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  #81  
Old Posted May 8, 2015, 7:18 PM
trofirhen trofirhen is offline
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a bit too far-fetched, for the moment perhaps, but ...

Are there any upgrades planned for the Ironworkers Bridge itself?
Sure, it will get its reweldings and fixits here and there, plus the annual paint job, but how much capacity does it have?
And is the lifespan of the bridge long enough not to consider a new bridge in 50 years or less?
     
     
  #82  
Old Posted May 8, 2015, 10:30 PM
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The bridge is in a middle of a $20 million upgrade. New (and awesome) sidewalks/bike lanes and a new suicide barrier.
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  #83  
Old Posted May 9, 2015, 3:57 AM
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The bridge is in a middle of a $20 million upgrade. New (and awesome) sidewalks/bike lanes and a new suicide barrier.
Yes, the new sidewalks / bike lanes really are awesome!
     
     
  #84  
Old Posted May 9, 2015, 3:23 PM
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Yes, the new sidewalks / bike lanes really are awesome!
the north Van side was sismic upgraded back in 2001 and the vancouve side after. Joints were done sometime I believe in the last 8 years
     
     
  #85  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 12:41 AM
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Really good article about the highway issues in the North Shore News today. The situation is dramatically worse than it was even five years ago

Quote:
Highway 1 no longer making the cut
Why afternoon Cut traffic is so bad, and why it’s hard to fix


It didn’t used to be this way.

Unless there was a stall or accident, cars used to zip down the Cut each afternoon, hit the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing and disappear to all points south of the Burrard Inlet.

Then, sometime in late 2012, the Cut started becoming routinely backed up to Westview Avenue, and other feeder routes to the highway along Keith Road, Third Street and Low Level Road became equally clogged.

“You talk to anybody on the streets of the North Shore and ask them, ‘What’s the major issue here?’ They’ll say it’s the traffic that emanates from the bridgehead,” says District of North Vancouver Mayor Richard Walton.

The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure hired a consultant more than a year ago to help figure out why the daily traffic flow between the top of the Cut in North Vancouver and Willingdon Avenue in Burnaby has gotten so bad in recent years — and what can be done about it.

It’s a question of numbers and a theoretical tipping point where a busy highway turns into a parking lot.

Traffic engineer Jason Jardine presented an update on the study to District of North Vancouver council members on June 22 and its conclusions so far aren’t what most people would expect.

The increasing traffic woes on the North Shore aren’t caused so much by more people living here as they are by more people working here, the study suggests. And they’re coming to work in one industry in greater numbers than ever before — residential construction.

Though that may conjure up images of work crews on highrises, the building boom is mostly being felt in single-family neighbourhoods.

“Quite often, the situation is a lot more complex,” Walton said. “We know a lot more information than we did a year ago and we have to understand that information before we can make meaningful solutions because they can take 10 or 15 years of shifting investment and policy to address.”

According to the last 10 years of data, the North Shore’s population has been growing by about half a per cent per year while the total number of daily trips over the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Crossing grew at a slightly slower rate.

But, along with changing demographics and ballooning land prices, there’s been a shift in commuting patterns.

The percentage of North Shore residents who also work on the North Shore has risen from 46 per cent to 50 per cent, but the number of people commuting from south of the Burrard Inlet has gone up by 14 per cent from 17,260 to 19,660 according to the census data.

Jardine compared that number with the volume of building and demolition permits granted by the North Shore’s three municipalities and found similar growth, suggesting much of the new traffic is building contractors coming to work on North Vancouver and West Vancouver homes.

“I would say there’s a strong pattern that tends to support that observation,” Jardine said.

The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better as many older single-family homes and apartments are considered tear-downs now. Walton estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of those permits and workers are related to rebuilding older homes, rather than highrise construction.

“The North Shore is now entering into a period where for the next decade, we’re very, very heavily building out old, wooden, family housing stock, which means we’re going to have significant numbers of trades folks working in neighbourhoods where they had no presence 20 years ago,” Walton said.

Those extra workers, combined with employment growth happening on the North Shore’s expanding industrial waterfront, have pushed the stressed highway beyond its tipping point — somewhere between 4,000 and 4,500 vehicles per hour.

In the two years since the new Port Mann Bridge opened in 2012, there have been disproportionate jumps of .6 per cent and 1.7 per cent in daily traffic over the Second Narrows bridge.

When a road hits its maximum capacity, the queues of idling vehicles and the amount of time rush hour lasts both just get longer. “Rush hour” with near-to or over-capacity traffic on roads leading to the Second Narrows bridgehead now extends from 2 until 6 p.m., according to the study, and that’s assuming there are no accidents or stalls.

“I think we’ve been close to that tipping point for many years now,” Jardine said. “You can get a certain amount of traffic through a bottleneck and when things fail, they fail very badly. . . ”

Making matters worse is the 50-year-old highway interchange system that doesn’t reflect modern best practices, Jardine said. The worst choke point when leaving the North Shore in both the morning and evening: the weave between the Fern Street on-ramp and Main Street off-ramp as well as the Dollarton Highway entrance to the bridge. The commute spoilers for driving on to the North Shore: The Hastings on-ramp, Dollarton/Main street exits, the weave between Dollarton and Seymour and the merge from Fern Street before the Mountain Highway off-ramp.

The study also looked into heavy trucks and found they only account for about two per cent of the crossings. Truckers prefer to avoid rush hours, with peak truck traffic happening during the middle of the day. Though traffic coming from B.C. Ferries vessels at Horseshoe Bay has been going down, one full ferry can put up to 370 more vehicles on the road.

The study, which the City of North Vancouver and the District of West Vancouver are also keeping a close eye on, should help focus the municipalities on how to resolve the problem.

“‘Traffic’s a nightmare. Growth is out of control.’ That’s the standard mantra that we hear. Well, growth is not out of control but traffic is obviously getting worse so let’s get at the traffic and understand the issues and make sure any response we have on the North Shore from any of our local governments is based on a very cogent analysis of the facts, rather than the perceptions,” Walton said.

Taking a scolding tone against commuters won’t help, Coun. Roger Bassam warned. “Those are jobs. Those are people who work here. . .” he said.

He suggested North Shore residents also look at their own habits before pointing fingers.

“A lot of it is local traffic. We could maybe make better choices around not driving six trips in a day.”

The study’s results come as massive dollars are about to be spent on bridgehead infrastructure.

The province, district and federal government have already announced plans to build a new $50-million interchange at Mountain Highway, scheduled to open in 2018.

The district is currently widening the Keith Road bridge to five lanes and connecting it to the Fern Street overpass at a cost of $12.7-million. That project is intended to create a new east-west route over the highway so commuters headed home to Seymour or Deep Cove aren’t sharing limited lanes of traffic with bridge commuters.

All three governments are also looking to share in the $100-million cost to update the remaining interchanges leading to the bridgehead.

The North Shore has long been overlooked by the province when it comes to transportation infrastructure spending, Walton said.

“The one place in the entire TransCanada Highway between Squamish and now Chilliwack that has not had virtually a nickel put into it is our community — Lynn Valley to the Ironworkers Bridge,” he said.

But, even if we untie all the traffic knots before the bridge, the Ironworkers itself will be unable to handle much more capacity, Jardine said. In theory, the bridge could handle 1,800 vehicles per lane, per hour heading eastbound. With the bridge already accommodating more than 5,000 vehicles per hour in its three eastbound lanes during peak periods, it’s only a matter of time before the bridge starts to look like the Cut.

The province and the consultant are now taking a detailed look at what mitigation measures could be taken, including re-evaluating the ones already being proposed “to make sure we’re actually going to get the kind of performance improvements that we want,” said David Stuart, the District of North Vancouver’s chief administrative officer.

When it came to looking for ways to mitigate the current mess, Coun. Mathew Bond suggested the district focus on not just increasing the supply of road space, but also managing demand.

“Looking at these charts, if we took 400 vehicles off the road during the peak hour, that would solve our problem. We’d go back to where we were three or five years ago and we wouldn’t have these issues,” he said. “How much does it cost to take 400 vehicles off the road compared to expanding all the infrastructure to supply another 400 vehicles?”

That question became especially relevant Thursday when Lower Mainland residents learned the results of the failed TransLink funding plebiscite. Had it passed, the North Shore would have got three new B-line bus routes, as well as 50 per cent more SeaBus service, and more regular buses.

The loss is being deeply lamented by Walton. “There’s no doubt. If you’ve got a bus with 50 people on it, that replaces 50 cars. That’s a huge shift,” he said.

The Lower Mainland’s mayors estimated the .5 per cent sales tax would have cost the average Lower Mainland household between $150 and $250 per year. By comparison, if North Shore residents were asked to pick up one third of the cost of building a new wider Ironworkers Bridge, Walton estimated that would cost local taxpayers about $400 million.

“That’s an awful, awful lot of money for the North Shore tax base,” he said. “Big concrete things and heavily engineered things are very expensive and it may be the champagne solution but there’s not even a guarantee that would suffice for more than five or 10 years before it reached capacity.”

One other way to manage demand is to introduce road pricing. Stockholm’s traffic congestion was remarkably similar to our own right up to the point its residents approved road pricing in a referendum.

“The next day, literally, the cars were back to . . . 100 kilometres per hour at a time when they were congested the day before. The impact of taking that much traffic out is profound,” Walton said.

Though our own plebiscite loss was deeply disappointing to Walton, he said the issue of transit improvement is far from dead.

“I’m not backing down for a second. I’m going to keep talking and pushing transit as a critical issue. This is a set-back but it’s not a permanent set-back,” he said.

The final report on Highway 1 traffic gridlock is due this fall.
- See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/highway-1....J2ATjQKh.dpuf
     
     
  #86  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:05 AM
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There is an ironic outcome to having Vancouver's anti freeway political culture/mantra: the heightened congestion of the single East-West arterial freeway in existence!
     
     
  #87  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:09 AM
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Yeah if there is a standstill on the north shore it's almost always because there was a crash somewhere between Willingdon and Kensington in Burnaby, which is insane considering how far away it is. And it's only gonna get worse with Brentwood/Metrotown growing at insane rates.
     
     
  #88  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:18 AM
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Originally Posted by Pinion View Post
Really good article about the highway issues in the North Shore News today. The situation is dramatically worse than it was even five years ago



- See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/highway-1....J2ATjQKh.dpuf
Thank God for guys like Bond and Walton. Transit and road pricing are the way out of this situation, not building more roads.

The point about residential construction contractors making up a lot of the car traffic is interesting, though. It's one thing for office workers to switch to transit, but sometimes contractors really do need pick-ups and so on to carry their work stuff. I wonder if there would be a way to get contractors to consolidate their vehicles and equipment at bases on each side of crossings like the Iron Workers, so that their employees could take transit to do river crossings. Right now you don't see a lot of construction workers on the Skytrain or seabus, unfortunately. Maybe municipalities could give transit allowances to construction companies/employees as an incentive to change their commuting habits.
     
     
  #89  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:31 AM
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As usual the answer is more lanes and better transit, not one or the other. Hwy 1 in that stretch is four lanes for large sections, and Lions Gate is often one lane for north shore traffic, so that's five lanes for nearly 200,000 people and everyone going to Whistler/the ferries.

The rest of the highway through the metro has been widened and it's done wonders, but for some reason the stretch near the north end of Ironworkers was ignored.
     
     
  #90  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:32 AM
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Lol they say not even a nickel was put into the section between Lynn and the bridge. Well they did completely redo westview and londsdale intersections to interchanges. Although that was 20 years ago. But the section through west van hasn't ever had anything done to it
     
     
  #91  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:33 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pinion View Post
Really good article about the highway issues in the North Shore News today...
Quote:
“Looking at these charts, if we took 400 vehicles off the road during the peak hour, that would solve our problem. We’d go back to where we were three or five years ago and we wouldn’t have these issues,” he said. “How much does it cost to take 400 vehicles off the road compared to expanding all the infrastructure to supply another 400 vehicles?”
I wish we heard more of this kind of thinking and actually saw some action taken in this direction instead of getting transit referendums.

And the obvious answer to the question is: peak hour tolls. And it would be nice to have a third Seabus and associated North Shore bus frequency increases to help handle the shifted commutes. Unfortunately the transit referendum has kiboshed that hope.
     
     
  #92  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:54 AM
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Thank God for guys like Bond and Walton. Transit and road pricing are the way out of this situation, not building more roads.
Maybe municipalities could give transit allowances to construction companies/employees as an incentive to change their commuting habits.
Large cat you also need alternative highway solutions! Remember, mass transit cannot move industrial/large scale consumer goods (hence putting the regional economy at risk via gridlock on the city's only East-West arterial hghway)!
     
     
  #93  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 1:58 AM
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I live this daily congestion with work on the north shore and life in PoMo. More lanes will only help so much. Mass transit is the long term solution. But there is (or was with the mayors plan) for mass transit on the north shore (outside of the extra seabus).

I completely agree that there is far more employment happening on the north shore. How many construction worker, landscapers, child caregivers etc live south of iron workers yet commute north?

Time to open the conversation to mass transit and newer possibilities like LIFT. A stat out of LA is staggering...: if they can improve average vehicle ridership from 1.1 persons per vehicle to 1.3 they would resolve all congestion today. I wonder what our Metro stats are?
     
     
  #94  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 2:01 AM
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Lol they say not even a nickel was put into the section between Lynn and the bridge. Well they did completely redo westview and londsdale intersections to interchanges. Although that was 20 years ago. But the section through west van hasn't ever had anything done to it
That isn't between Lynn Valley and the bridge. Lynn Valley is to the east.

And those interchanges were wonderful. I still can't believe there was a red light on Hwy 1 at Westview (as well as Hastings) in my memory.
     
     
  #95  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 2:25 AM
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The #1 north of the Iron Worker`s Memorial is getting the upgrades it needs now. The solution there isn`t really more lanes, it just needs updated interchange designs (which it is getting) and longer merges. Improving highways isn`t always more lanes, often it is just better designed interchanges. That with more Sea Bus service and bus connections.

Again, the polarized views on here always annoy me, having good roads and good transit create the healthiest region of all. Hence I find people such as Large Cat to be counter productive (such as his desire to completely remove the Patullo Bridge without replacement, not understanding that in a region disected by rivers and inlets you need decent bridge links, not just for single vehivles, but for commercial / industrial traffic, emergency use, redundancy when there are problems, etc...)
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  #96  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 2:51 AM
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Large cat you also need alternative highway solutions! Remember, mass transit cannot move industrial/large scale consumer goods (hence putting the regional economy at risk via gridlock on the city's only East-West arterial hghway)!
The problem is commuters, not goods movement. Did you read the article? Most of the truckers avoid the rush hours anyway, the congestion is being caused by commuters. According to the article if you could divert just 400 cars a day then traffic would go back to the way it was before all this recent congestion started.

Just for reference, spending $100 million on just the interchange, even if it did relieve the immediate problem, is tantamount to spending $250,000 for each of those extra 400 vehicles, the vast majority of which have a single occupant. Do we really want to subsidize drivers at that rate?

Sorry if that sounds incendiary - I actually do believe that the interchange is way past due for being upgraded. But I think it's important to stop and think a bit about the best way to spend our money. Before we start talking about a new bridge I think we really, really ought to consider the tolling option, at least during peak times. That, and more transit options. Imagine the transit improvements we could make for $250,000 per person!
     
     
  #97  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 4:09 AM
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Originally Posted by Metro-One View Post
The #1 north of the Iron Worker`s Memorial is getting the upgrades it needs now. The solution there isn`t really more lanes, it just needs updated interchange designs (which it is getting) and longer merges. Improving highways isn`t always more lanes, often it is just better designed interchanges. That with more Sea Bus service and bus connections.

Again, the polarized views on here always annoy me, having good roads and good transit create the healthiest region of all. Hence I find people such as Large Cat to be counter productive (such as his desire to completely remove the Patullo Bridge without replacement, not understanding that in a region disected by rivers and inlets you need decent bridge links, not just for single vehivles, but for commercial / industrial traffic, emergency use, redundancy when there are problems, etc...)
I totally agree about interchange streamlining often being more important than extra lanes for reducing congestion. I see Knight St. bridge as an example of this. I am not opposed to improving interchanges, especially since this also has knock-on benefits for pedestrians as well as transit users if it is done right. (I think the Ironworkers north side proposed interchange upgrades will do a great job helping all users, so I welcome them!) The problem I have with increasing lanes is that this rarely helps unless it also has knock-on widening consequences for arterials surrounding the interchange, which can lead to an explosion of car-oriented development in the area.

What I said about the Patullo was kind of hyperbole. I do see the need for emergency vehicles to cross quickly, even if both sides of the river tend to have hospitals/police forces, etc. I apologize for my polemicism, I was just sad that day.
     
     
  #98  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 4:31 AM
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Well that is good to hear, sometimes it is hard to judge how serious one is being on the internet

And, when roads are improved, I fully want all aspects of travel on them to be improved (vehicles, pedestrians, bikes).

I would actually love a true separated bikeway to be part of the GMT / 99 improvements. Given the flat landscape and the destinations the 99 connects it is maybe the best candidate of any freeway in BC to have such a parallel bike way.
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  #99  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 4:31 AM
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Originally Posted by aberdeen5698 View Post
Sorry if that sounds incendiary - I actually do believe that the interchange is way past due for being upgraded. But I think it's important to stop and think a bit about the best way to spend our money. Before we start talking about a new bridge I think we really, really ought to consider the tolling option, at least during peak times. That, and more transit options. Imagine the transit improvements we could make for $250,000 per person!
The interchanges are also a huge safety issue. They regularly cause crashes which back up the bridge and non-bridge traffic alike. There is literally no merge on several movements in the North Shore. In a slow vehicle, they're fucking terrifying. I'm sure bus drivers coming out of Phibbs are overjoyed to get rid of that merge.

The other thing about the interchange upgrades is that they're going to make it so East-West traffic can bypass the bridge queue. Right now everything East of the highway is cut off from the rest of North Van when traffic is bad now. There are no ways around the bridge traffic.

I however would totally support Skytrain heading to the North Shore. Hastings to Second Narrows to Lonsdale wouldn't be all that hard to build.
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  #100  
Old Posted Jul 6, 2015, 4:47 AM
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That isn't between Lynn Valley and the bridge. Lynn Valley is to the east.

And those interchanges were wonderful. I still can't believe there was a red light on Hwy 1 at Westview (as well as Hastings) in my memory.
Ah!!! Yes of course I confused Lynn with capilano.
Speaking of which are there plans to fix that interchange (capilano). I can't remeber if I read that or just dreamt it lol
     
     
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