Crossposting the info from the other thread since it's relevant here:
I was also there last night (and wow, were the crazies out in force!), and the city had some pretty good reasoning for putting it at Tower Rd. There were a few things mentioned:
1) The city will not be extending past Tower Road. Due to the major rail line a few hundred meters past that point, it would be very difficult to extend city utilities and roads. It may jump those tracks in 50-75 years, but in the medium-term it will not happen so Tower Rd is a good location as the city will be completely within that limit.
2) This will be a full systems interchange (as well as the Pinkie Rd interchange) which means quadruple the area needed of a regular cloverleaf like the one at Albert St. and #1. Because of this, it can't be placed too close to any other interchanges. And that's important to note because the province will be building 2 other interchanges east of the city, at the Pilot Butte turnoff by White City and also further out near Balgonie. If the city bypass was moved further out then there would not be a good enough distance between the interchanges which is a big problem for GTH truck traffic as you don't want 2 and 3-trailer semis scrambling to merge/shift lanes in less than a 1 or 2km distance.
3) If the bypass went further east then the interchange at Arcola would need to be moved further south-east, which would align it with an active railway. This would mean constructing a multi-level interchange with not only 2 highways meeting, but also a rail line. It's possible, but much more costly. In general the bypass would also have to cross a few more pipelines and rail lines out that way, which would increase costs.
4) Traffic studies have shown that the majority of traffic along that corridor of the #1 are not through-traffic, but are commuters heading into the city anyway. So building it further east wouldn't reduce the traffic between it and the city by more than 10%, which is not worth the much higher cost. And due to the 2 other interchanges east of the city, there will be less concern about traffic levels near Balgonie or White City since there will be full-movement access points (no lights or at-grade crossings). So people in the bedroom communities will be able to merge at highway speeds, meaning the extra 10% of traffic between them and the city will not be as big a concern as overall flow will be greatly improved.
Anyway, that's what I got out of it! There was one particularly crazy lady I was debating near the end who had a grudge. She wouldn't believe me that the city was already planning to triple-lane Vic East at that old bridge in the east end, or that Sask Dr is also being tripled in the coming years. She also tried to tie in the Stadium project to this. Oh, and my favourite part was this conspiracy theory from her:
She believed that if the bypass were moved further east, then the city would continue to expand past Tower Rd, all the way past the rail line. She believes the bypass being placed at Tower Rd was meant to stop this growth, and for a nefarious reason. She believes the reason the city wants to stop the growth in the east end at Tower Rd is to mandate and force further growth in Harbour Landing which means more money for developers there. That is stupid because developers would also be the ones making money in any east expansion, but she wouldn't let that theory go. She also tied it into the stadium somehow, that the province was part of the conspiracy and that city engineers were working with them. But also that city council was behind it. I tried to point out that you can't have it both ways, that either the engineers are having their ideas accepted by council (and therefore are to blame for any problems or concerns) or that council is not listening to engineers and doing things for political reasons. No matter what I said though, she had her mind set that the city was doing this to line house developers pockets, and also something to do with the stadium!
Anyway, that's my (not so brief) summary of last night, hope it helps!
EDIT - And the reason for building south of the ring road compared to having it branch off between Albert and Wascana as originally planned is:
1) The interchange would only be 400m from Albert St, which is not acceptable for 2 or 3-trailer semis needing to merge/move with city traffic.
2) They don't want 3-trailer semis driving in city traffic at all. If the GTH hadn't been done then the bypass would have simply been off the current bypass in the south. But because of the GTH they need to get that super-heavy/long truck traffic out of any merging areas within the city.
One other reason they gave for keeping the bypass so close to the city on the east side was to allow city residents to use it in place of the Ring Rd. If you move it out to the Pilot Butte interchange location and have it all combined there, all you're really doing is reducing traffic between Tower Rd and the interchange by roughly 10%. There's no housing in between there anyway (in any meaningful amount), so it's not really helping clear traffic in that sense for anyone. On the other hand, moving the bypass access out to White City like that would prevent people in the Creeks or around there from being able to use it as an alternate road to the Ring Rd. If you keep it at Tower Rd and have it intersect Arcola just past the Creeks/Greens, then it allows people who are on the edge of town to access it and alleviate traffic on the Ring Rd, improving access and flow for everyone.
It's actually very well thought out.
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