Roads/Bridges projects/issues

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by Aylmer

A good Main street:
1. has lots of connectivity
2. is easily traversable

Having lots of intersections is one way to do it, but its very blunt and can often undermine those very elements. You can accomplish this without vehicular intersections by replacing them with good pedestrian crossings (either signalized and/or curb extensions, crossing refuges, raised crossings, etc.

At the cost of seeing the traffic speed on the main street increase.

This is an urban main street, not a suburban main drag, and should not become a suburban main drag, the best efforts of council's most useless member notwithstanding.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by rocketphish

But the legitimate traffic it impedes, probably the vast majority at that, will just flow to the next street, adding to that street's existing traffic, making the problem even worse over there.

This just moves the issue instead of solving it. Sounds like the typical Ottawa solution to traffic woes.

But Emond St. is only 1 block long (it ends at Deschamps Ave.) so the amount of "legitimate traffic" along it is minimal. I suspect Hannah (and to a lesser extent Durocher) get the vast majority of the traffic anyway, so this change should only result in a small increase in traffic on them in relative terms.

As for the undesirables, it is true they will be moved, but at least they will be divided between Hannah and Durocher instead of being concentrated on Emond. There may also be a reduction overall since it will be further from the club and thus not as convenient and obvious a destination.

[MichelKazan]

Originally Posted by roger1818

(and to a lesser extent Dorchester)

It's Durocher, not Dorchester. Dorchester is in the Carlington area.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Uhuniau

When you close off intersections to vehicular traffic, it allows the traffic to flow even faster, and more dangerously, on the main street. A good main street has lots of active intersections. Blocking even more of them (there are already at least two on the main part of Montreal Road in Vanier) will turn what should be a growing main street into a traffic sewer.

From my understanding, the proposal would not be to close the street at Montreal Rd, but instead "close the street just after the businesses" (about 35m from Montreal Rd). As a result, the intersection would still exist. A great compromise IMHO. Having said that, I don't see how this intersection affects the flow of traffic on Montreal Rd, as it is pretty much invisible to the traffic.

This is a very dumb idea, which is why Fleury is all over it.

Is he? My impression is he is only hesitantly agreeing to try it temporarily to see if it has the desired effects.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by Spoonsy

You get the same — on Dupuis even with it closed.

There will always be idiots and there is nothing you can do to get rid of them completely. The question is, do they learn and know next time not to rip down the street again.

Closed street gives a lot more space for congregating. More room for shenanigans if you don't have to dodge cars and hide from police patrols! Great opportunities for long-term loitering without eyes from all those pesky cars looking at ya!

Good point. Better street lighting can help with that. No one hiding wants a spot light in their face. Also, are the issues purely pedestrian or do they also involve a vehicle?

For a largely residential street like Emond with less traffic driving by I expect you would see instances of theft, break-ins, and property crime go up as the street becomes more secluded.

Another good point.

I'm not sure how closing the street to vehicular traffic will reduce this... they didn't carpool there to start a fight... the problem is the Playmate

Agreed on your analysis of the root cause. Likely one of them was parked on Emond and that is how they ended up there. Blocking the street would make it less convenient to use the street for parking.

[Uhuniau]

Originally Posted by roger1818

From my understanding, the proposal would not be to close the street at Montreal Rd, but instead "close the street just after the businesses" (about 35m from Montreal Rd). As a result, the intersection would still exist. A great compromise IMHO. Having said that, I don't see how this intersection affects the flow of traffic on Montreal Rd, as it is pretty much invisible to the traffic.

If you reduce the amount of traffic entering/exiting the main street, you will allow for greater speeds on that main street. Cross-cutting traffic calms traffic better than any speed bumps or barriers.

Is he? My impression is he is only hesitantly agreeing to try it temporarily to see if it has the desired effects.

There is no "temporarily" or "if" with that guy. The outcome is predetermined, the "temporary" or "pilot" nature of a change is a sham.

[rocketphish]

Traffic manager ‘not surprised’ by serial speeding on some Ottawa roads
Reducing speed limit not enough, must change road itself: traffic manager Phil Landry

By: Adam Kveton, Metro
Published on Fri Oct 28 2016

There are certain Ottawa roads where the majority of drivers consistently drive well above the speed limit.

But the city’s traffic services manager says that can have less to do with the people behind the wheel and more to do with the roads themselves.

In fact, you could probably identify those roads yourself just by looking at them.

Many have multiple lanes, medians in between, few houses along them, or houses that are set back from the road. Some even have barriers between housing and the road.

You might consider them to be places where you could go 80 kilometres an hour pretty safely, and yet their speed limits are getting lower.

One example is Hunt Club Road east of Bank Street. Last year, the city passed a motion to have the stretch between Cahill Drive and Conroy Road reduced from 80 kilometres an hour to 60.

This was due to community concern over high speeds. The ward’s councillor supported the change at the time, despite the fact that 80 kilometres an hour was “appropriate” for the road based on the city’s speed zoning policy, and the city’s public works department noting that it “does not expect the operating speed on Hunt Club Road to be significantly reduced … unless there is significant police enforcement on an on-going basis.”

That is where the disconnect happens.

“You’ve got a four lane roadway, you’ve got setback sidewalks. You’ve got a barrier wall on both sides. So it’s actually not conducive to lower speeds, and actually if you start driving slower … you don’t feel that comfortable,” said Phil Landry, the city’s manager of traffic services.

Now, the majority of people are still speeding, and Landry said he’s not surprised.

“Hunt Club was designed for 80 kilometres an hour because that’s what the speed limit was set at, so it’s operating at what the design was to be.”

In short, drivers still feel comfortable driving 80 kilometres an hour. But, as more houses are built nearer streets like Hunt Club, residents speak out on safety.

“The feedback we get from residents is that cars are going too fast – they don’t feel safe crossing the street, even though we’ve got some traffic lights and things like that – so they just want the traffic to slow down in their communities,” said Landry.

Add to that an increased interest in cycling and walking, and roads like Hunt Club are getting their speed limits lowered.

Other roads, like Meadowlands Drive, historically have had lower speed limits in some places and higher speed limits in others. East of Fisher, the speed limit on Meadowlands is 40 kilometres an hour because that section of the road was in the former city of Nepean, which chose to reduce the speed limit. Now, according to city stats released to Metro, compliance with the speed limit is one per cent.

The 85th percentile speed (which the city’s speed zoning policy used to determine what a streets speed limit should be) is 57 kilometres an hour.

That too is an example of a street built to have drivers driving at higher speeds, said Landry.

To try and increase compliance, the city does implement things like digital speed signs, flexible stakes and cues to motorists that are shown to reduce speeds, but ultimately the best solution is to alter the roads themselves, said Landry.

Area traffic management studies are one way in which the city works to make permanent additions to streets to reduce speeding, but the waiting list for that program is 73 studies long.

Landry is looking into having roads purpose-built, or later changed, to induce the desired speed limit.

“We are working with our planners to build roads so if you want the speed to be at 40 or to be at 50 or to be at 60, you build it so that people actually travel at that speed,” he said.

“Because just changing and making the speed limit 40 on a road isn’t going to change the behaviour unless we have enforcement all the time.”

http://www.metronews.ca/news/ottawa/2016...er-not-surprised-by-serial-speeding.html

[kmcamp]

Wow, someone in the traffic department actually gets it. I was simply shocked, shocked I say when reducing the speed limit to 60 on what's essentially Ottawa's second cross town expressway didn't actually change the speed that anyone, myself included, drives at. If you build a highway, people will travel at highway speeds. If you want slower speeds, you actually have to design the road for the speed you want

[Richard Eade]

Well, why are they trying to reduce the speed of roads like Hunt Club, between Cahill and Conroy?

The problem is not that there are large higher-speed roads. A large, limited-access, higher-speed, road like the 417, or like what Hunt Club should have been, is a much more efficient way for vehicles to cross the city. The problem is the City’s planning department which allows homes to be built along those streets – and then the City listens to people who buy homes along those streets and then complain about the traffic.

For pete's sake, Hunt Club now goes from the 417 in the east to the 416 in the west. The City needs to stop thinking that it can make that road into a residential street. As TV's Dr. Phil would no doubt say "The City needs to 'get real'."

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Richard Eade

Well, why are they trying to reduce the speed of roads like Hunt Club, between Cahill and Conroy?

The problem is not that there are large higher-speed roads. A large, limited-access, higher-speed, road like the 417, or like what Hunt Club should have been, is a much more efficient way for vehicles to cross the city. The problem is the City’s planning department which allows homes to be built along those streets – and then the City listens to people who buy homes along those streets and then complain about the traffic.

For pete's sake, Hunt Club now goes from the 417 in the east to the 416 in the west. The City needs to stop thinking that it can make that road into a residential street. As TV's Dr. Phil would no doubt say "The City needs to 'get real'."

How far back would you have to keep houses so that nobody would need to cross the street (and be mowed down by a speeding driver)?

If the city wants to build a controlled access freeway along hunt club then fine, but otherwise they should be taking some steps to maintain some semblance of safety.

[phil235]

Originally Posted by acottawa

How far back would you have to keep houses so that nobody would need to cross the street (and be mowed down by a speeding driver)?

If the city wants to build a controlled access freeway along hunt club then fine, but otherwise they should be taking some steps to maintain some semblance of safety.

Bingo.

[MaxHeadroom]

Originally Posted by acottawa

How far back would you have to keep houses so that nobody would need to cross the street (and be mowed down by a speeding driver)?

If the city wants to build a controlled access freeway along hunt club then fine, but otherwise they should be taking some steps to maintain some semblance of safety.

Too late for that, that ship has sailed. Now because Hunt Club is another Merivale, with traffic lights and stores and homes, it's original purpose to carry traffic is now rendered mostly useless at peak periods, and you have more and more traffic going south to Leitrim in an effort to bypass it.

[lrt's friend]

Build super wide roads and then set unrealistic speed limits. This is becoming typical. Walkley Road had a notorious speed trap just east of the VIA rail overpass for years at the bottom of a long hill. You had to brake all the way down the hill to maintain the 50km speed limit.

Regarding Hunt Club, where are the houses? Almost all the houses face away from Hunt Club. That is why traffic travels at the pace it does. If a lower speed limit was wanted, then more businesses should have been facing Hunt Club requiring more frequent traffic signals. As far as the stretch from Cahill to Conroy, nothing has changed there in years. So why the change in the speed limits now?

I remember one vocal resident in the Greenbelt on Conroy was able to lower the speed limit from 80 to 60. It was ridiculous for a straight rural road with few houses and no traffic lights. The speed limit finally was increased to 70 again.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by lrt's friend

Regarding Hunt Club, where are the houses? Almost all the houses face away from Hunt Club.

AFAIK, the only houses on Hunt Club are between Downpatrick and the Airport Parkway.

I think the big concern is cycling. IMHO, it is on highways like Hunt Club (and March Rd) that we should be putting segregated cycling lanes, not on the downtown streets. Intersections and vehicle speed are the two worst enemies of cyclists. Cycling lanes make intersections more dangerous for cyclists and paint does little to stop a distracted driver traveling 80+ km/h. Highways like Hunt Club have few intersections and very fast cars and are thus prime candidates for barricades.

[lrt's friend]

Originally Posted by roger1818

AFAIK, the only houses on Hunt Club are between Downpatrick and the Airport Parkway.

I think the big concern is cycling. IMHO, it is on highways like Hunt Club (and March Rd) that we should be putting segregated cycling lanes, not on the downtown streets. Intersections and vehicle speed are the two worst enemies of cyclists. Cycling lanes make intersections more dangerous for cyclists and paint does little to stop a distracted driver traveling 80+ km/h. Highways like Hunt Club have few intersections and very fast cars and are thus prime candidates for barricades.

The answer to this is to put the cycle lane up on the curb next to the sidewalk like they do in Europe. Pedestrians will need some retraining as I did in Germany last year. This will provide the most safety for cyclist rather than leaving them on the road even with those barriers. Often in the suburbs, there is already a grass or paved strip between the sidewalk and the curb.

[acottawa]

I think one thing that would enhance safety is if the media/police would publicize what happened when there is an incident so that drivers/pedestrians/cyclists are reminded of things to look out for.

[rocketphish]

Campeau to be widened to four lanes near Tanger Outlets
First phase of work to connect roadway begins this month.

By: Jessica Cunha, Metroland Media
Published on Wed Nov 02 2016

Work will begin on Campeau Drive this month to widen a western portion of the roadway to four lanes.

A small section of Campeau Drive – from Huntmar Drive to Country Glen Way in the Minto Arcadia development – will be expanded.

The work is needed before a road connection can be built to attach the two parts of Campeau, between Didsbury Road and Country Glen, said Kanata North Coun. Marianne Wilkinson.

Minto needs to construct a stormwater pond before Campeau is linked but can’t design the pond until the road elevations are complete, said Wilkinson.

“The city’s not allowed to build the bridge or the road until the pond is done,” she said.

Once the drainage pond is complete, likely towards the end of 2017, work will begin on connecting the two ends of Campeau, said Wilkinson. Construction of that section will take about two years.

FOUR LANES

The two-stage project between Huntmar and Country Glen is set to begin Nov. 14 if the weather co-operates, she said, and notices to residents will be delivered this week.

Work on the first phase will include underground pipe work and constructing the base of the two new traffic lanes. It’s set to wrap up around mid-December.

The second stage of construction is scheduled to begin in May 2017 and includes the final layer of gravel, curbs, sidewalk work and asphalt paving. A roundabout at Campeau and Country Glen will also be installed.

The section of four lanes will provide better access to the new Kanata West Business Park, which includes Tanger Outlets, Cabela’s, carpentry training centre, UPS distribution facility, and plans for other businesses, and will allow the area to continue to grow more quickly, said Wilkinson.

The widening and extension of Campeau was approved in the city’s 2013 transportation master plan.

http://www.metronews.ca/news/ottawa/2016...d-to-four-lanes-near-tanger-outlets.html

[rocketphish]

Jim Watson and John Tory become unlikely champions of road tolls

David Reevely, Ottawa Citizen
Published on: November 25, 2016 | Last Updated: November 25, 2016 5:48 PM EST

Ottawa and Toronto are talking about charging tolls to help reduce the massive subsidies we give road projects, a conservative idea that is finding little support from professional conservatives.

We made the first tentative move a couple of years ago, when our city council asked for permission to erect toll gates on Highway 174 at the eastern edge of Ottawa. It’s a former provincial highway, forcibly downloaded onto the city in the 1990s, and a meaningful percentage of the traffic on it comes from Clarence-Rockland and points east. Ottawa taxpayers pay for snowplowing and repaving and culverts and some councillors hoped to get the road’s other regular users to kick in.

Hahaha, no, said the provincial government, in the person of Glen Murray, the Toronto Centre MPP who was transportation minister at the time and is now Ontario’s environment minister. You’re on your own.

Now Mayor Jim Watson, a toll skeptic, is talking about using them to pay for the upkeep on a traffic tunnel we might build under Sandy Hill and Lowertown. Take two.

Toronto Mayor John Tory blew past the political guardrails on tolls in a big speech Thursday, talking about charging drivers to use the city-owned Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway. They need major work and Toronto has no way to pay for it.

Pieces have started falling off the Gardiner where it’s an elevated highway along Lake Ontario. Rather than tear it down, Toronto city council wants to repair it: the latest estimate of the price for the full job is $3.6 billion. That’s a staggering amount of money even by Toronto standards and the problem is they don’t have it.

Like the 174, the Gardiner and Don Valley Parkway are roads owned by a city government that are used by a whole lot of people who don’t live in the city, so Mayor Tory proposes charging tolls to offset the repair costs and eventually contribute to other transportation projects non-Torontonians use.

Maybe, says Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca. Come to me with a specific request and we’ll talk about it.

No way, says Progressive Conservative opposition leader Patrick Brown, who polls say could well be premier by the time Toronto is ready to make that formal approach. Tolls make life less affordable and that’s the last thing Ontario needs.

But a $3.6-billion repair bill, much of it charged to people who don’t use the roads? That’s fine.

Some drivers will complain that they already pay for roads through taxes on gasoline, which is not as true as they think. Last year, Toronto got about $320 million in gas-tax money from the federal and provincial governments. Real money, but nothing like enough to pay for the expressway projects let alone all Toronto’s other transportation needs.

Ottawa gets about $90 million a year in gas-tax transfers. Also real money, also nothing like enough to pay for a $2-billion traffic tunnel.

Meanwhile, few people think twice about the user fees transit riders pay. We might argue about whether fares are too high or too low but nobody disputes the principle. OC Transpo is subsidized by property-tax dollars, of course, but as of January regular users will pay over $113 a month for passes to ride it. You’d have to buy more than 450 litres of gas to pay that much in federal and provincial gas taxes.

Brown bangs on about how expensive electricity is these days but has no plan for making it less so, any more than the Liberals or New Democrats do. We had him in our newsroom this week for a sit-down meeting and he repeated what purports to be a plan but isn’t: Stop privatizing Hydro One, stop signing new green-energy contracts and restore municipal planning authority over where new wind and solar farms go. Only not signing new generation contracts has much to do with prices — and at best, it’ll head off future increases.

Electricity used to be cheaper, it’s true. Ontario Hydro racked up $40 billion in debt and the grid was so ramshackle the government had to beg us to use less power or risk blackouts and brownouts. We actually had a provincial brownout in 2005, when there wasn’t enough electricity to meet demand on a hot August afternoon.

Higher prices, despite stinking, are how we got more supply and less demand. It’s the kind of hard truth that conservatives are supposed to stand up for: Price signals matter and you have to pay for what you want.

If Ontario’s in a mess, with crumbling infrastructure and overpriced power, magical thinking will not get us out of it.

[email protected]
twitter.com/davidreevely

http://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columni...-become-unlikely-champions-of-road-tolls

[capital_urbanite]

Originally Posted by roger1818

AFAIK, the only houses on Hunt Club are between Downpatrick and the Airport Parkway.

There are houses between bank street and hawthorne in East Hunt Club. This is where the speed limits were lowered. Most housing is on the North side, however there are enclaves on the South side and this is where the issues stem from.

Reengineering sections of the road to reduce speed (like they did to Blvd des allumettières in Gatineau) would make these areas more liveable, but it's expensive and likely low priority for the city.

This represents only a few stretches of 2-3 km. The remainder could operate at 80km/h. Travelling at 50-60 km/h in these areas would only add maybe 5 minutes to a cross-town journey...which the majority don't do.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by capital_urbanite

There are houses between bank street and hawthorne in East Hunt Club.

Looking at Google maps using satelite, 3D and street views, I don't see any houses between Bank and Hwthorne on Hunt Club. There are houses that back onto Hunt Club with a continuous fence or wall between intersections, but to me, that doesn't count. There are houses that back onto the 417, and we aren't proposing a speed reduction on it because of them. Maybe they need a better sound proof barrier, but that to me isn't justification for a speed reduction.

there are enclaves on the South side and this is where the issues stem from.

I am assuming this is what you are meaning by a an enclave on the south side? I can see why residents there wouldn't like the traffic on Hunt Club, but it is an arterial road and has been for a long time, so most of them must have known it when they moved there.

Reengineering sections of the road to reduce speed (like they did to Blvd des allumettières in Gatineau) would make these areas more liveable, but it's expensive and likely low priority for the city.

I am curious about this re-engineering on Boulevard des Allumettières. It seems to me to be an Areterial with a speed limit of 70 km/h.

The problem with Hunt Club isn't the proximity of the houses, its that it is a cycling spine route on the TMP. Since the two biggest threats to cyclists are intersections and speed (in that order), if they really wanted to make it safer for cyclists, they would close off the minor intersections to cars (rerouting them to the major intersections) and install continuous, barricaded bike lanes between the intersections.