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Originally Posted by Richard Eade
Looking at the next leg of the Western Transitway Extension, I think Staff have only planned for an interim solution.
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Based on this one can see that the transitway going west takes it north of the stormwater ponds, right behind people's properties and sort of cuts off the stormwater ponds from being accessible if the usual fence-the-Transitway-in mentality dominates.
For reference, the envisioned 'ultimate' (and I use this term advisedly, as you shall see below) route of the West Transitway is to proceed eastward essentially on a straight line corresponding to the drawn section that's coming from the west. If you look at the interchange you'll see a gap between the N-to-W loop ramp and the westbound off-ramp. The transitway is to slot through this gap after going under March Rd (which I guess has to be raised) before going under the off-ramp itself and into the space between the Queensway and Corkstown Rd. So, unlike at Moodie, the plan does avoid crossing a superfluous number of ramps, but the underpass of the off-ramp will still be at a significant skew.
A second consideration is that the MTO will be building a second overpass of the Queensway at this interchange to the east of the existing one:
What's depressingly notable about this is that this configuration, just like back between Moodie and Holly Acres, makes no allowance for the MoE-approved West Transitway to the north of the Queensway and south of Corkstown. And we know that the MTO EA is later than the West Transitway EA because the latter is what authorized the Eagleson P&R which we can clearly see in this image.
Besides the usual lack of co-ordination, the northbound carriageway of March takes it well into the current (re)alignment of Corkstown Rd and it clearly pushes the westbound off-ramp+March Rd intersection north of the current intersection (while leaving the Campeau Dr+March Rd intersection in place) and of course pushes poor old Corkstown Rd yet further into the Greenbelt and its intersection with March presumably further north still. I would expect that there is now enough room between the March southbound and northbound carriageways to fit in a transitway (likely on the alignment of the former northbound carriageway), but whether that is by accident or design I have no idea since the co-ordination seems to be quite lacking.
It's basically insanity and yet the MoE (and one would suppose the NCC) approved it, which goes to show how pointless environmental assessments are.
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I thought that I'd get the ball rolling on a more future-minded plan.
In this concept drawing, I have moved the 417 ramps into a diamond configuration (similar to what I suggested for Moodie), and I have re-aligned Campeau (requires an expropriation) and Corkstown to meet March at a right angle. Again, as before, the 417 ramps are in red, the Transitway is in blue.
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I would have aligned Corkstown to meet Campeau at or maybe just a little north of the current intersection (south of the creek portal, anyway), which would avoid any building expropriation. It's kind of hard to trade off a building for a larger parking lot...
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This time, however, I have added a huge Park & Ride facility (yellow) with its own ramps to and from [March] and the 417 (shown in green). I have tried to keep these as free-flow ramps. I expect that most of the vehicles arriving at the Park & Ride will come from the west via the 417 (crossing the 417 on the March Bridge), however, there might be a bunch from the 416 via the west-bound 417. There are also secondary accesses onto Campeau and Corkstown. Notice that the Park & Ride has a bi-directional car tunnel passing under [March] beside the Transitway.
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The car tunnel is a neat touch.
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What I am unhappy with is getting cars from the Park & Ride to head south on [March]. I can add another ramp from the west lot between the two shown, but there will still be weaving with the cars heading for the west-bound 417 (the vertical red line).
Any suggestions?
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Given the MTO's plans, presumably to deal with intersection failure, something else probably has to be considered. I just don't know when the MTO is going to start building and the fact that the diagram you supplied doesn't show the MTO's plans is not at all encouraging.
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