Highways in Canada

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by wave46

Even if the province doesn't do it all in one shot, why not reserve the corridor?

It makes a project much more hugely complex when there's no future planning done since you have to expropriate and demolish.

Reserving corridor space is very smart. The AB government did that decades ago for Edmonton and Calgary which has avoided a lot of hassles when building the 216 and 201, respectively. Unfortunately for Calgary, this wasn't possible everywhere as we have a First Nation that borders the S.W. edge of the City. After decades a deal was worked out but it came at a huge financial cost. Hopefully the end result is win-win for everyone.

[MolsonExport]

Maybe you could have one interchange per 500 people. Heck, they only cost about $15 million each! Great way to use taxpayer dollars.

And in a province where the population is barely larger than it was in the 1930s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saskatchewan

Meanwhile the same people probably want to defund the CBC.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I agree - it appears they have put in full size grade separated interchanges in for what are essentially goat trails, in terms of traffic volume. If Calgary had applied the same standards to its ring road then virtually every interchange would have been a "systems interchange", as they call it.

System interchange is the correct term. I'm surprised that they plan on building so many. System interchanges are for when two freeways meet up and you want/need freeflowing movement in most if not all directions. To me some of the highways the Saskatoon Freeway will intersect seem rather minor. Maybe they have big plans for those other highways in the future?

[Denscity]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Maybe you could have one interchange per 500 people. Heck, they only cost about $15 million each! Great way to use taxpayer dollars.

And in a province where the population is barely larger than it was in the 1930s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Saskatchewan

Meanwhile the same people probably want to defund the CBC.

Haha that would be awesome we would have 18 interchanges!

[foolworm]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

Reserving corridor space is very smart. The AB government did that decades ago for Edmonton and Calgary which has avoided a lot of hassles when building the 216 and 201, respectively. Unfortunately for Calgary, this wasn't possible everywhere as we have a First Nation that borders the S.W. edge of the City. After decades a deal was worked out but it came at a huge financial cost. Hopefully the end result is win-win for everyone.

In Alberta's case, I think the government dawdled too long in building its ring roads, the result being that both 201 and 216 hitting capacity as soon as they opened segments to traffic. They never actually function as bypasses since the vast majority of traffic are commuter vehicles travelling in the metro regions.

Calgary's issue with Tsuutina is entirely their own making, Edmonton has the same issue and made sure the corridor was situated well away from the border with Enoch. It's a good thing they bought enough land for probably a dozen lanes each way, since there might not be a second chance.

One thing about the Saskatoon ring road though is its staging: phase 1 simply doesn't seem very useful, as though it was all they could afford to build. In particular, the river crossing seems redundant and connects to nowhere.

[ssiguy]

This notion that BC far to difficult terrain to build a proper highway system is convenient politically but just a laughable cop-out. The entire Fraser Valley is mostly flat as a rock {hence the term Valley} and has no major rivers to cross. HWY#1 throughout the entire Valley has a median wide enough to accomodate 6 EXTRA lanes and still not have to annex a single foot of new land.

What's worse is that the province and cities have had exceptionally poor planning by not even allowing a single corridor in the last 50 years to be put aside for a potential freeway and now that it is so built up, it will cost a fortune and be very indirect. As for outside the FV, the entire Island Highway was suppose tio be freeway standard but the province cheaped out and now it's just a regular 4 lane road with dozens of traffic lights along it. The Pat Bay Highway in Victoria is very busy and could very easily be brought up to freeway standard but there are no plans to do so.

People say it's due to the Hippie mentality but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Every government in the last 50 years as been loath to spend any real money on the highway system to the point where even safety upgrades are considered an extravagance. People outside BC would be truly appalled at how dangerous many of the major highways are here.

[scryer]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

This notion that BC far to difficult terrain to build a proper highway system is convenient politically but just a laughable cop-out. The entire Fraser Valley is mostly flat as a rock {hence the term Valley} and has no major rivers to cross.

Is the Fraser River just an inconvenient creek to you ?

I can throw you a bone to everything South of Fraser up until the Bridal Falls Area because North of Fraser and beyond, you'll need a bridge crossing unless you have a specific route in mind. Further East than Bridal Falls and you get into all of the wonderful geographical limitations that I was talking about before. For the record I didn't make it clear that my post was mostly referring to BC outside of the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley. We Vancouverites tend to forget that the rest of the province exists outside of the Lower Mainland .

Originally Posted by ssiguy

HWY#1 throughout the entire Valley has a median wide enough to accomodate 6 EXTRA lanes and still not have to annex a single foot of new land.

Is there a specific spot on HWY 1 that you are referring to or just the entire Valley? I could see that happening but I am not sure if the demand is there for it unless it's around the Abbotsford area (?). The truth is that until the Patullo bridge gets upgraded and until the Massey Tunnel is replaced, we probably won't see a significant upgrade to any highway infrastructure in the Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley.

Originally Posted by ssiguy

What's worse is that the province and cities have had exceptionally poor planning by not even allowing a single corridor in the last 50 years to be put aside for a potential freeway and now that it is so built up, it will cost a fortune and be very indirect.

I'm guess that you're specifically speaking on the Lower Mainland/Fraser Valley municipalities here (just double checking for clarification)?

Vancouver set the tone for the rest of valley when it rejected the highway proposal way back in the 50's (iirc). What the Lower Mainland municipalities have been really great at though is setting aside land for Skytrain extensions such as the Fraser highway, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam (of which the Mayor is already hopelessly vying for an extension). To me that speaks to the mentality of the region prioritizing rapid transit over freeways. But that doesn't solve improvements for smoother freight transfers - of which I think should be handled by rail transportation as much as possible anyways.

New West is being ultra difficult with the Patullo Bridge lanes so I can understand if you are taking umbrage with that municipality's attitude towards an interchange that makes absolute sense. But I don't think that New West's attitude reflects the current attitude of the entire region. The NDP dressed up the bridge to be a 6 laner with bike and ped paths. So let's see how that goes .

The Lower Mainland's strategy has always been to take pedestrian vehicles off of the road as much as possible. That's why the Millennium Line and Expo Line extensions are moving at the pace that they are, which is much faster than a lot of other public transportation projects in other cities in Canada. Any significant HWY infrastructure in the Lower Mainland would cut through existing neighbourhoods. Personally I don't think that the Lower Mainland is adequately investing enough in public rapid transit to make regional transportation easier for 2020 and beyond but I digress...

There is quite a bit of significant investment in the Lower Mainland already for HWY infrastructure (the Patullo Bridge and Massey Tunnel are HUGE projects) so anymore provincial investment into the Fraser Valley is going to piss off the rest of BC. BTW, I'm not anti-highway by any means but I do see other municipalities in the Interior and in Northern BC taking great umbrage with more investment in the Fraser Valley until our ongoing projects get started/completed.

I honestly think that the highway infrastructure investment into the FV will come but just not right now with the Patullo Bridge and Massey Tunnel looming over the province's heads.

Is there a specific municipality that you think should be setting aside land in the FV area? I can really only see Chilliwack, Abbotsford, or select parts of Surrey dedicating more space towards highways?

Originally Posted by ssiguy

As for outside the FV, the entire Island Highway was suppose tio be freeway standard but the province cheaped out and now it's just a regular 4 lane road with dozens of traffic lights along it. The Pat Bay Highway in Victoria is very busy and could very easily be brought up to freeway standard but there are no plans to do so.

People say it's due to the Hippie mentality but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Every government in the last 50 years as been loath to spend any real money on the highway system to the point where even safety upgrades are considered an extravagance. People outside BC would be truly appalled at how dangerous many of the major highways are here.

I have lived in Toronto, MB, and Vancouver; let me tell you that BC has got good highways. In comparison to MB and to rural areas in ON; at least in BC you have interchanges even in some outlying areas.

I get that you don't think that the BC highway system is adequate and I do agree with you to an extent however I think that its inadequacies are not solely reflected in the state of the FV highway system. Rather it is reflected in the movement of freight across the province.

The island, itself, will always puzzle me. It's like they don't want trains (they use to have Via rail travel to Courteney iirc) and they don't want to invest significantly in any kind of transportation. I think that the island is a difficult one to invest in because (I think) you have higher construction costs since you need to import concrete onto the island via a seaport and then ontop of that (and I'm going to sound rude typing this) the island doesn't see the transport of goods through its municipalities like the rest of BC does. What this means is that the only traffic that the island has to contend with basically boils down to local traffic and tourist traffic (although this never reaches the numbers like they do in Vancouver); therefore theoretically there would be less demand for highway infrastructure on the island as opposed to the interior or to Northern BC since PR is a port transporting goods east and trucks pass through the interior to head east.

[SaskScraper]

Originally Posted by milomilo
I agree - it appears they have put in full size grade separated interchanges in for what are essentially goat trails, in terms of traffic volume. If Calgary had applied the same standards to its ring road then virtually every interchange would have been a "systems interchange", as they call it.

Originally Posted by Corndogger

System interchange is the correct term. I'm surprised that they plan on building so many. System interchanges are for when two freeways meet up and you want/need freeflowing movement in most if not all directions. To me some of the highways the Saskatoon Freeway will intersect seem rather minor. Maybe they have big plans for those other highways in the future?

Big plans indeed & possibly to the chagrin of posters like milomilo, the main reason City of Saskatoon and the Province are planning right from the start free flowing System Interchanges for most of the freeway to highway crossings for the first three phases of the freeway's circumference, is to build it correct right front the start without having to go back & make fixes to the interchanges later, this may mean Saskatoon will have more System Interchanges than a city like Calgary perhaps, but at least Saskatoon will be optimizing on what the city is paying to build by planning ahead, without the need for knee-jerk reaction expensive fixes to the project in the future.

It's takes a certain fraction more land to plan for the System Interchanges and is more expensive with all the loops and extra layers of overpasses over top of each other for each interchange but it's also a cost saving measure for all the users of the freeway, since it's faster reducing minutes per day, hours per month and days worth of time per year for the drivers that will use it the most.

Less stops/starts with no traffic lights, particularly for trucks, is more environmentally friendly. Every time a vehicle is idling at a traffic light it's burning petrol, multiply that by thousands of vehicles a day and hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year and that adds thousands of tons of CO2 into the environment each year, Saskatoon's Freeway System Interchanges will minimize that.

Saskatoon growth will undoubtedly leapfrog wider than the Saskatoon Freeway's orbit someday but with the proper interchanges intact, minimal modifications will be needed if freeway traffic count grows exponentially if project is built properly right front the start.

[hipster duck]

Originally Posted by SaskScraper

Big plans indeed & possibly to the chagrin of posters like milomilo, the main reason City of Saskatoon and the Province are planning right from the start free flowing System Interchanges for most of the freeway to highway crossings for the first three phases of the freeway's circumference, is to build it correct right front the start without having to go back & make fixes to the interchanges later, this may mean Saskatoon will have more System Interchanges than a city like Calgary perhaps, but at least Saskatoon will be optimizing on what the city is paying to build by planning ahead, without the need for knee-jerk reaction expensive fixes to the project in the future.

It's takes a certain fraction more land to plan for the System Interchanges and is more expensive with all the loops and extra layers of overpasses over top of each other for each interchange but it's also a cost saving measure for all the users of the freeway, since it's faster reducing minutes per day, hours per month and days worth of time per year for the drivers that will use it the most.

Less stops/starts with no traffic lights, particularly for trucks, is more environmentally friendly. Every time a vehicle is idling at a traffic light it's burning petrol, multiply that by thousands of vehicles a day and hundreds of thousands of vehicles per year and that adds thousands of tons of CO2 into the environment each year, Saskatoon's Freeway System Interchanges will minimize that.

Saskatoon growth will undoubtedly leapfrog wider than the Saskatoon Freeway's orbit someday but with the proper interchanges intact, minimal modifications will be needed if freeway traffic count grows exponentially if project is built properly right front the start.

Why not just reserve the ROW for a system interchange, and then build it in the future if the demand warrants it?

Pretty sure the environmental impact of making and pouring hundreds of additional tones of concrete to build sophisticated flyover viaducts negates any environmental savings of trucks accelerating from red lights.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Why not just reserve the ROW for a system interchange, and then build it in the future if the demand warrants it?

Pretty sure the environmental impact of making and pouring hundreds of additional tones of concrete to build sophisticated flyover viaducts negates any environmental savings of trucks accelerating from red lights.

This. If it weren't the case, one would advocate for flyovers everywhere there are volumes of truck traffic, which is every industrial zone, every commercial zone...

[wave46]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

Why not just reserve the ROW for a system interchange, and then build it in the future if the demand warrants it?

Pretty sure the environmental impact of making and pouring hundreds of additional tones of concrete to build sophisticated flyover viaducts negates any environmental savings of trucks accelerating from red lights.

This seems to be the prudent decision.

As long as the new road is future-proofed and doesn't concede too much to multiple at-grade intersections (thinking about the Perimeter in Winnipeg as a bad example of that), why have an interchange for every podunk side road?

You could have big cost savings there.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by wave46

This seems to be the prudent decision.

As long as the new road is future-proofed and doesn't concede too much to multiple at-grade intersections (thinking about the Perimeter in Winnipeg as a bad example of that), why have an interchange for every podunk side road?

For context, the at-grade intersections included on the Perimeter probably made good sense when it was designed in the 1950s (there were only a few cloverleafs included at the outset) and way too far from the built up parts of the city to be a busy commuting route. Through the 60s, 70s and 80s the province converted several intersections to interchanges as traffic levels grew, but then around 1990 that practice came to a dead stop. No new interchanges were built from roughly 1990 until 2015. That 25 year pause in intersection improvements was obviously less than ideal.

We have seen a couple of new interchanges get built with more that were planned, although with the impact of Covid on the province's finances, who knows. Had the province kept building a few new interchanges a decade through the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, it would have been fine and there would really only be some small minor roads with at-grade intersections left.

I guess the benefit of Saskatchewan's approach is that you get it all done at the outset and then you don't have to worry about keeping up that pace of interchange construction over a long period of time.

[wave46]

Originally Posted by esquire

For context, the at-grade intersections included on the Perimeter probably made good sense when it was designed in the 1950s (there were only a few cloverleafs included at the outset) and way too far from the built up parts of the city to be a busy commuting route.

I was more referring to the Perimeter's many very minor intersections.

I get that access is needed, but on the Perimeter there was a whole bunch of access points that were effectively farm accesses. I don't really see the need for that, especially when there was a parallel frontage road.

Saskatchewan has avoided this.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by wave46

I was more referring to the Perimeter's many very minor intersections.

I get that access is needed, but on the Perimeter there was a whole bunch of access points that were effectively farm accesses. I don't really see the need for that, especially when there was a parallel frontage road.

Saskatchewan has avoided this.

Ah yeah. A whole pile of these were eliminated on the south Perimeter a year or so ago, the situation is much better now. There are still a few left but on the whole the situation is much better. I think the north Perimeter (north of the TCH) still has them, although I'm sure the province will phase those out soon too.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by Dengler Avenue

I’ve always wondered why TCH and N.B.-15 are so close to one another on the north end without actually being connected though. Also, the cloverleaf interchange between the two by the airport needs upgrading. I think a flyover from TCH Freddy-bound to N.B.-15 Moncton-bound will be nice.

It is peculiar. We've ended up with two grade separated limited access east to west freeways along the northern border of Moncton which, in places, are barely 2 km apart.



I guess the simple answer is "two highways for two different purposes"

The TCH (Highway 2) is the northern bypass around the city, and was built to handle through traffic. Back when it was built in the 1960s, nobody really thought it would ever be divided, and would just be a bypass. Now of course it is a full freeway, and increasingly handles crosstown east/west commuter traffic as the city has grown out to meet the highway, and in places hopscotch over it ( for example, Crandall University, the Costco and the regions largest industrial park (Caledonia) are all on the north side of the highway.

Wheeler Blvd (Highway 15) on the other hand was not built as a bypass. It was built as a ring road around the central portion of the city, but was later extended to the east to provide a freeway to the nearby town of Shediac on the Northumberland Strait. Highway 15 therefore was envisioned much more as a commuter road.

One could have saved a lot of money when the TCH bypass was built by having it connect up with Wheeler Blvd in the west, roughly along an alignment similar to Mountain Road (Route 126 - see map above), but by the time that the TCH was under construction, this would have meant mowing down several neighbourhoods and would have been very unpopular. Hence, we have the situation as it currently exists.

FWIW, Fredericton also has parallel divided highways along its southside. This happened for similar reasons in that when the new TCH alignment was built, they couldn't connect it up easily with the current highway without a lot of costly land expropriation.

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

This notion that BC far to difficult terrain to build a proper highway system is convenient politically but just a laughable cop-out. The entire Fraser Valley is mostly flat as a rock {hence the term Valley} and has no major rivers to cross. HWY#1 throughout the entire Valley has a median wide enough to accomodate 6 EXTRA lanes and still not have to annex a single foot of new land.

What's worse is that the province and cities have had exceptionally poor planning by not even allowing a single corridor in the last 50 years to be put aside for a potential freeway and now that it is so built up, it will cost a fortune and be very indirect. As for outside the FV, the entire Island Highway was suppose tio be freeway standard but the province cheaped out and now it's just a regular 4 lane road with dozens of traffic lights along it. The Pat Bay Highway in Victoria is very busy and could very easily be brought up to freeway standard but there are no plans to do so.

People say it's due to the Hippie mentality but that has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Every government in the last 50 years as been loath to spend any real money on the highway system to the point where even safety upgrades are considered an extravagance. People outside BC would be truly appalled at how dangerous many of the major highways are here.

I’ve driven on Highway 1 between Horseshoe Bay and Abbotsford multiple times. There are some sections that are highly modern and built to a high standard. However the section through the east end of Surrey through Langley, as well as parts on the North Shore leave a lot to be desired. Acceleration lanes at some interchanges are very short; last year I almost got hit by a truck that was entering the highway eastbound in Langley. I saw the truck on the on-ramp from a distance, but I didn’t expect the truck to have almost no acceleration lane available upon entering.

I also have gotten the sense that highway upgrades in the Fraser Valley are sometimes presented as a false dichotomy between highway widening and public transit (as often happens in the GTA as well). Why can’t it be both?

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

I also have gotten the sense that highway upgrades in the Fraser Valley are sometimes presented as a false dichotomy between highway widening and public transit (as often happens in the GTA as well). Why can’t it be both?

I get a good laugh every time the provincial government announces something related to a growth in provincial road capacity in Ontario, as all the urbanist-type people I follow on twitter inevitably post some comment about how widening any road is equal to the devil. Like widening Highway 3 to Leamington isn't going to make diddly squat difference on transit demand in the area or change the modal share on the corridor in any direction. Or the 401 through Mississauga is so comically overloaded but widening it isn't something that should even be considered.. Sure, let the trucks and our shipping industry drown in the congestion then.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

I’ve driven on Highway 1 between Horseshoe Bay and Abbotsford multiple times. There are some sections that are highly modern and built to a high standard. However the section through the east end of Surrey through Langley, as well as parts on the North Shore leave a lot to be desired. Acceleration lanes at some interchanges are very short; last year I almost got hit by a truck that was entering the highway eastbound in Langley. I saw the truck on the on-ramp from a distance, but I didn’t expect the truck to have almost no acceleration lane available upon entering.

I also have gotten the sense that highway upgrades in the Fraser Valley are sometimes presented as a false dichotomy between highway widening and public transit (as often happens in the GTA as well). Why can’t it be both?

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

I get a good laugh every time the provincial government announces something related to a growth in provincial road capacity in Ontario, as all the urbanist-type people I follow on twitter inevitably post some comment about how widening any road is equal to the devil. Like widening Highway 3 to Leamington isn't going to make diddly squat difference on transit demand in the area or change the modal share on the corridor in any direction. Or the 401 through Mississauga is so comically overloaded but widening it isn't something that should even be considered.. Sure, let the trucks and our shipping industry drown in the congestion then.

I think it has to do with the issue that financial resources are finite.

[craner]

Originally Posted by esquire

For context, the at-grade intersections included on the Perimeter probably made good sense when it was designed in the 1950s (there were only a few cloverleafs included at the outset) and way too far from the built up parts of the city to be a busy commuting route. Through the 60s, 70s and 80s the province converted several intersections to interchanges as traffic levels grew, but then around 1990 that practice came to a dead stop. No new interchanges were built from roughly 1990 until 2015. That 25 year pause in intersection improvements was obviously less than ideal.

We have seen a couple of new interchanges get built with more that were planned, although with the impact of Covid on the province's finances, who knows. Had the province kept building a few new interchanges a decade through the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, it would have been fine and there would really only be some small minor roads with at-grade intersections left.

I guess the benefit of Saskatchewan's approach is that you get it all done at the outset and then you don't have to worry about keeping up that pace of interchange construction over a long period of time.

I like that Saskatchewan plans to build fully free-flow ring roads from the outset but I don’t think building full systems interchanges at intersections where they won’t be required for 10, 20, 30 years or more is a smart idea. Reserve the space for them sure but there are just too many variables over time that could make one regret building them too soon.

Esquire mentions full cloverleafs which are never built now for good reasons. Saskatchewan may end up rebuilding the systems interchanges the build now anyway. Seems like money you don’t need to spend currently.

You can still have a fully free-flowing ring road and plan for future full systems interchanges (including pre-grading, etc.). I think Alberta has done a good job with the 201 & 216 in this regard.

[foolworm]

Originally Posted by craner

I like that Saskatchewan plans to build fully free-flow ring roads from the outset but I don’t think building full systems interchanges at intersections where they won’t be required for 10, 20, 30 years or more is a smart idea. Reserve the space for them sure but there are just too many variables over time that could make one regret building them too soon.

Esquire mentions full cloverleafs which are never built now for good reasons. Saskatchewan may end up rebuilding the systems interchanges the build now anyway. Seems like money you don’t need to spend currently.

You can still have a fully free-flowing ring road and plan for future full systems interchanges (including pre-grading, etc.). I think Alberta has done a good job with the 201 & 216 in this regard.

Maybe not for twenty or thirty years, but if an interchange is needed in ten years then it should go in today, since building these things does often take the better part of a decade. The real issue is whether to take the Alberta or Manitoba approach - Winnipeg's Perimeter Highway did act as a rural bypass for the longest time because it was built far out enough. Compare that to, say, Edmonton where Highway 19 is posted as a truck bypass for QE2 traffic heading west because the corresponding section of 216 is horribly inadequate (in particular the diamond interchange at Terwillegar is a piece of work... the Province should have just put in a full cloverstack, City be damned).

One thing is that both the Saskatoon and Regina bypasses are three-quarter orbitals, but Regina's unbuilt quadrant is the northeast while Saskatoon's is the southwest. I'm guessing their existing inner ring roads are enough there?