Red Hill Creek Expressway

[CaptainKirk]

Originally Posted by king10

For example the $200 million infrastructure debt includes repaving an entire residential survey because of some potholes instead of filling them with asphalt.

we rarely rebuild pothole-ridden residential streets because most roads cash is hoarded for vital arterials and bridges.

http://www.thespec.com/news-story/55...fordable-city/

Can you elabourate on your above statement please. I'm not sure where you got the $200 million dollar debt. The annual infrastructure deficit is stated as $195m, totaling to a combined current infrastructure debt of $3.3 billion. Are you confusing the annual infrastructure deficit with the total infrastructure debt?

Also, I'm not sure you how you interpret the quote from the article that you bolded. It refers to "pothole-ridden residential streets", not "some potholes" and no where does it say they are not filling them with asphalt.


I'd bet if you were to ask residents of a "pothole-ridden" street if it needs to be repaved or just pot holes refilled, they'd say repaved.

"Some potholes" and "pothole-ridden" are two very different things as I see it.

I don't see the exaggeration in the numbers. What am I missing?

[king10]

Originally Posted by CaptainKirk

Can you elabourate on your above statement please. I'm not sure where you got the $200 million dollar debt. The annual infrastructure deficit is stated as $195m, totaling to a combined current infrastructure debt of $3.3 billion. Are you confusing the annual infrastructure deficit with the total infrastructure debt?

Also, I'm not sure you how you interpret the quote from the article that you bolded. It refers to "pothole-ridden residential streets", not "some potholes" and no where does it say they are not filling them with asphalt.


I'd bet if you were to ask residents of a "pothole-ridden" street if it needs to be repaved or just pot holes refilled, they'd say repaved.

"Some potholes" and "pothole-ridden" are two very different things as I see it.

I don't see the exaggeration in the numbers. What am I missing?

Sorry. I meant roughly 200 mill annual infastructure deficit. Thought that was assumed. Not total infastructure debt.

I never said they werent filling them with asphalt. I said they ARE filling them with asphalt where as the infastructure backlog takes into account the cost to completely repave them vs simply fill them in with hot asphalt off the back of a city truck.

Anywho. I agree something needs to be done about the increasing infastructure back log. Just focus on the main arteries first. Some of which were downgraded to the city by the province thus increasing our upkeep costs.

[CaptainKirk]

Originally Posted by king10

Sorry. I meant roughly 200 mill annual infastructure deficit. Thought that was assumed. Not total infastructure debt.

I never said they werent filling them with asphalt. I said they ARE filling them with asphalt where as the infastructure backlog takes into account the cost to completely repave them vs simply fill them in with hot asphalt off the back of a city truck.

Anywho. I agree something needs to be done about the increasing infastructure back log. Just focus on the main arteries first. Some of which were downgraded to the city by the province thus increasing our upkeep costs.

Oh, ok. Got ya. Thanks for the clarification.

Yeah, I wonder when a street with a few potholes, becomes "pothole ridden" and "requires" complete repaving.

On a side note --- Hopefully LRT construction will allow an opportunity to efficiently replace aging sewers and waterlines that otherwise were just waiting to fail.

[flar]

Originally Posted by Jon Dalton

If I'm not mistaken Ottawa has a strict urban boundary similar to the Greenbelt around Toronto and the effect is sprawl leapfrogs over that boundary and even further into the suburbs that surround it. Is that the case and does that make it worse than a city that just sprawls continually from wherever it ends?

It makes it a lot worse. Especially since a lot of jobs are downtown, which is a long bus ride from the far reaches of the city. Check out a map of Ottawa and look for places like Stittsville, Manotick, Blackburn Hamlet, Leitrim, etc. Then look at Gatineau and it's even worse.

Development jumped the Greenbelt about 40 years ago, places like Barrhaven, Orleans and Kanata now all have populations over 100,000. Homes inside the Greenbelt are more expensive.

[Ottawaresident]

I think Barrhaven is 85000. I'm just being annoying, am I?

[thistleclub]

Red Hill Valley Parkway class-action lawsuit filed against City of Hamilton
(Hamilton Spectator, Nicole O'Reilly, May 9 2019)

A class-action lawsuit that seeks more than $250 million in damages against the City of Hamilton has been filed on behalf of victims who crashed on the Red Hill Valley Parkway.

The lawsuit alleges negligent design, construction and maintenance of the Red Hill Valley Parkway, according to the statement of claim served to the city Thursday.

The class action is on behalf of victims and their families who have crashed on the parkway. According to the statement of claim, close to 2,000 vehicles have lost control on the parkway since it opened in 2007.

Representative plaintiffs include Corinne Klassen, a 54-year-old mother of three from London who survived a single-vehicle crash on the parkway in October 2016, and the family of Michael Sholer, who died in a crash in January 2017.

None of the claims have been proven in court.

Lawyers from Grosso Hooper and Scarfone Hawkins are seek damages because of a hidden 2013 report that found overall lower friction on the roadway.

That report remained secret until it was discovered by new management last year and revealed publicly in February.

The report had called for further investigation and possible remedial action that never happened.

During the time that the report remained buried, there were more than 200 serious collisions — including four fatal crashes — on the parkway.


Read it in full here.

[HackD]

Not mentioning all the close-calls, over the years, that didn't result in contact, or wreck.

I bought into the upper Redhill Valley area March 2007, knowing the Parkway was opening up.. i literally overlook the Greenhill interchange. 99% of the KM on my vehicle is using the RHP/QEW/403 commute route.

The Redhill Valley Expressway, almost took me out, March 2018, on the Northbound on-ramp. Accelerating onto the on-ramp with an empty RWD passenger van, i first lost rear-end traction, and with brakes applied, total traction control, it then swapped ends on the end of the on ramp, and i entered the highway going backwards, cutting perpendicular across traffic. I stopped inches short of the ARMCO barrier, and the now black-splotched bridge abutment for the CP bridge.

By some miracle, i cut between traffic in both lanes, going backwards, and didn't kill myself or anyone else, in the process. Only damage sustained was my confidence, and a half-deck of smokes road-side, after i got out of the live-lanes.

I discounted it at the time to new pavement with possible frost on it, RWD van, and pure dumb luck (both good and bad).

In the intervening years - my conclusion has changed on that last point - i've heard far too many sirens, and major accident scenes within walkable range, since.

Unfortunately, in addition to all the victims, the Hamilton taxpayer will also be paying for the City of Hamilton's negligence (if not outright criminal suppression) in addressing a known issue, as well as cost of Legal Inquiry, Civil Litigation (lawsuits), and other attendant Legal costs.

I'm sure i'm going to enjoy the 6 weeks of traffic chaos, following closure May 21st, for remediation..

Originally Posted by thistleclub

Red Hill Valley Parkway class-action lawsuit filed against City of Hamilton
(Hamilton Spectator, Nicole O'Reilly, May 9 2019)

A class-action lawsuit that seeks more than $250 million in damages against the City of Hamilton has been filed on behalf of victims who crashed on the Red Hill Valley Parkway.

The lawsuit alleges negligent design, construction and maintenance of the Red Hill Valley Parkway, according to the statement of claim served to the city Thursday.

The class action is on behalf of victims and their families who have crashed on the parkway. According to the statement of claim, close to 2,000 vehicles have lost control on the parkway since it opened in 2007.

Representative plaintiffs include Corinne Klassen, a 54-year-old mother of three from London who survived a single-vehicle crash on the parkway in October 2016, and the family of Michael Sholer, who died in a crash in January 2017.

None of the claims have been proven in court.

Lawyers from Grosso Hooper and Scarfone Hawkins are seek damages because of a hidden 2013 report that found overall lower friction on the roadway.

That report remained secret until it was discovered by new management last year and revealed publicly in February.

The report had called for further investigation and possible remedial action that never happened.

During the time that the report remained buried, there were more than 200 serious collisions — including four fatal crashes — on the parkway.


Read it in full here.

[SteelTown]

Inquiry into Hamilton highway finds collisions could have been avoided if damning report not kept secret
The years-long Red Hill Valley Parkway inquiry released its findings Wednesday

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamil...uiry-1.7043315

A years-long judicial inquiry has determined several design flaws including tight curves and slippery asphalt on a Hamilton highway contributed to hundreds of collisions, some where people were killed, between 2008 and 2019.

Justice Herman J. Wilton-Siegel, the inquiry's commissioner, also found that if a damning 2013 report raising serious concerns about friction levels on the Red Hill Valley Parkway (RHVP) had been released to city staff and council before 2019, there would have been fewer accidents and injuries.

Instead, Gary Moore, then-director of engineering services who requested the report be prepared by Tradewind Scientific Ltd., kept the findings under wraps for six years, the commissioner wrote in his decision released Wednesday. Moore was involved in designing the RHVP.

....

[Dengler Avenue]

Maybe MTO really should take over and completely reconstruct this…

[Innsertnamehere]

Hamilton already repaved the whole highway a few years ago to address traction issues - the problem is fixed - it's who is to blame which is being determined.

I don't disagree with MTO taking over it though.

[ScreamingViking]

Doesn't bode well for the lawsuits against the city.

[SteelTown]

Should Ontario take over Hamilton's municipal parkways?
Mayor Andrea Horwath said she wants to raise the prospect of an "upload" of the Red Hill and Linc with the provincial government.

https://www.thespec.com/news/council...567c75a01.html

Mayor Andrea Horwath wants to talk to the province about taking over Hamilton’s two increasingly busy, costly and occasionally contentious municipal parkways.

Her planned pitch comes in response to Tory Premier Doug Ford’s decision to “upload” responsibility for Toronto’s Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway as part of a “new deal” for Canada’s largest and apparently most cash-strapped metropolis.

[Innsertnamehere]

Not surprised. I imagine the PCs knew this would be coming, along with requests from Ottawa and Windsor which also maintain municipal expressways.

[king10]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Not surprised. I imagine the PCs knew this would be coming, along with requests from Ottawa and Windsor which also maintain municipal expressways.

Highbury Ave in London as well? Used to be provincial responsibility.

[StuffedPouch]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

it's who is to blame which is being determined.

I don't disagree with MTO taking over it though.

The inquiry questions were developed to avoid pointing blame, because that’d begin to fall into the realm of criminal inquiries. We don’t really do those in Ontario.

As for MTO taking over, it’s a terrible idea. MTO would then having permitting authority over a large portion of Hamilton and could alter a significant portion of our Planning authority. They would have final say over every bike lane, sidewalk, development application or lane width within 400 m of these expressways. We can’t give it up!

[ScreamingViking]

Loss of control is definitely worth consideration. But if more and more trucks are using it to get between the 403 and QEW, that represents a huge maintenance and rehab cost to the city. Perhaps a deal for ongoing [substantial] funding would be more suitable? What else would the province want in return? More planning control over things like our industrial port and airport lands, development along the QEW and 403, and residential development near the Greenbelt and GO stations spring to mind.

That Spec story also gets into potential for Indigenous issues, which Ontario's provincial government seems to have left for others to deal with. Not that the feds have been any better, aside from apologizing.

Relevant text from it:

Provincial uploading would be a financial relief to the city — but it could also come with a loss of control.

While Toronto expects to see billions of dollars in relief from the upload of its parkway and expressway, that city will also give up decision-making power over the future of the assets — a big deal for those in favour of tearing down the eastern raised portion of the Gardiner.

(Toronto also had to agree to stay out of a debate over a contentious Ontario Place redevelopment.)

Similarly, Hamilton has unique responsibilities to consider when it comes to the Red Hill — including a years-old joint stewardship agreement with the Haudenosaunee for the valley, said Aaron Detlor, a lawyer who acts for a traditional confederacy council of Indigenous chiefs.

Indigenous protests blocking the mid-2000s construction on the parkway were only settled after a unique partnership agreement that saw a joint board of city and Haudenosaunee members formed to “steward” the Red Hill Valley and decisions about its future.

Last year, council abruptly suspended work on studies looking at widening the Red Hill after concerns proper consultation had not occurred.

Uploading costs is one thing, but the city cannot unilaterally hand over decision-making responsibility for the parkway to another level of government, suggested Detlor.

“My perspective is that the city could not do it until (the joint board) agreed,” he said, noting the idea has not yet been raised with the group.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by StuffedPouch

The inquiry questions were developed to avoid pointing blame, because that’d begin to fall into the realm of criminal inquiries. We don’t really do those in Ontario.

As for MTO taking over, it’s a terrible idea. MTO would then having permitting authority over a large portion of Hamilton and could alter a significant portion of our Planning authority. They would have final say over every bike lane, sidewalk, development application or lane width within 400 m of these expressways. We can’t give it up!

just because MTO has permit rights within radius of it's corridors, doesn't mean that they won't approve anything. The 403 already runs right through central Hamilton and Hamilton is building an LRT, converting Main St to two-way, and already runs several cycle tracks over the highway.

I've dealt with MTO permits before - all they care about is potential impacts on their facilities. If the design of the road modification doesn't cause potential traffic backups onto the highway, they don't care. Similarly with development - they require a 14m setback, but other than that, don't care at all what is built.

It's not that big of a deal.

It's an excellent idea as it will save the City tens of millions annually in capital and operating expenses, and remove the upcoming expense of having to widen the highways, which also won't be cheap.

MTO will also actually have the budget to operate the highways safely. As it stands the city already takes lots of shortcuts to save money on the operations of the highways (i.e. no lighting, removing overhead signage and replacing it with cheaper roadside signage, piecemeal resurfacing)

The highways are still relatively new, but will become big liabilities for the city as the structures involved in them reach end of life. A lot of the structures along the Linc are about 30 years old now, in about 20 years they will need extensive rehabilitation or replacement which will be wildly expensive.

Uploading the highways will give Hamilton a lot more room to spend it's limited infrastructure dollars on actual local roads - which we all know it can't afford right now, and MTO is a better manager of large freeways anyway with a massive institutional knowledge of how to safely operate them. We all know through the Red Hill Valley Parkway Inquiry that the City doesn't have the institutional capacity to do that.

[Dengler Avenue]

At this point, it’ll be mainly up to the Haudenosaunee to decide whether RHVP will get a new owner then.

[ScreamingViking]

Minor quibble, but could a mod please change the title of the thread to "Red Hill Valley Parkway"

It hasn't been called the "expressway" since maybe the 1990s. And I don't ever recall "creek" being in the name (Red Hill Expressway during the looooong debate over its construction)

[ScreamingViking]

Our friend Radley at the Spec, wrote about this in today's edition:

What are we willing to give up for the province to upload our parkways?
Toronto surrendered control of Ontario Place to get the province to take over its parkways. Since we're interested in the same thing, what are we willing to give up?

Scott Radley
The Hamilton Spectator
Thursday, December 14, 2023

https://www.thespec.com/opinion/colu...e=opinion-rail

Kudos to Mayor Andrea Horwath for wanting to talk to the provincial government about possibly having Ontario take over the Red Hill Valley Parkway and the Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway — as happened in Toronto with the Don Valley Parkway and Gardiner Expressway.

These routes are expensive to operate, maintain and expand. And heaven knows we don’t have any extra cash lying around. So getting someone else to cover the costs would almost certainly be good for taxpayers. Council sure thinks so, since it unanimously passed a motion on Wednesday to begin exploring the possibility of uploading responsibility for these roads.

There’s just one small catch.

To get this rather sweet deal Toronto had to give up a small slice of Ontario Place and agree not to challenge the government’s plan to redevelop the land.

So what are we willing to give up?

There’s got to be something. The Ford government isn’t going to unnecessarily absorb a giant cost for nothing. It’s going to want something in exchange that it believes would be useful to fulfil its mission.

“It’s a two-way street,” says Flamborough-Glanbrook MPP Donna Skelly. “There will have to be negotiations for sure.”

Which brings us to that question about what bargaining chip we’d be willing to offer to make this happen. What do we have that the province might want?

Let’s start with the biggie and the most obvious answer.

The province is pushing hard for housing. We know it’s wanted some extra acreage to do this. We just wrapped up a long fight over the Greenbelt and restrictions on the use of it. Would the city be willing to relent and expand its urban boundary to some degree if the cost of our parkways was taken off our hands?

Several weeks ago, Doug Ford said he won't be making any changes to the Greenbelt in the future. But what if it was the city that did so, not him?

That would be a humiliation to a council that’s fought hard against such a thing and would infuriate a bunch of people here in town. Not all, for sure, but enough to be a lingering headache for this mayor and the current councillors.

That makes it unlikely. So let’s move on to what might be next on the list.

Would we be willing to absorb some portion of the cost to build LRT? The price tag has almost certainly risen from the last estimate of $3.4 billion thanks to inflation. Would the city be willing to chip in? If that's too rich, would we give the province complete control over operations once it’s done? Assuming the province even wanted that.

If that's not acceptable, would we let the province control and develop Confederation Park, if that’s what it asked for? There could be a bunch of towering condos and apartments built on a site that large. Failing that, how about handing over control of some other desirable city property to clear the way for development of housing units?

How about giving it the former Sir John A Macdonald school property to utilize for housing or something else that would enhance the new entertainment precinct across from FirstOntario Centre? This one’s a lot trickier since it’s school board property rather than municipal land. But if a deal could be worked out, would we do it to make a deal happen?

You might have another idea. The province might too. This list isn't exhaustive.

Mind you, not all agree this is necessary.

On Wednesday, Coun. Brad Clark suggested this is about extraordinary traffic load and trucks using the parkways to make a quick pass through the city. Essentially using the roads as extensions of provincial highways. Queen's Park should do this because this is the right thing to do. A trade isn't in order.

“That's not what we're talking about,” he said. “Not even close to what we're talking about.”

But Skelly suggests it is. And based on what happened in Toronto, it's going to be something. We’re not going to get a deal like Mayor Olivia Chow did as a Christmas gift. If Doug Ford agreed to fund our parkways with nothing coming his way in return, a whole heap of other cities would be asking for the same thing. That would be a wildly costly precedent.

So you can bet we'd have to surrender something to make a deal. If there’s even a deal to be made.

What’s it going to be?