Highways in Canada

[MolsonExport]

Those lower mainland highway 1 photos are stunning. I loved the scenery but hated the traffic along that stretch of highway. (Lived there early-late nineties, and visited many times since)

[Innsertnamehere]

The reason I hate it is that it is often rusted out to the point of its structural integrity looking compromised, it's bent where someone has smashed into it, there are even small chunks missing at some points. It just seems like a token thing placed there and the run down state of it means it has no real protection.

[sonysnob]

Box beam used to be pretty common in Ontario:

There was a time when most of the 401 between Scarborough and Oshawa had boxbeam barrier:







The 404 also had boxbeam between the 401 and Steeles Avenue when it was first constructed:



The boxbeam on the 400 formerly ran all the way south into Toronto:

[eemy]

They are particularly annoying at night due to oncoming lights. Also, the left shoulder is often inadequate.

[Klazu]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Those lower mainland highway 1 photos are stunning. I loved the scenery but hated the traffic along that stretch of highway. (Lived there early-late nineties, and visited many times since)

Thanks. Highway 1 would really need to be widened to 3+3 lanes all the way to Chilliwack (100km from Vancouver) to meet today's traffic. The new 4+4 lane section ends in Langley and shrinks to 2+2 lanes seen in the photos.

[libtard]

Originally Posted by middeljohn

It's a highway, it's not supposed to be aesthetically pleasing. The US has an annual road accident death rate of 10/100k, Canada is 6/100k. One huge difference is our barriers are a lot better (in addition to our longer on ramps, wider lanes). Point being even a regular jersey barrier is safer than a guard rail. A tall wall is just a modified jersey barrier (Ontario innovation, along with the parclo interchange)

Are you kidding? You'll meet a lot of people that will disagree with you about highways not having to be aesthetically pleasing. Thats simply your opinion. I could say the same thing about LRT stations or sky scrapers. They're just buildings, they don't need to be aesthetically pleasing.

A regular jersey barrier isn't safer than a guard rail on the edge of the cliff. Thats just false. They are not anchored to the ground in any way, while guard rails have pylons buried in the ground, making them much safer if someone were to crash into them.

[middeljohn]

Originally Posted by sonysnob

Box beam used to be pretty common in Ontario:

There was a time when most of the 401 between Scarborough and Oshawa had boxbeam barrier:

Looking at the cars, that was pretty recent. Could've been as little as 10 years ago!

What that section looks like today (apparently Park Rd no longer has an interchange, see exit 416 was replaced with 415)

[middeljohn]

Originally Posted by libtard

Are you kidding? You'll meet a lot of people that will disagree with you about highways not having to be aesthetically pleasing. Thats simply your opinion. I could say the same thing about LRT stations or sky scrapers. They're just buildings, they don't need to be aesthetically pleasing.

A regular jersey barrier isn't safer than a guard rail on the edge of the cliff. Thats just false. They are not anchored to the ground in any way, while guard rails have pylons buried in the ground, making them much safer if someone were to crash into them.

Jersey barriers are definitely anchored to the ground, how else do you think 60 foot poles are surface mounted on them? Temporary ones might not be, but permanent barriers are anchored. Like I said, it's safer cause the tire hits the barrier first, giving the driver somewhat of a chance to correct his course. With a guard rail the driver has no chance and it's for sure a messy accident.

Aesthetics matter, but comes secondary to safety. Make something safe and functional first, then worry about how it looks. Countries across the world aren't replacing their guard rails.with jersey barriers for no reason. They're much safer and have a much longer design life.

[Innsertnamehere]

The park road interchange wasn't switched to Stevenson until 2010 or so, but the Jersey barrier was there much earlier. The 401 through Oshawa is rather substandard currently, MTO is doing an EA at widening it to 10 lanes (as well as extending the express collectors system to Salem) to Courtice, and 8 lanes to highway 35. A bit overbuilt If you ask me, you can probably end the 10 lanes at Harmony and the 8 lanes at Waverley in Bowmanville, but they want to do that and rebuild most of the Oshawa interchanges to make them a bit more up to code, even if they aren't going to be parclos.

[Dmajackson]

Originally Posted by jeremy_haak

They are particularly annoying at night due to oncoming lights. Also, the left shoulder is often inadequate.

If oncoming headlights bother you just move to the drive-thru ... err I mean New Brunswick.

The main highway between Halifax and Moncton has two examples of "forested medians" one near Sackville, NB and Oxford, NS.

New Brunswick Highway 2 Exit 500

Nova Scotia Highway 104 near Thomson Station / Oxford

There is also an extreme example just built a few years ago by NSTIR on Highway 103 within suburban Halifax. This one was for environmental concerns but notice how in the picture it is a yellow centre line.

Nova Scotia Highway 103 outside of Halifax

New Brunswick has also continued with the "forested medians". This section in the rural NW was one of the last sections twinned.

New Brunswick Route 2 near Woodstock

[sonysnob]

Originally Posted by middeljohn

Looking at the cars, that was pretty recent. Could've been as little as 10 years ago!

It was taken by me at the end of 2004, so yeah, it's just less than 10 years old. This was taken a couple of years before the Stevenson Road project started, and just before the box-beam barrier through Durham Region was replaced by a pre-cast tallwall barrier.

Originally Posted by middeljohn

Jersey barriers are definitely anchored to the ground, how else do you think 60 foot poles are surface mounted on them? Temporary ones might not be, but permanent barriers are anchored. Like I said, it's safer cause the tire hits the barrier first, giving the driver somewhat of a chance to correct his course. With a guard rail the driver has no chance and it's for sure a messy accident.

Aesthetics matter, but comes secondary to safety. Make something safe and functional first, then worry about how it looks. Countries across the world aren't replacing their guard rails.with jersey barriers for no reason. They're much safer and have a much longer design life.

Concrete barriers are definitely better performing barriers than their steel counterparts (they should be, they are considerably more expensive) but they aren't anchored to the ground, simply poured on top of it. It's their weight that makes them strong, not an anchor.

(For transparency, barriers on bridges are usually anchored to the bridge by use of rebar, and non-continuous segments of barrier are usually dowelled together, also with rebar)

[go_leafs_go02]

Originally Posted by Klazu

Thanks. Highway 1 would really need to be widened to 3+3 lanes all the way to Chilliwack (100km from Vancouver) to meet today's traffic. The new 4+4 lane section ends in Langley and shrinks to 2+2 lanes seen in the photos.

Yeah, hopefully it's done in the next few years. They've invested a fair bit between Langley and Abbotsford over the past 5 years (3 new climbing lanes), new 248 Street overpass, and the Clearbrook Road and McCallum Road interchanges in Abbotsford have been completely rebuild.

Think the focus now is on the Highway 99 from the USA Border up to Massey Tunnel however.

[sonysnob]

Webcam that will show bridge construction activities for the new Nipigon River Bridge on the Trans-Canada in Northwest Ontario:

http://www.enl-tbay.com/NipigonBridge/Home-Cam.html

[haljackey]

Highway 21, Bruce Country, Ontario

[Andy6]

Originally Posted by Dmajackson

If oncoming headlights bother you just move to the drive-thru ... err I mean New Brunswick.

Long stretches of the Trans-Canada in eastern Manitoba have as much as a mile between the eastbound and westbound sections. When they built the westbound lanes back in the early 70s, they took a much straighter route rather than following the wandering path of the eastbound lanes that were built in the 1950s. I suppose they thought that the eastbound lanes would eventually be realigned to match the westbound ones, but this has never happened. The result is that Highway 1 from the Ontario boundary to Winnipeg is non-trivially shorter (I don't know by how much) than Highway 1 from Winnipeg to the Ontario boundary.

[Klazu]

Perhaps the most notorious highway in British Columbia is the Coquihalla Highway (BC Highway 5). It is a major highway that is well-known for its furious winter blizzards. It is also the only highway in Canada to have its own reality tv show.

• Video Link

In summer weather it's the most relaxing and un-eventful highway to drive with no problem of keeping up with the 110km/h speed limit.

















In winter it is a different story. Whereas before Hope the weather can be like this...



...up Coquihalla Highway it may looks like this.











Still not bad, however when a winter blizzard strikers, it strikes fast and with force. The below change in weather and driving conditions occurred two weeks ago in just 10 kilometres around the Coquihalla Summit (1244m). Not a nice weather to be on this road I can tell you and I am happy to drive 4WD car with proper winter tires!

[Klazu]

And to give one some idea how winter at Coquihalla Highway can be, one should know that this major highway is closed as we speak due to an avalance.

http://www.vancouversun.com/Coquihalla+H...che+control+operation/9531364/story.html

Gilowski said the depth of the avalanche was between half a metre and a metre, but nobody was hurt in the naturally occurring slide. "Mother Nature has thrown us a pretty dramatic curveball here," he said. "We've received over three metres of snow in about nine days, which is a record for the Coquihalla … It's just a massive amount of snow in a very short period of time."

[go_leafs_go02]

Apparently this is the worst avalanche year on the Coq since it opened 27 years ago. They're hitting areas of the highways where avalanches have never been recorded previously.

Apparently powerful enough to destroy a house no problem.

[eemy]

Is the Fraser Canyon route really a lot more scenic? I was driving east from Vancouver once and we took the Coquihalla, and I found it very scenic in its own right, but I'm from Ontario and if you stick any mountain in front of me, I'll be impressed.

[eternallyme]

Originally Posted by Andy6

Long stretches of the Trans-Canada in eastern Manitoba have as much as a mile between the eastbound and westbound sections. When they built the westbound lanes back in the early 70s, they took a much straighter route rather than following the wandering path of the eastbound lanes that were built in the 1950s. I suppose they thought that the eastbound lanes would eventually be realigned to match the westbound ones, but this has never happened. The result is that Highway 1 from the Ontario boundary to Winnipeg is non-trivially shorter (I don't know by how much) than Highway 1 from Winnipeg to the Ontario boundary.

If they ever upgrade Highway 1 to a full freeway, I would think they would just twin the straighter lanes in many sections while converting the original lanes to a service road?

I know there is a section in Saskatchewan, between Moose Jaw and Swift Current, that has a 3 km separation between the EB and WB lanes, like a separate one-way couplet.