[St. John's] Transport development (Highways, Airport, and Public Transit)

[Horsell]

Originally Posted by J_Murphy

Any idea how the connection with Old Pennywell Road will look?

I've been wondering the same thing, a roundabout would make sense, having two staggered intersections would NOT. We should know within a few days I guess.

[jjavman]

Originally Posted by statbass

Here's a story regarding the opening of the Team Gushue extension. Looks like they're aiming for a mid to late November opening.

VOCM
Oct 29, 2018

My 3 takeaways were:

1. Crocker is celebrating like the whole route is finished, without any mention of the completion to Howlett.

2. Calling the opening of this section a "gamechanger" for the whole NE Avalon is just silly. Imagine the 4:30 traffic now coming off it at Dodge City!

3. He implies it could mitigate accidents on the ORR? Holy crap.

Sorry ... trying not to be cynical as I'm a big proponent of this road as most of you know, but political hyperbole kills me, when they've dragged their heels for years on this. Maybe I need more coffee ...

[613_YYT]

Originally Posted by jjavman

My 3 takeaways were:

1. Crocker is celebrating like the whole route is finished, without any mention of the completion to Howlett.

2. Calling the opening of this section a "gamechanger" for the whole NE Avalon is just silly. Imagine the 4:30 traffic now coming off it at Dodge City!

3. He implies it could mitigate accidents on the ORR? Holy crap.

Sorry ... trying not to be cynical as I'm a big proponent of this road as most of you know, but political hyperbole kills me, when they've dragged their heels for years on this. Maybe I need more coffee ...

Well I am cynical of politicians and an opponent of this road so I'd like to point out:

We are within 12 month of an election. Expect a few more PR events on this road by the time it opens and more when the next set of funding announcements are made in about 4 years.

[Offshore1]

Originally Posted by jjavman

My 3 takeaways were:

1. Crocker is celebrating like the whole route is finished, without any mention of the completion to Howlett.

2. Calling the opening of this section a "gamechanger" for the whole NE Avalon is just silly. Imagine the 4:30 traffic now coming off it at Dodge City!

3. He implies it could mitigate accidents on the ORR? Holy crap.

Sorry ... trying not to be cynical as I'm a big proponent of this road as most of you know, but political hyperbole kills me, when they've dragged their heels for years on this. Maybe I need more coffee ...

On takeaway #2, I've touched on this before.
You've got to expect traffic to make it's way through Mount Pearl to meet up with TGH at Topsail Rd, meaning increased traffic along Topsail Road as well as Smallwood Drive/Park Ave/Dunns Road.
I can see commuters from the Goulds, Southern Shore making their way along here - who knows maybe some from Mount Pearl too?

[jjavman]

Originally Posted by jjavman

My 3 takeaways were:

1. Crocker is celebrating like the whole route is finished, without any mention of the completion to Howlett.

2. Calling the opening of this section a "gamechanger" for the whole NE Avalon is just silly. Imagine the 4:30 traffic now coming off it at Dodge City!

3. He implies it could mitigate accidents on the ORR? Holy crap.

Yeah ... and now that I've had some coffee, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on his "gamechanger" comment, if he had intended to imply that "once the entire route is finished"; which he may claim if challenged on that phrase.

A lot of Goulds/Southern Shore traffic comes into the city every morning
which as stated correctly stated above, is going to funnel thru Mount Pearl if they wish to head East quickly! Also Brookfield Road & West on Topsail!

[Marty_Mcfly]

It'll certainly take the load off of some of the roads that aren't built for the traffic which it's seeing right now. The final completion will help Brookfield and Mt. Carson, which are completely beyond capacity right now.

In the short term, traffic moving from St. John's out to Mount Pearl and Paradise will see the biggest benefit. Getting out that way via Kenmount, Thorburn or across Columbus down to Topsail is a real nightmare; the traffic numbers are way too high, and it takes way too long to commute via these routes (20+ minutes in peak traffic). Diverting most of this traffic through the highway will likely pull a lot of the Mount Pearl traffic off of Kenmount onto the highway, while leaving Paradise traffic on Kenmount. It should only take 3-4 minutes to get to Topsail Road on the highway, and traffic flowing off of the highway onto Topsail should be able to do so more effectively than if they were still trying to move through Mount Carson, which backs up one lane all the way up the hill.

During non-peak hours it's not really that advantageous to take the highway over Columbus Drive, you may only be saving yourself a few moments at best. It's why I never take the ORR to get from point A to B in the city: the time it takes to drive out to the ramp and get on the highway is just about as long as it takes to just drive through the city. Once it's complete though, and you need to get to Costco? Team Gushue will be a life saver. We may as well rename it the Costco highway while we're at it.

[rthomasd]

Originally Posted by J_Murphy

Any idea how the connection with Old Pennywell Road will look?

Hard to say right now. There's A LOT of work going on there, they are moving sidewalks on the south of Old Penneywell, installing new sidewalk on the North side, new curb on both sides of Brier Ave, etc. It's a nightmare trying to get through there.

This should have been a roundabout.

[Horsell]

Scratching my head and wondering what the thought process was on the design of the intersection of Briar Ave, New Pennywell Rd, Old Pennywell Rd. I just drove through there and it is definitely going to be separate "T" intersections from New Pennywell and Old Pennywell onto Briar. WHY? There appears to be plenty of room to have made this a roundabout with a slight realignment. Shall we start a pool on how long it will be until the first accident at either of those intersections. Maybe it was done this way on purpose to deter an easy flow of traffic off New Pennywell and Old Pennywell, discouraging drivers to "short cut" through those neighborhoods. Time will tell.

[rthomasd]

Since the City is paying for the work, it's being done on the cheap. A roundabout would have cost another $100K.

[jjavman]

Originally Posted by Horsell

?... Shall we start a pool on how long it will be until the first accident at either of those intersections. Maybe it was done this way on purpose to deter an easy flow of traffic off New Pennywell and Old Pennywell, discouraging drivers to "short cut" through those neighborhoods. Time will tell.

Thought the same thing when I went by there today!

Trying to turn left from Old Pennywell into Briar, in fog and darkness with traffic coming down that hill. Not nice.

[KDMusic]

Has anybody else seen the new lights at the Mall food court entrance on O'Leary? I noticed that for some reason, there is only 3 sets of lights, meaning one direction of traffic has no traffic signal. Anybody wanna try to explain how this would work??

[goodgrowth]

Article on Team Gushue Highway:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/kenmount-topsail-team-gushue-highway-1.4892442

- expected to open in late November
- more than 4 years behind schedule
- cost $58.9 million
- phase 3 (Brookfield Rd->Pitts Memorial) still in planning stages

[jjavman]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Article on Team Gushue Highway:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/kenmount-topsail-team-gushue-highway-1.4892442

- expected to open in late November
- more than 4 years behind schedule
- cost $58.9 million
- phase 3 (Brookfield Rd->Pitts Memorial) still in planning stages

Planning for the highway started in 2006, so the last line got me head scratching.

12 years later phase 3 is in the "planning stages"?

[statbass]

Originally Posted by jjavman

Planning for the highway started in 2006, so the last line got me head scratching.

12 years later phase 3 is in the "planning stages"?

i.e. Looking for money before they can start construction....

[J_Murphy]

Originally Posted by statbass

i.e. Looking for money before they can start construction....

I'm guessing that land expropriation is taking some time...and of course funding is an issue.

I wonder if they could just create a temporary 3-way intersection with Brookfield Road until they can complete all the way to Robert E Howlett. Or would that put too much strain on Brookfield?

[rthomasd]

Originally Posted by jjavman

Planning for the highway started in 2006, so the last line got me head scratching.

12 years later phase 3 is in the "planning stages"?

The Minister tried to justify the length of the construction based on how complicated it is to construct overpasses ( ! ) - the Redmonds Rd one he said took 2-3 years, while the reality is that it took 1 year to construct and then it sat idle for almost 3 years.

The Phase 3 construction could take 4 years by the Minister's logic, with a big overpass at Brookfield Rd to take 2-3 years. Can't tell what's to be built near the Howlett Rd.

In the meantime, after today's paving at the Brier Rd / Old Pennywell Rd, the only real item left is the Blackmarsh Rd redirect, which looks to be still a couple of weeks work.

They could be pushing up against winter, I think and the first traffic might actually be a snow plough

[goodgrowth]

There should be a lot less work for phase 3. Less overpasses/ramping/roundabouts and the topography of that area seems like it would be a lot easier to build roads than phase 2 (hell a significant chunk is just being built on an existing part of Brookfield Rd).

From what I can tell there would only need to be two overpasses:

[rthomasd]

Not sure how accurate that map is now, the roadbed parallels Brookfield Rd for a distance and I think the plan was to keep Brookfield Rd as is. Perhaps a viaduct over Brookfield Rd in the area of the Experimental Farm??

Wish they'd issue a new map for Phase 3.

[613_YYT]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Article on Team Gushue Highway:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/kenmount-topsail-team-gushue-highway-1.4892442

- expected to open in late November
- more than 4 years behind schedule
- cost $58.9 million
- phase 3 (Brookfield Rd->Pitts Memorial) still in planning stages

"The Department of Transportation pegs the total cost of the construction of the Team Gushue Highway from the Outer Ring Road to Topsail Road at $70.5 million."

$70.5M for about 7 km of road (as measure on Google Maps) is >10M per KM. I'd also like to know how much the city spent on the collector roads plus yearly maintenance and financing costs are so we can get the true price of this project. And we wonder why why NL is close to bankruptcy? But hey, we can get to Costco a few minutes faster (as long as there isn't another crash blocking the road).

Now imaging using those funds to build a transportation network.

What if an extra $10M was spent on public transit? Currently Metrobus operates on $23M (fares + municipal funding). Or how many separated bike lanes could be built? Toronto did a basic retro fit of 2.4 km of road for about $500k. Full retrofit roads with bike lanes cost about $1M per km which is not much more than a regular road. In addition to being healthier people spend more money when they are out of a car.

Which city sounds like a nicer to live in? One that you have to drive for almost every trip and the highlight is a new big box stores in an outer suburb? Or a city you can chose how you travel with healthy and prosperous neighbourhoods?

Watch this video, atleast: http://vicmap.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=cb197facfed94205a609830df736edbf

Other sources:
https://www.metrobus.com/html-default/pdf/Statements/2017audited.pdf
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/10/11/bloor-st-bike-lanes-should-stay-city-report-finds.html
https://ottawa.ca/en/residents/transport...ling/cycling-planning/completed-projects

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by rthomasd

Not sure how accurate that map is now, the roadbed parallels Brookfield Rd for a distance and I think the plan was to keep Brookfield Rd as is. Perhaps a viaduct over Brookfield Rd in the area of the Experimental Farm??

Wish they'd issue a new map for Phase 3.

Not really sure what would have changed. If you look on the satellite view of Google maps the roadbed that is already completed up to Brookfield Rd is pretty much following the plan.

If it's paralleling Brookfield Rd on the North Side it's possible they A) put an overpass where it crosses over(green) or B) If you look at the north-bound access road that would come from Commonwealth it looks like that might be also be able to provide access to Brookfield(dotted blue)

Edit: though looking at the plan the fact there is a specific clear intersection (overpass) for the north-bound access sort of kills solution A. So I'm thinking it will be B.