Interprovincial bridge crossing discussion

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Thanks for posting the TRANS projections for 2031. They are a great counter argument to those saying that it is a waste of money to build an eastern bridge because ALL the trucks won’t be removed from King Edward.

In fact, in his opinion piece (see the text of Mohammed Adam’s piece from the Ottawa Citizen, on page 90 of this thread), Mr. Adam says:


I have not looked into the IBI report, but I am assuming that what Mr. Adam is saying is that the volume of commercial traffic predicted to be on King Edward in 2050 will be 85% of what the current volume of commercial traffic is – or was, in 2021, when the study was done.

Getting back to the TRANS images, look at the width of the line crossing the M-C Bridge in the ‘Do Nothing’ version, as predicted for 2031. That is a heavy line, indicating a LOT of truck traffic. I expect that that line represents a fair amount more traffic than is crossing today. (Too bad that the NCC didn’t provide a similar image of the traffic at the time of the survey. Leave it to the NCC to skip crucial information and not show how things will differ from today.) Traffic, especially truck traffic, will continue to grow, year after year. Thus, in 2050, the year that Mr. Adam picked, I expect that the line would be considerably wider still, than the one that the 2031 image shows.

That is, of course, unless an eastern bridge is added. In the TRANS images with bridges, the width of the line crossing the M-C Bridge is narrower, since trucks have an alternate path to take.

It might be that, with an eastern bridge, the volume of trucks driving along King Edward in 2050 is only 15% less than today’s volume. But if the new bridge is not added, that volume of trucks will be considerably increased from what it is now.

In a typical cycle of lights there might be 4 trucks waiting to turn right and 2-3 waiting to turn left. If in 2031 there will be 3 and 2 instead of 5 and 4 I really don't see how that changes much. It's only worthwhile if it removes all but a few trucks a day. It might make driving a bit easier as you often get stuck boxed in by trucks but for the neighbours and pedestrians it's largely irrelevant.