[terrynorthend]

Well the city has finished re-grading the Windsor Street Interchange. Now I always thought these things were supposed to be designed by engineers, but it looks like it might have been designed by the sixth guy named Moe.

When coming off the bridge and heading to the intersection, its hard to tell which set of traffic lights are directed towards you, as the set facing Lady Hammond and leading to the Fairview overpass are canted on an angle towards the bridge approach. This is compounded because the approach off the bridge curves leftwards just before the intersection, causing drivers to be heading directly towards the wrong traffic lights about 100m from the intersection. Only when you negotiate that last bit of the curve do you realize you are facing an entirely different set of lights. My father and I almost had an accident here a couple of weeks ago.

There is also the case of the disappearing lane when heading from Lady Hammond to the Fairview overpass. one of the lanes just disappears and suddenly traffic from the bridge is in your lane. I've been caught by this one myself twice now, and I'm not even sure what is going on there...it happens so fast that I haven't had a chance to study it to figure out just where the traffic should be going.

Has anyone else any thoughts on this? IMO its a serious accident waiting to happen.

[someone123]

I bet it's more a serious accident that happens every week or so. ;)

I haven't thought much about how the area might be better-designed but some of these intersections are just really problematic to begin with. There are cities where engineers don't have to worry about 15 different lanes merging together at weird angles.

[Keith P.]

Well the city has finished re-grading the Windsor Street Interchange. Now I always thought these things were supposed to be designed by engineers, but it looks like it might have been designed by the sixth guy named Moe.

Nice... :haha:

For all the time and money invested in this thru the summer, it realy didn't amount to much. They built a dedicated truck lane for the Ceres terminal (maybe built with Gateway federal funds?) but that is pretty inconsequential in the overall project. They gave two lanes heading to the Bedford overpass from the MacKay bridge but I don't find that does much -- the traffic there wasn't that bad. That second lane Bedford-bound is the one that causes the short merge for left-turning traffic off of Windsor St which is such a problem. There is a simple fix, which would just put things back as they were in that spot by making it one lane to Bedford from the MacKay and devoting two to traffic coming from Windsor St. I'm not sure what realigning the intersection actually did except maybe make the left turn from the end of the Bedford Hwy onto the MacKay approach a little less severe. It seems like a big waste of money because they need to get rid of the surface intersection and build a proper interchange, and get rid of the hairpin turn from the overpass onto Joe Howe and build a proper overhead ramp.

[Empire]

It is unfortunate that the design was a stop-gap band-aid measure. What is needed is an overpass from the bridge to Windsor St. and a ramp from the Bedford Hwy. to the bridge in the form of an overpass. This is a typical HRM booddoggle where a lot of money is spent and very little is acheived.

[Haliguy]

Nice... :haha:

For all the time and money invested in this thru the summer, it realy didn't amount to much. They built a dedicated truck lane for the Ceres terminal (maybe built with Gateway federal funds?) but that is pretty inconsequential in the overall project. They gave two lanes heading to the Bedford overpass from the MacKay bridge but I don't find that does much -- the traffic there wasn't that bad. That second lane Bedford-bound is the one that causes the short merge for left-turning traffic off of Windsor St which is such a problem. There is a simple fix, which would just put things back as they were in that spot by making it one lane to Bedford from the MacKay and devoting two to traffic coming from Windsor St. I'm not sure what realigning the intersection actually did except maybe make the left turn from the end of the Bedford Hwy onto the MacKay approach a little less severe. It seems like a big waste of money because they need to get rid of the surface intersection and build a proper interchange, and get rid of the hairpin turn from the overpass onto Joe Howe and build a proper overhead ramp.


One thing they did that made a huge difference is extra lane coming onto the Mackay bridge instead having to yield into the one lane the way it used to be.

[hfx_chris]

It is unfortunate that the design was a stop-gap band-aid measure. What is needed is an overpass from the bridge to Windsor St. and a ramp from the Bedford Hwy. to the bridge in the form of an overpass. This is a typical HRM booddoggle where a lot of money is spent and very little is acheived.

Agreed, this should ideally be an interchange, not an intersection...