city.

[neonjoe]

The widths of our roads are as much a planning exercise as an engineering exercise. The planners have a large impact on whether the road can suffice as a two lane road or needs to be four lanes. One decision like allowing a Costco at the edge of town an impact traffic significantly. One recent memory of a new road that was built with the right capacity but quickly was overwhelmed was Ira Needles. It started as a two lane roadway and in less than 5 years was rebuilt as a 4 lane road.

"Planning exercise"....

You mean land use planning? The thing is, that's not how it's planned. At least at a regional level--I don't think the cities do any better. The region's transportation plan was developed in isolation. They took what they believed would be the development pattern, and used that as gospel. Engineers were very explicit, the scope of work did not include asking about the land use plan. Which is insane, because now we are developing a regional plan that...god willing...will not align with the transportation plan that they are implementing.

The Ira Needles incident was...unfortunate. I think an overreaction, or rather, reaction to complaints. They widened a road without widening the intersections. This does not increase the road capacity, all it does is permit impatient drivers to recklessly filter around slower drivers. The road was built as four lanes, but was only paved 2 wide to save money. That's why widening it was so easy. They claim development happened faster than expected but realistically I think the novelty of the roundabouts, the unusual traffic patterns they general (slow down at every intersection) was foreign to people, they perceived it as "excessive congestion" and complained to council, who then demanded that staff "fix" the non-problem, which they did by spending money widening pavements for no value, and then were angry and bitter about it after that.

I have no doubt that this kind of thing is what leads them to have a "preference" for four lanes, because unlike building unsafe, deadly infrastructure which kills people, the environment, and our city, this kind of apparent "blunder" is the thing that makes heads roll in the city.

You're not wrong. I do believe though that this is another one of the cases where having separate tiers of government causes more miscommunication where the planning doesn't match the transportation etc. Normally I would say the region does a slightly better job building more realistic roads and widening when the 'demand' comes. A road that come to mind include Fisher Hallman between Ottawa and Bleams, it opened in 2000 as a two lane road and was only widened in 2016. On the other hand the city rebuilt Huron Road with four lanes during the same era and it still never seems busy.

[plam]

 The choice to build four lanes is a policy choice from engineers who like building four lane roads.

I'm definitely not an engineer or involved in this at all but I am curious about this:

Do engineers just design things with outdated doctrine and pass that on to politicians?

or: 

Do politicians make lazy demands for wide roads that engineers just go along with, and leave the costs to future politicians/generations?

If it is option 2, what's the point of having professionals that we are supposed to respect for their expertise? A politician might personally like a wasteful left-turn lane (or whatever), but I expect professionals to explain why it is a bad idea and for that to be adopted over the whims of a councillor.

Speaking of option 2, sometimes a municipal council says they want the thing that's not good enough, the engineer doesn't push back, and then the engineer gets a disciplinary hearing and charges.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatche...-1.6450110