Highway 102/103 - Interchange Upgrade | Completed
 

Great news this horrible outdated and congested interchange was long overdue for an overhaul.

I see from the map along with an all new overpass and ramps, they appear to widening the 102 with a 3rd land Northbound to Chain Lake Dr. to make that section 6 lanes. Also they appear to be building new collector lanes southbound to North West Arm Dr. similar to what Highway 118 has along Dartmouth Crossing. :tup:

It took a minute to figure out what is new, since a good part of the proposed piece is a very similar alignment to what's there already. But the curve on the north side of the interchange will be made a bit less severe.

Way back when in a list of proposed highway projects I saw something like a $1.1B entry that described an overhaul of the 102. I think it included widening the whole thing to 6 lanes plus on/off ramps and maybe a connection to the MacKay. Technically the highways link up via surface streets, along Bayers and Connaught. That is not a very good arrangement.

He added that Nova Scotia's low population density and widespread infrastructure makes maintaining it a challenge.

Why do they always have to put this in? The Halifax area doesn't have a low population density and building highways there isn't particularly difficult. Nova Scotia has the second-highest population density in Canada after PEI and building and maintaining highways there is easier than in a lot of Canada (like in BC and Alberta where some highways go through mountains). If NS roads are bad it's because they're poorly funded and maintained, not because there is something special about NS that makes things harder there than everywhere else.

That should be a nice improvement. I've always thought the on-ramp to the 102 from the 103 to be a little short given the amount of traffic. Currently you have to pick a space and gun it or you will run out of lane. The collector between the 103 and Northwest Arm Drive should help traffic as well, though I'm not sure that it will alleviate the morning traffic jam as that seems to be more of a volume thing than a routing of flow - the bottleneck at Bayers Road will still be in place.

The Sackville exit on the 102 outbound and the interchange between Victoria Rd. and the 111 could use similar updates...

Here is roughly what is being added that I can determine from their map:

http://i.imgur.com/CaKZ4dY.jpg

Updated design on this project currently under construction from the herald

http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1...p-now-underway

102 facing NORTH BOUND
http://thechronicleherald.ca/sites/d...A9KJM4H.11.jpg
Source: thechronicleherald.ca
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1...p-now-underway

http://thechronicleherald.ca/sites/d...04_27_2018.JPG
Source: thechronicleherald.ca
http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1...p-now-underway

Hopefully it will result in a longer entrance ramp to the 102 northbound. There is currently a very short merge that makes it really difficult to find a spot during higher traffic volumes.

That ramp should go all the way to Lacewood

Agreed. Similar to what they did with Kearney lake to Larry Uteck.

That would be best, but lengthen it at least.

And while they are at it, lengthen the exit from Lacewood northbound to the 102. When the left turn arrow empties the backed up traffic from Bayer's Lake onto that ramp there's usually a minimum of 10 cars in a line trying to merge onto the 102 all at once, with varying results. Last night I was caught behind a couple of cars that were having difficulty merging with 102 traffic resulting in a near stand-still on the 102 while they sorted it out. There were a few nervous moments of glancing in the mirror hoping not to be rear ended by an 18 wheeler traveling at highway speeds, and the left lane was not available to move into due to oncoming traffic and a few kamakazi-type moves by motorists behind me trying to get over to the left lane at the same time.

There are a few other exits which come to mind that need upgrading as well, such as the one from/to the 102 northbound at Bedford/Sackville highway 101 interchange. Notoriously short entry/exit (basically a loop) that was obviously designed when traffic volumes were much less, and similarly the exit from Victoria Road to the 111 where you have zero merge distance to jump into all the traffic from the MacKay bridge...

:2cents:

That one is BRUTAL. I've lost count the number of times I have seen people almost get clocked on those super short entry/exit sections

I'm a little concerned that there has been no indication of lighting in the article(s) nor the rendering. Driving this stretch at night, one is abruptly plunged into almost complete darkness, as if in the middle of nowhere. Being a very busy route (arguably one of the main entrances to / exits from the city) and important interchange, I would say there ought to be serious consideration for lighting, similar to the section of the 118 adjacent to Dartmouth Crossing.

On another note, I'm curious as to why there are apparently five outbound lanes proposed through the underpass and three inbound. Clearly one will exit around to the 103, but perhaps the right two lanes will both exit there? Or is afternoon rush hour just that much worse than in the morning?

Yup. I came very close to getting hit there once (Victoria Rd onto 118). Someone tried to change lanes to the outside lane to let some merge without checking the lane first (I was in the outside lane). It was an EXTREMELY close call. I layed on the horn for what felt like 10 seconds while trying to evade them. They just kept on coming. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to within an INCH of the concrete divider... horn blaring... brakes slammed to the floor... tires screeching... cloud of smoke from the burnt rubber. I still think they never even saw me. They just kept going after missing me by inches and forcing me almost into the concrete wall.

Laughing my ass off - great writing - very descriptive - I hope you are a writer - What is your next novel?

One would have to assume that lighting is part of the plan. This area is notorious for fog. That and add a wet rainy night and it is a navigation challenge for the most experienced motorist.

Well written... I can almost smell the burning rubber... ;)

Yah that was before I bought a new car in 2013. The car I was driving didn’t have antilock brakes or traction control of any of that fancy stuff. So the wheels locked up hard and it was all very loud and smoky and dramatic!

The main thing is that it ended well! That's a good job of avoiding a potential disaster - you don't have a lot of time to make decisions and take action in these situations. :tup:

A more detailed plan showing the lanes is available. The outbound lane on 102 might be longer than it currently is but it won't be extended up to Lacewood.

https://novascotia.ca/tran/highways/...lan-aerial.pdf

Thanks, it looks like it could be an improvement, but it's not really clear from the diagram as to the extent. Hopefully somebody has recognized a need for a longer merge lane.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dujox3UWwAAd8Jf.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/AeroVisionUAV/st...65730462810119

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dujox5HW4AIqEEM.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/AeroVisionUAV/st...65730462810119

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DujowPkXQAAY9KN.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/AeroVisionUAV/st...65730462810119

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dujox35WkAEQXKH.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/AeroVisionUAV/st...65730462810119

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D2IVopDW0AAcsnO.jpg:large
Twitter: @AeroVisionUAV
https://twitter.com/AeroVisionUAV/st...72460150784002

Still a long way to go...

July 15

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D_hpzgHW...jpg&name=large
https://twitter.com/AeroVisionUAV/st...86051490951169

They seem to be taking their sweet time getting this finished. :sleep:

What a shame all that beautiful rock gone

New Highway 102/103 ramp and overpass will open on Monday

The new and improved Highway 102/103 interchange will open on Thanksgiving.

As of sunrise on Monday, Oct. 14, drivers heading east on the 103 or north on the 102 will be using the new ramp and overpass.

Message boards will be along the affected routes to let people know about the change. Traffic control signs, cones and barriers will also be in place.

Construction work began last spring to replace the existing interchange, which was constructed in 1963.

https://www.halifaxtoday.ca/local-ne...ujAnQ2bkeRG1ec

This is happy news, not least because during construction it has been sometimes nerve wracking negotiating through there. What makes me happiest though is to see that this stretch of roadway will finally be lit. Travelling through there on a dark night, especially in fog or heavy rain, has long been a death-defying drive. This will leave the 107-118 interchange as undisputed champ in the list of darkest, deadliest merges in metro.

I was coming back from a weekend on the South shore and almost plowed myself into a ditch on a foggy night. Lack of light, and the way those paints get so hard to see in the rain made that whole area awful.

https://i.postimg.cc/wvbmc6Yh/hwy-0002.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/25S7fjmZ/hwy-0004.jpg

https://novascotia.ca/news/release/?id=20191011003

I will have to get up early Monday morning to tune into the traffic bedlam that will undoubtedly occur.

Should be pretty quiet.....being Thanksgiving!

Slept right through that vital point.

Drove by there today. No mayhem but still very much a construction site.

Was happy to see that the northbound entrance ramp to the 102 has been lengthened, so a big improvement there.

No signs of our friend Keith pulled over on the side of the road trying to figure out which lane to take or wondering what each sign says? Not sure Keith should be driving with his adversity to round abouts traffic circles and new and improved roads/ramps. LOL

Funny, I never have incidents on the roads but lots of others seem to, maybe that's you. The Uteck roundabouts are a daily disaster, a monument to poor traffic engineering and roadway design.

Indeed the proliferation of roundabouts on Larry Uteck is most peculiar (and unnecessary).

There's a multilane "dogbone" roundabout in Moncton, at the Dieppe/Harrisville Interchange with Highway 11/15, which actually works surprisingly well but, as always, multilane roundabouts work best for natives who inherently know which lane to be in. Itinerants will always have more difficulty, which is why the three-roundabouts-in-a-row on Larry Uteck is such a pain in the ass. :rolleyes:

Not me. I live in Palm Beach Gardens FL I used to live on Larry Utect and never had a problem with the round abouts.

All in good fun - I enjoy your posts

I have to agree with that. Even the locals don't seem to know how to handle the multi-lane roundabouts, yet try to traverse them as quickly as possible. I've noticed that the Uteck series of roundabouts are being handled more quickly and haphazardly with each passing year. Witnessed a near pedestrian fatality on Friday night when somebody in the left lane stopped for a pedestrian, while somebody in a small SUV was just about to blast by them on the right - luckily the pedestrian saw them and stopped just as the driver slammed on the brakes - it could have been bad. Have witnessed other creative uses of the lanes, not to mention those that don't seem to understand that a car in the circle has the right of way, among other things.

Those particular roundabouts are just a bad design, though. They are too tight, too numerous in succession, and 2 lanes in a small roundabout is just too difficult to get everybody to understand quickly as to what they are supposed to do. I feel that I have masted roundabouts in general, and typically do not hesitate to tackle the Uteck ones, but found myself yesterday taking a different route to avoid them, because they just aren't worth the hassle. Most people who use them seem to think they have somehow graduated to the skill level of Emerson Fittipaldi, but I have to tell them... they have not - they need to slow down at least to the point that their tires aren't starting to lose grip...

Honestly, I found the ones that are designed well, like the downtown circles near the armories seem to work pretty well. Roundabouts in general do suffer from one inherent design deficiency though, and that is that in rush-hour situations, the busy roads feed constantly into the circles, creating a situation where one route only gets traffic priority (constantly occupies the circle) and thus all other routes that feed into the circle, after the busy entrance, get backed up because there is nothing breaking the flow of traffic for subsequent lanes to feed into. Experienced it coming from Chebucto Road into the Armdale roundabout in rush hour a couple of weeks ago. All the traffic from Quinpool fed into the circle, jamming it up for anyone else to get in, thus the backup on Chebucto - eventually, you feed into it and then have to look for a gap and gun it to get into the circle - either that or sit there until rush hour is done...

Rant over... the new ramp should be an improvement when it's actually finished, and the lighting will be a godsend...

I have no problem with roundabouts. I think they work very well. I love the ones next to the Common. They work fantastic!

Well designed roundabouts work very well, especially when locals get used to them. There is a five point single lane roundabout in north central Moncton that Killam and Collishaw feed into (as well as Russ Howard and Purdy) which is infinitely more efficient than the (former) signalized intersection.

Not all roundabouts are well designed though, and I include the morass at Larry Uteck in that category.

I'm OK with them as well, but I'm not going to pretend that they do not have faults. That's all. I think they are the best alternative for some situations, but not all situations, and also that some iterations are better than others. I can only hope that the city traffic people are paying attention and decide to integrate the best features into future designs - and avoid the troublesome ones. Presumably they will, after all that's their job.

I agree with your opinion on the downtown ones - I think they are the best of all that I've experienced, but admittedly I haven't been on them during rush hour, and don't know whether they are even affected by rush hour, actually.

I do think the ones out at Larry Uteck could have been designed a bit better, but overall I find them pretty good. That common ones do get a bit backed up at rush hour but they seem to run very smoothly.

Fair enough. Thanks for the info on the commons ones.

For the Uteck ones, my main quibbles are situations such as people continuing around the circle in the right lane when the rules say they have to exit and that the left lane can exit too. Or people entering in the right lane and crossing over to the left lane directly in front of another vehicle. Or approaching quickly and entering the circle when it's not clear, cutting off the vehicle within the circle... etc etc

Admittedly, most of this is 'bad driver' stuff and the small, tight, 2-lane roundabouts tend to be less forgiving than most other road structures for these kind of mistakes.

To be fair, other road systems have their problems too. 99% of the time the Uteck circles are fine but they can be nerve wracking when you see people overdriving their capabilities based presumably on overconfidence. Most people probably wouldn't notice anyhow... I tend to be a little overanalytical when it comes to driving, as it's a thing for which I have fairly high standards... but I know people who happily flirt with disaster each and every day who are gleefully unaware of it, until the planets line up and then they can't understand what happened as they always did it that way before... :haha:

Regardless, the circles are out there, may as well use them. I think they are generally more efficient than lighted intersections, and one would think they are better economically in that there are no traffic lights which require power, maintenance and replacement, eventually.

And those who can't or don't want to bother can avoid them if they want to.

I would have said the same thing myself, except that last week I had a near-incident there and still am not sure whether it was my fault or that of the other driver.

I was heading east on Cunard towards the Armories, with an intent to head north on Agricola. My path was the yellow line:

https://i.imgur.com/eyM7ciq.jpg

A driver on North Park approached the circle and since he had a lane on the right in the circle that suddenly materializes right there, he entered next to me. But he was where I intended to go because the design there is a mess, forcing you to merge right into that newly-created lane if you are following the signs. Having a roundabout that is a single lane become multi-lane partway around does not seem to me to be good design.

He should not have entered the circle with you coming around in the circle.

I would say that technically you were in the right, as he is not supposed to enter the circle if it's not clear. However, you are right - I can see how he would be confused by the multiple lanes and perhaps assume that you were in the left lane and thus the right lane was open to him.

I think that it should have been obvious to him by the dashed lines at the entrance that your lane extended over to the right side, though. It might have been, like MonctonRad suggested, that this person could have been from out of town, and thus was unfamiliar with them and had to make a snap decision based on all of the visual stimuli suddenly presented to him by the roundabout.

I also worry about pedestrians in that drivers may focus on vehicles in the circles and could forget to look for pedestrians until it's too late. Not sure what the statistics say, though.

That looks tragic BUT you still had a quarter of the circle to either speed up and merge into your lane in front of him or slow slightly to merge behind him. Of course when that fails you simply go all around the circle again and hope you can get into your preferred lane - NO PROBLEM

I fail to understand why that new lane appears in that spot. It seems to serve little purpose except to cause problems.

Probably to provide a dedicated lane for the heavier traffic routes served by the roundabout. Traffic studies would have been done leading up to the design.

HRM's motto is "Poor design costs no more!". :yuck: