Soundy | 06-04-2013 12:30 PM | Quote:
Originally Posted by Gridlock
(Post 8252838)
Bigger bridge=more capacity=more cars.
You can never solve the problem of traffic with more capacity. Cannot win it. This argument was made with the port mann project. It's all pretty now, lanes galore. It will drive more growth in Langley, and those people will drive the bridge and be more cars on it. Eventually, you will have more gridlock(haha) as pure volume than you had before. It's not hard to see where the new bottlenecks are. | In other words, the "if you build it, they will come." Only problem with that is, if you DON'T build it, they will still come... and they will sit and idle all the way back to 200th St.
Upgrading the Port Mann had been debated for decades, and that argument was brought every time. So what happened? They kept putting it off, and the population kept growing, and the traffic long with it. Quote:
So you replace the Patullo with a 6 lane bridge, because hey! it makes sense right?
So then, we need 6 lanes of road coming off the bridge. One peels off to go to Columbia in either direction, and 2 need to be blasted through McBride to feed through into the middle of the city. So now McBride is a highway. It kind of is now, but not really. If memory serves its 2 lanes into New West from the bridge, and 1 lane onto the bridge, with one lane on from Royal.
| Pretty much the gist of an email I just sent to Simi Sara following their segment on this issue: Quote:
I think the biggest problem they're going to find, regardless of which bridge option is chosen, is that there's just nowhere to go on the New West side... and New West seems to prefer it that way.
Look at the Braid St. Bailey bridge - Coquitlam built a nice, wide, smooth United Way up to their side of it... and New West initially responded by putting up a locked gate on their side (eventually removed, ostensibly for safety concerns from the fire department).
Many of your callers mentioned how hard it is to get around IN New West as well... on the Queensborough bridge, one side empties nicely onto Hwy. 91 for smooth traffic flow... the other end either puts you (slowly) onto Marine Way (not too bad), or onto the headache that is Stewardson Way.
And similarly with the Patullo: going east, when you leave the bridge, you immediately have some fairly high-flow options to get away from the area... going West, you're stuck on narrow, twisty, crowded surface streets. A new bridge, as much as it's needed, would only exacerbate the problem, making it quick and easy to LEAVE New West, but a nightmare to get anywhere in or beyond the city.
| Quote:
You will never win.
We are a city, with rivers and water. It's never going to be pretty in terms of traffic. Never. In the middle of land, you can have ring roads, and 50 highways leading in and out.
| NOT building new infrastructure is not the solution. Unfortunately too often, what NEEDS to get done gets reduced to half-measures and half-assed solutions that don't even half-solve the problem, and then people look and say, "See, we did all that, and it's no better".
If you put a new six-lane bridge in but don't give people anywhere to go, it's going to be a clusterfuck. They got it right (mostly) with the new Port Mann, by not JUST building a new bridge, but by upgrading the highway on both sides, an greatly improving the on- and off-ramp network. Cape Horn has been re-aligned two or three times in the last 25 years, but never FIXED until now. The only remaining problem there is access to downtown: they're funneling cars more efficiently to 1st Ave. and East Hastings, where it will just get worse with the majority of freeway traffic heading downtown.
But on the upside... it may be that if you build it, they will come... but they can also leave. I've had it takeover an hour just to get from Grandview to the Brunette exit, because traffic was always plugged up getting over the bridge and through Surrey. New bridge, wider road, and better access means once it's done, traffic OUT of Vancouver/Burnaby should flow a lot smoother too. Ditto a new Patullo, will not just bring people into New West more easily, it will reduce the problems with them leaving. |