Red Hill Creek Expressway

[king10]

Originally Posted by thistleclub

City of Hamilton – Public Works:

The work will take place, weather permitting, from Monday, January 12 to Friday, January 16 between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. To safely complete these traffic improvements, intermittent lane closures in this area of the RHVP will be required. The contractor will not work during the peak directional flow time periods to minimize disruptions to commuters during the morning and afternoon rush hours.

why wouldn't they do this work on weekends like they do with the Gardiner in Toronto?

shut it all down for 48 hours and get it done, not partial lane closures during the work week between 8 and 3 for 5 days

[SteelTown]

That's probably considered doing overtime. If that's the case the City would have to pay extra for the work.

[thistleclub]

City of Hamilton studies widening Red Hill
(Hamilton Spectator, Andrew Dreschel, May 25 2015)

Only eight years after it opened, the city is already looking at widening the Red Hill Valley Parkway.

The good news is the eight-kilometre four-lane highway is built to be seamlessly expanded to six lanes of traffic.

The bad news for Coun. Doug Conley — who argues the road is already too packed at rush hour — is the report won't be ready for a year.

"To have a plan a year from now is fine, but that means it's another four or five years before we do it.

"Maybe I'm a little anxious, but I can see gridlock all over the place."

The Ward 9 councillor first raised the issue of enlarging both the Red Hill and Lincoln Alexander parkways to handle growing traffic volumes at a recent committee meeting.

Conley says the residential development boom in the upper Stoney Creek portion of his ward and neighbouring Binbrook is only going to make a bad situation worse.

"With all this construction going on, I don't know where we're going to put all the cars."

According to city manager Chris Murray, widening the sister highways, which connect the QEW to the 403 across the Mountain, is part of the ongoing review of the city's transportation master plan, which is expected to be finished in the next 12 months.

The report will provide recommendations on the time frame for expansion.

City engineering director Gary Moore figures widening both highways would cost $80-$100 million, a significant challenge given that the city is currently spending about $48 million a year on road work when it should be spending $180 million to meet its needs.


Read it in full here.

[HillStreetBlues]

I was pretty frustrated to see that on the cover of the paper this morning. The article did point out that the City is performing only a fraction of the necessary road work each year, and so perhaps cannot afford a project of this scale, but mostly quoted the local councillor insisting that we need more road capacity without doing much challenging of that. Induced demand is in other places a pretty well-accepted principle- making the expressways six lanes won’t ultimately do anything but increase pollution and sprawl, and make our municipal budget even less sustainable. What’s our infrastructure deficit again? Wasn’t it just last year that staff said we would soon have no choice but let roads go to gravel for want of repair funds. It isn’t as though we have particularly low taxes here…

For less money, we could implement express bus routes on the mountain and the ‘burbs that would make much better use of the existing four lanes. That possibility- the possibility of moving any of those people by transit- is conspicuously absent from the article.

[bigguy1231]

The need for expansion of the road doesn't need to be challenged, the numbers show the need. Both roads are running over capacity as of now. From 6 am to 7 pm the traffic is bumper to bumper and at rush hours it is stop and go. Express buses would do nothing to alleviate the problems since the people who use their cars are never going to get on buses.

As for the assertion this is somehow a problem created by sprawl and suburbanites, neither road runs through the suburbs, it is totally within the boundaries of the old city of Hamilton. I might also add that the areas adjacent to the highways were for the most part well developed long before either road was built. These are not roads that were built to facilitate urban sprawl but rather to service already developed areas. Most of the neighbourhoods adjacent to the highways were built 50 or 60 years ago.

[interr0bangr]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

The need for expansion of the road doesn't need to be challenged, the numbers show the need. Both roads are running over capacity as of now. From 6 am to 7 pm the traffic is bumper to bumper and at rush hours it is stop and go. Express buses would do nothing to alleviate the problems since the people who use their cars are never going to get on buses.

As for the assertion this is somehow a problem created by sprawl and suburbanites, neither road runs through the suburbs, it is totally within the boundaries of the old city of Hamilton. I might also add that the areas adjacent to the highways were for the most part well developed long before either road was built. These are not roads that were built to facilitate urban sprawl but rather to service already developed areas. Most of the neighbourhoods adjacent to the highways were built 50 or 60 years ago.

So much wrong with your post. Please read up on "induced demand". The RHVP was designed for people to get to and from the QEW and LINC (aka the suburbs) without having to go through any urban areas, to say otherwise makes the mind boggle.

[CaptainKirk]

Adding an extra lane only adds an extra lane of traffic.

It will be filled a soon as it is added and will accomplish little to nothing.

The real solution is to plan differently, more efficiently.

[thmx]

Originally Posted by bigguy1231

As for the assertion this is somehow a problem created by sprawl and suburbanites, neither road runs through the suburbs, it is totally within the boundaries of the old city of Hamilton. I might also add that the areas adjacent to the highways were for the most part well developed long before either road was built. These are not roads that were built to facilitate urban sprawl but rather to service already developed areas. Most of the neighbourhoods adjacent to the highways were built 50 or 60 years ago.

There are homes for over 30,000 people currently under construction right off of the Mud Street and Stone Church Road ramps. The problem is without a doubt being caused by suburban sprawl.

[matt602]

Ever noticed how at rush hour, almost all the traffic congestion is going South to all those new subdivisions on the East mountain and in Elfrida?

Yeah...

[mattgrande]

https://twitter.com/JoeyColeman/stat...84882471628800

Council vote to start process of expanding RHVP and Linc to six lanes. Notice of Motion just put on table. #YHMgov

[HillStreetBlues]

The Public Works Committee has voted to study widening both the Red Hill and Lincoln Alexander expressways.

The cost has been estimated at one hundred million dollars. I honestly can not see how this is affordable...it doesn't take a genius to realize that more capacity will just spur more suburban sprawl that will quickly eat up that capacity. Hamilton has a huge infrastructure deficit, and it seems like this will do little more than add to it.

[coalminecanary]

This is just insane.

[lucasmascotto]

@SteelTown Can we update the title of this thread to just; "Red Hill Expressway"?

[matt602]

Ridiculous.

[haljackey]

Originally Posted by HillStreetBlues

The cost has been estimated at one hundred million dollars. I honestly can not see how this is affordable...it doesn't take a genius to realize that more capacity will just spur more suburban sprawl that will quickly eat up that capacity. Hamilton has a huge infrastructure deficit, and it seems like this will do little more than add to it.

This is a study. Construction likely would not happen for a long time. Best time to do it is when the pavement / road foundations start to wear out and the overpasses need mid-life maintenance work.

The roads are designed with expansion in mind, so this would not be a difficult job.

[HillStreetBlues]

Originally Posted by haljackey

This is a study. Construction likely would not happen for a long time. Best time to do it is when the pavement / road foundations start to wear out and the overpasses need mid-life maintenance work.

The roads are designed with expansion in mind, so this would not be a difficult job.

To hear some of council (and many suburbanites) talking, it's practically a foregone conclusion that the expressways will be widened, and the sooner the better. It's true that they were designed to accommodate easy expansion, but that says nothing of the cost of it. Can we afford it?

I just realized the RHVP opened exactly eight years ago. And it's already "gridlock"? Maybe it's because the expressway enabled the sprawl that will inevitably lead to increased traffic.

[SteelTown]

I'd rather have the money spent on widening the 403 from four to six lanes from the Meadowlands area to Aldershot instead of widening the Linc.

Most of the congestion on the Linc is because of people trying to merge onto the 403.

[sonysnob]

Originally Posted by HillStreetBlues

To hear some of council (and many suburbanites) talking, it's practically a foregone conclusion that the expressways will be widened, and the sooner the better. It's true that they were designed to accommodate easy expansion, but that says nothing of the cost of it. Can we afford it?

I just realized the RHVP opened exactly eight years ago. And it's already "gridlock"? Maybe it's because the expressway enabled the sprawl that will inevitably lead to increased traffic.

The widening of the expressways in Hamilton was a forgone conclusion. They were always designed to be widened, right from construction. It shouldn't be a shocking development given the number of building permits that have been issued on the east mountain.

[haljackey]

The Linc/Red Hill's volume isn't coming from just increases in local use, but from its use for long distance traffic.

They have taken some stress off 403/QEW. I use them instead to get to Niagara Falls from London ever since the Red Hill opened.

I'd say that building new highways will do more to encourage sprawl rather than widening these highways.

New highways don't even necessarily encourage sprawl. Example: northern London is sprawling like a weed and there are no highways anywhere around the area.

[SteelTown]

^And that highlights why the city should look at tolling these expressways. It's a municipal expressway that receives no provincial funds, all comes from municipal taxes. The only possible exemption to tolls I would allow is industrial trucks.