Sandy Hill Truck Tunnel

[kwoldtimer]

What are the dangerous materials being transported through the city (and why)?

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

What are the dangerous materials being transported through the city (and why)?

Not sure what they all are, but gasoline going to gas stations for one. Many industries use a variety of chemicals, some more hazardous than others.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Not sure what they all are, but gasoline going to gas stations for one. Many industries use a variety of chemicals, some more hazardous than others.

Well gasoline travels by truck to gas stations throughout the city. I have assumed that this is a reference to something uniquely hazardous that would not normally be transported through urban areas.

[McC]

Chlorine for water treatment is another (and, frankly, much scarier) example.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Well gasoline travels by truck to gas stations throughout the city. I have assumed that this is a reference to something uniquely hazardous that would not normally be transported through urban areas.

Yes it does travel throughout the city (including to central Ottawa) but having all of Gatineau’s funnel through central Ottawa is scary because of the volume. I’m sure there are others (like Chlorine as McC mentioned).

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Yes it does travel throughout the city (including to central Ottawa) but having all of Gatineau’s funnel through central Ottawa is scary because of the volume. I’m sure there are others (like Chlorine as McC mentioned).

There are different levels of 'danger' which are dictated by the volatility of the material, and the volume of the material. All roads have a rating based on population density and type of road to show what is allowable, and trucks need to follow those rules. The most volatile materials will be allowed on only certain roadways at certain times.

I would imagine the craziest stuff travels down the 417 into Quebec, and not through the core of Ottawa.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by OTownandDown

I would imagine the craziest stuff travels down the 417 into Quebec, and not through the core of Ottawa.

I think there is a mistake here. There is no way to get to the Quebec side of the Ottawa River (meaning the Gatineau area) from the 417 other than through the core of Ottawa.

Unless you want to go all the way to Hawkesbury or Montreal and come back west on the 50.

[OCCheetos]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Not sure what they all are, but gasoline going to gas stations for one. Many industries use a variety of chemicals, some more hazardous than others.

Nylene in Arnprior has Caprolactam delivered by rail. Apparently (although I can't find any more information on this other than from a rail blog) it can't be trucked in which is why Nylene owns all those rails up to Arnprior and stuff.

I'm not sure why something like that can't be trucked but can be delivered by rail, isn't rail somewhat more hazardous?

[DoTheRightThing]

Originally Posted by roger1818

Yes it does travel throughout the city (including to central Ottawa) but having all of Gatineau’s funnel through central Ottawa is scary because of the volume. I’m sure there are others (like Chlorine as McC mentioned).

The issue of dangerous goods materials is a thorny one. What kind of info do we have on this subject? The 2007 MTO survey did not include any info about goods type. However an earlier survey from 1999 did. In that survey it identified 146 trips out of 3450 total (4%) as chemicals/petroleum. These numbers were for both Chaudieres and M-C bridge combined with the distribution of hazardous goods being almost exactly 50-50 between those 2 bridges.

The distribution of chemicals/petroleum were broken out by type and by my count exactly half (73) of them were various kinds of petroleum. The other half (73) were chemicals some of which were pretty inert (salt, oxygen, asphalt waste, lime, CO2, etc).

So how many trips per day would we really need to keep out of a tunnel? For those trips could we restrict them to night time transport to lower risk? Is it better to send them on a 10km alternate route from the 417 to the 50 via a potential bridge at Kettle Is? Probably somewhat but still not great either. Do we really have a good solution for hazardous goods in the NCR no matter what we do?

For those interested, here was the detailed breakdown of type for the category of chemicals/petroleum (yes I know this was 18 yrs ago and I'm sure the mix would be somewhat different today):

3 QUARTERS WATER/1 QUARTER ACID 3
ASPHALT WASTE 5
CALCIUM CARBONATE 1
CHLORATE SODIUM 3
COMPRESSED GASES, OXYGEN 7
GAS AND LIQUID CO2 13
HYDRATED LIME 4
LIME 3
LIQUID FERTILIZER 5
OMYAFILL SLURRY. 1
OXYGEN 12
PASTE 3
PESTICIDES 7
SALT 4

COLOURED DIESEL 3
FURNACE FUEL/OIL 16
GAS 4
GASNO LEAD REG 7
GASOLINE 9
PETROLEUM 7
PROPANE 16
PROPANE TANKS 5
WASTE OIL 6

[DoTheRightThing]

During the Kettle Is bridge study the following changes were deemed to required to the Montee Paiement corridor:

• A new 4 lane road section northerly from the bridge to Maloney Boulevard;
• Rebuilding Montee Paiement/Maloney Blvd intersection as a 'mini' interchange with overpass of Maloney Boulevard (much like the Airport Parkway-Hunt Club exchange in Ottawa)
• Creating a parallel 'service road' to service driveways of homes currently accessing Montee Paiement
• Widening Montée Paiement over Autoroute 50 to a 4-lane structure and
• Reconfiguring the interchange of Montee Paiment with Hwy 50

Originally Posted by acottawa

None of those improvements seem anywhere near the cost and disruption of building a tunnel. It might inconvenience a golf club, a Home Depot parking lot and maybe 20 houses.

There is no doubt the tunnel that was proposed was more expensive.

Let me also clarify here the additional work needed for the KI bridge solution on the Ontario side as well:

• Reconstruction of the Aviation Parkway / Highway 417 / Ottawa Road (OR) 174 (split) interchange;
• Widening a few kms of the Aviation Parkway, where necessary, to a 4-lane divided arterial cross section;
• Creating another 'mini' interchange with overpass of Ogilvie Rd (again like the Airport Parkway/Hunt Club road exchange in Ottawa)
• Constructing a new intersection with the Rockcliffe Parkway and with Hemlock St;

End-to-end it was 9.9km of road works and a 2.7km bridge (the final proposal was for a 6-lane bridge)

It all ended up estimated as 1.4B$ (in 2013$) which is not exactly a walk-in-the-park either.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DoTheRightThing

During the Kettle Is bridge study the following changes were deemed to required to the Montee Paiement corridor:

• A new 4 lane road section northerly from the bridge to Maloney Boulevard;
• Rebuilding Montee Paiement/Maloney Blvd intersection as a 'mini' interchange with overpass of Maloney Boulevard (much like the Airport Parkway-Hunt Club exchange in Ottawa)
• Creating a parallel 'service road' to service driveways of homes currently accessing Montee Paiement
• Widening Montée Paiement over Autoroute 50 to a 4-lane structure and
• Reconfiguring the interchange of Montee Paiment with Hwy 50

There is no doubt the tunnel that was proposed was more expensive.

Let me also clarify here the additional work needed for the KI bridge solution on the Ontario side as well:

• Reconstruction of the Aviation Parkway / Highway 417 / Ottawa Road (OR) 174 (split) interchange;
• Widening a few kms of the Aviation Parkway, where necessary, to a 4-lane divided arterial cross section;
• Creating another 'mini' interchange with overpass of Ogilvie Rd (again like the Airport Parkway/Hunt Club road exchange in Ottawa)
• Constructing a new intersection with the Rockcliffe Parkway and with Hemlock St;

End-to-end it was 9.9km of road works and a 2.7km bridge (the final proposal was for a 6-lane bridge)

It all ended up estimated as 1.4B$ (in 2013$) which is not exactly a walk-in-the-park either.

Not a walk in the park, but also 600M less than the tunnel for a more useful piece of infrastructure. Also, the surface route is probably less vulnerable to delays and cost overruns. You could spend 100M on additional mitigation and still be a half billion ahead.

[DoTheRightThing]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Not a walk in the park, but also 600M less than the tunnel for a more useful piece of infrastructure. Also, the surface route is probably less vulnerable to delays and cost overruns. You could spend 100M on additional mitigation and still be a half billion ahead.

Lot of assumptions there behind one's definition of "useful".

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DoTheRightThing

Lot of assumptions there behind one's definition of "useful".

Yes, I am assuming most people would not find it useful to be stuck underground for a considerable amount of time waiting for the bottleneck at the roundabout.

Then again maybe people like getting high on the nitrous oxide from the fumes in an unventilated tunnel and will love the experience.

[DoTheRightThing]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Yes, I am assuming most people would not find it useful to be stuck underground for a considerable amount of time waiting for the bottleneck at the roundabout.

Then again maybe people like getting high on the nitrous oxide from the fumes in an unventilated tunnel and will love the experience.

You are assuming that there will be a bottleneck...that is just your personal opinion and has not yet been validated by any kind of traffic analysis

...and the tunnel will be ventilated out of the ends. The fact that after 42 pages of discussion here you still misrepresent that is really disappointing. Furthermore it is a disservice to the quality of discussion on this thread.

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by DoTheRightThing

You are assuming that there will be a bottleneck...that is just your personal opinion and has not yet been validated by any kind of traffic analysis

Hopefully there won’t be on day 1 but equally you can’t say there won’t ever be one. Incidents can (and will) happen that will cause traffic to stop.

...and the tunnel will be ventilated out of the ends. The fact that after 42 pages of discussion here you still misrepresent that is really disappointing. Furthermore it is a disservice to the quality of discussion on this thread.

Ventilation reared both an inlet (for fresh air to come in) and an outlet (for stale air to be exhausted). When ventalting out the ends, one end is the inlet and the other is the outlet. With a long tunnel, the air will be quite stale near the outlet.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by DoTheRightThing

You are assuming that there will be a bottleneck...that is just your personal opinion and has not yet been validated by any kind of traffic analysis

The existing intersection has 53000 vehicles per day.

http://data.ottawa.ca/dataset/fd1146da-1...data---intersection-volume-aadt-2016.csv

This plan adds 10s of thousands more.

The capacity of a roundabout is 40-50k.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/00068/00068.pdf

[OTownandDown]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I think there is a mistake here. There is no way to get to the Quebec side of the Ottawa River (meaning the Gatineau area) from the 417 other than through the core of Ottawa.

Unless you want to go all the way to Hawkesbury or Montreal and come back west on the 50.

I'm just assuming that the Gatineau (and/or Ottawa) is not a hub for extremely dangerous goods, and that those goods will be travelling cross-country, on the trans-Canada, therefore do not need to cross into Gatineau through Ottawa, but travel down the 417 onwards into Quebec. Now what those goods are, who knows.

I do like that breakdown. It seems like most of the stuff is petroleum based. Don't see chlorine in there (seems to be the worst stuff).

[roger1818]

Originally Posted by OCCheetos

Nylene in Arnprior has Caprolactam delivered by rail. Apparently (although I can't find any more information on this other than from a rail blog) it can't be trucked in which is why Nylene owns all those rails up to Arnprior and stuff.

I'm not sure why something like that can't be trucked but can be delivered by rail, isn't rail somewhat more hazardous?

From my understanding it isn't that the Caprolactam can't be trucked, it is that it can't be moved from train to truck. The source is in Texas and given the volume of Caprolactam required, it would be too expensive to transport it by that distance truck.

Caprolactam is not very dangerous at all. It is considered an an irritant and is mildly toxic and its flash point is 125 °C

Having said that, I dispute your comment about "rail somewhat more hazardous." According to Forbes (discussing transportation of crude oil), truck is worse than train under all categories of safety:

• Human death and property destruction,
• Normalized amount of oil spilled, and
• Environmental impact (dominated by impact to aquatic habitat).

[Ottawaresident]

Yeah. Nicholas and King Edward are very congested. I believe that the LRT will improve things but the section is always congested. They should at least widen Nicholas and routes to the bridge to 4 lanes.

[CityTech]

Originally Posted by Ottawaresident

Yeah. Nicholas and King Edward are very congested. I believe that the LRT will improve things but the section is always congested. They should at least widen Nicholas and routes to the bridge to 4 lanes.

Nicholas already is 4 lanes.