Quote:
Originally Posted by yellowghost
The sad truth is that Winnipeg will NEVER have a true freeway. The best you can hope for is that future projects are budgeted with things like bridges, cloverleaves in mind. For example, Chief penguis street to be extended westward and eastward no? Is it planned to get joined with other streets at its new ends with cloverleaves or traffic lights? If the plan is cloverleaves, then it take much longer for the city to aquire the money for the project. But even if it is...you still have all those intersections in between to slow down traffic. I have seen a significant reduction in traffic flow since I started driving in 1992. I wonder sometimes what streets like pembina, Keewatin, Henderson..etc. will looks like in 20 years in a rush hour. I am afraid a tradegy is the only way action will be taken in this matter. Perhaps if somebody of importance dies because paramedics cannot arrive in time because they just litterally cannot get thru the traffic.
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That's an incredibly happy truth. Cities are invariably worse off for freeways. We can all breathe a sigh of relief that Winnipeg didn't go down that road and end up like so many comparable American cities--depopulated, broke, ravaged by crime and poverty, and ringed by endless sprawl. If you want to see what could have been, just look at satellite pictures of Detroit, Buffalo, Cleveland, Albany... any city east of the Mississippi. It's sad, sad stuff.
That said, this city needs to get off the incredibly stupid and unsafe fence it's on when it comes to road building. Check out this piece here on "stroads":
http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2...l#.UuAmnRDnaUk
The real sad truth is that stroad describes nearly every major artery in this city, in one form or another. Whether it's older, street-like roads like Henderson, Portage, or Pembina; or pseudo-expressways like Kenaston, Waverley, or Lagimodier; they all keep one costly, dangerous foot on each side of the street/road line.
rrskylar mentioned service roads a few posts back and, for my money, they're the best bet for Winnipeg's more suburban stroads. They're relatively cheap to build, fit in limited space, reduce access to the road, and accommodate future diamond interchanges, and get the city off the hook for building intersections for every business. Service roads now and a gradual replacement of intersections with diamond interchanges would do well to convert Winnipeg's roadiest stroads into functional roads--even one day into something like freeways.
You mention cloverleafs but those only make sense for two country highways meeting each other. In a city, they're a tremendous waste of space and easily the most hostile environment for pedestrians and cyclists. Since Chief Peguis would cross more street-like stroads that currently accommodate mixed traffic, highway-style interchanges cannot work. Diamond interchanges, on the other hand, are feasible and affordable alternatives.
As for the street-like stroads I mentioned earlier (Portage, Pembina, Nairn, Henderson, St. Annes, McPhillips, and so on): they need to become streets. They're already too intensely developed to turn into roads without massive, expensive expropriations. On the other hand, some of these streets are massive and really suck to walk along. Of all of them, Pembina is on the best track with its segregated cycling lanes, but that just scratches the surface. Upzoning, widening sidewalks, more pedestrian corridors, continental crosswalks (
http://sf.streetsblog.org/2013/11/01...on-sf-streets/ --maybe something Ross Eadie should hear about), better transit service... I'd even go so far as to ban access from parking lots onto these streets--an advantage on two fronts, improving safety and the pedestrian experience.
There are low-cost, incremental changes the city can start making right now that will improve traffic, safety, urbanity, and cost-effectiveness in this city. Part of the problem is the bottom-dollar, Tom Brodbeck, save taxpayers money mentality that thinks scrapping everything but filling pot holes is Winnipeg's ticket to ride. Winnipeg isn't rich, but it's not so broke we have to settle for bullshit every time. And making the right moves now will only help us in the future.