Quote:
Originally Posted by Reignman
My apologies Cory but I have to disagree. Not saying Wilkes is not unsafe but St Mary's @ 100 has become unbelievably bad. The lineups on EB 100 in evening rush hour are often absolutely ridiculous...I have seen the lineup backed up all the way to the Pembina overpass. Nothing like flying over an overpass at 100+ kph and suddenly seeing a lineup dead stopped on the overpass decline.
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That is definitely an extremely dangerous situation and is nearly the same setup as south bound Perimeter exiting to Wilkes. The exit is hidden on the decline of the overpass so you often gets vehicles slowing on the decline to make the exit while out of sight on traffic coming the same direction. It was to the point at one recent accident it required several police cars to clear as they needed to safely mark/block the collision from on coming traffic.
The short term solution for St Mary's seems to be to increase the duration of the left turn light. The impact of that would need to be monitored though to try and avoid solving one safety issues and creating a different one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reignman
At least Wilkes has free flow for the perimeter and some form of a merge lane made available.
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The lack of
any form of usable north bound merge lane is actually the dangerous part of the Wilkes over pass. Traffic entering the north bound stream exits a tight turn about a third of the way up the incline and needs to merge into the right lane before the bridge. This results is slower moving traffic being forced into the right high speed through lane with traffic often being highly reluctant to yield the lane. It's a slight variant on the St Mary's left turn issue but a very similar end result with traffic moving at two drastically different speeds wanting to occupy the same space.
The maddening piece of the Wilkes situation is a small redesign on current undeveloped land would significantly change the situation without needing the rebuild the overpass. Currently, the north bound entry ramp starts running parallel to the Perimeter heading south. Instead of entering at the current point if it continued about a third of a KM south, then turned and had about a third of a km merge lane running north the issue would virtually be eliminated.
For south bound traffic exiting to Wilkes, doing a similar move of the exit further south and off the decline ramp would improve the situation. The deceleration lane could even be extended for some distance to allow existing traffic to safely move out of the through stream before the start to slow down.
Sure, fixing Wilkes would require some capital spending but it would be a small fraction of any new overpass construction and have significant safety gains.