Roads Fantasy Thread

[xd_1771]

Originally Posted by go_leafs_go02

I like that for the most part. Pretty good design, not too complicated either.

Only thing I would change is to have the 70A Avenue connection instead connect down 232 Street. Alot of traffic uses 232 Street so it should be connected through with an intersection.

You make an interesting point, but unfortunately because of the creek location in that area, connecting 232 street with that intersection would be much more complicated, perhaps not even doable. 232 Street would connect where it currently does under this plan with no change.

Originally Posted by go_leafs_go02

Oh, and another collision there today EB right at the merge point. Traffic back to 200 Street. Yet the MOT says they need warrants to do any upgrades. An accident every other week or so says nothing?

Why this wasn't included in Gateway is beyond me...

There seems to be less attention paid to things like these. You should make the MOT aware of that in another e-mail. You are a frequent driver of the area, I'm sure they will listen.

[go_leafs_go02]

Originally Posted by xd_1771

You make an interesting point, but unfortunately because of the creek location in that area, connecting 232 street with that intersection would be much more complicated, perhaps not even doable. 232 Street would connect where it currently does under this plan with no change.

Well, your other option could be realigning Highway #10 along 72 Avenue and then giving the ROW from 72 Avenue to Glover Road. North on Glover Road would be an intersection, (signalized) but you would need to turn off HIghway #10 to access Glover Road North.

Originally Posted by xd_1771

There seems to be less attention paid to things like these. You should make the MOT aware of that in another e-mail. You are a frequent driver of the area, I'm sure they will listen.

I emailed back with a response mentioning that I was simply curious whether or not the MOT was planning to do some studies/warrants to see if upgrades were actually warranted (which I'm sure they are). And likewise, again, the only way you could possibly get things implemented or changed within Surrey is by contacting the City with your concerns, and even possible solutions.

[xd_1771]

I'm not too sure about 72nd. Great idea route-wise, but it's a hit to development along the road, as well as any Hwy 10 4-laning potential. Of course routing 232nd to be the main road to hit that intersection rather than 70A is not impossible, but might result in even more land expropriation requirement.

[ruggedscot]

Vancouver is probably in the top ten of places in the world thats livable. A truly beautiful city. But it is cursed with an infrastructure that is inadequate to cope with the traffic that the city generates.

How do you solve such a blight? A difficult one indeed. The city core itself wont take any multiple lane freeways without detriment to the city. At least any surface or elevated. But using tunnels would provide some relief. Keep long distance traffic out of Vancouver - provide an orbital route of high class - yes its a freeway but these have been proven to work - they provide interconnection and can take considerable traffic away from the core.

The ferry at Horeshoe generates traffic - is this not better served by developing the lower mainland ferry terminal to serve both Nanimo and Victoria ? Provide decent freeway from this terminal up to towards vancover and the wider lowland area.

Park and ride facilities along with rapid transport to the city. P&R integrated with the freeway network. Tunnelled connections from the city to the suburbs.

[DKaz]

Some concepts for the viaducts removal by me...

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by ruggedscot

Vancouver is probably in the top ten of places in the world thats livable. A truly beautiful city. But it is cursed with an infrastructure that is inadequate to cope with the traffic that the city generates.

How do you solve such a blight? A difficult one indeed. The city core itself wont take any multiple lane freeways without detriment to the city. At least any surface or elevated. But using tunnels would provide some relief. Keep long distance traffic out of Vancouver - provide an orbital route of high class - yes its a freeway but these have been proven to work - they provide interconnection and can take considerable traffic away from the core.

The ferry at Horeshoe generates traffic - is this not better served by developing the lower mainland ferry terminal to serve both Nanimo and Victoria ? Provide decent freeway from this terminal up to towards vancover and the wider lowland area.

Park and ride facilities along with rapid transport to the city. P&R integrated with the freeway network. Tunnelled connections from the city to the suburbs.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I agree with just about everything you say. But be warned. People in Vancouver (or many of them anyway) have a "thing" against tunnels. I remember suggesting that and I got either over-intellectual responses why tunnels were tabou, or sometimes something tantamount to "No-o-o-o-o-o-o...." I don't understand it either.

[Political_R]

Unless the province wants to pony up the dough for something near Iona Island, you can forget the idea of another terminal. I think SFPR might help with traffic relief from Horseshoe Bay since it will make it easier to access Tsawwassen from Maple Ridge onward. Tsawwassen-Duke Point for regular vehicles is still underutilized except during the summer weekends.

Although, my fantasy was to create a new bridge across the narrows with a six lane tunnel that bypasses downtown to the Oak Street bridge. Although we will have to wait for the Massey to be twinned before that happens.

[bardak]

Originally Posted by Political_R

Although we will have to wait for the Massey to be twinned before that happens.

Now there is a real fantasy.

[xd_1771]

I remember someone else on here before mentioned his/her idea of 2 or 3 lane uni-directional (AM or PM) expressway from Rte 1, tolled, and similar to the effective Melbourne Citylink, to provide an express link into the downtown core and move traffic off of city streets; it may also provide a new source of revenue for the City of Vancouver.

I actually find this a decent idea, then Vancouver can work to reduce traffic on local streets incl. First Ave, Hastings, Powell, be able to viably further reduce their capacity and increase on pedestrian friendliness and transit service (First doesn't even have any transit along the route at the moment) along those corridors. I was thinking such an expressway (which could run along the BC Rail/Millenium Line corridor) could link up with the viaducts. I know lots will disagree instantly at the thought of "expressway in Vancouver", but do think about it and the potential benefits to the street level infrastructure. An optimized design with little to no merges on the route will move fairly well from Highway 1 and not jam LA-style.

I do like Dkaz's concept and from an overall perspective it can and will work very well, but there are a few minorities I would do differently (the lack of turn lanes may be a problem when adjacent to the road are prioritized bike lanes; the redesigned Dunsmuir includes right turn bays at all intersections (at the cost of a through lane, but Dunsmuir moves more efficiently like this anyway) as turning traffic has to yield to bicycles.

[fredinno]

Originally Posted by BCPhil

It would not help get downtown at all. IOCO and Barnet is probably THE worst intersection, in congestion for turns, in BC (I have seen the left turn line back up to Moray St). I would drive over the Ironworkers any day, any time than try to turn left off Barnet onto IOCO at rush hour.

So, IMO, the cost of building a bridge, plus the cost of improving the roads in the area at both ends, would never be worth it for the number of drivers using the crossing, ever.

If you actually really wanted a crossing, I would propose a small ferry, like the Albion ferry but with tolls, from the Dollarton Hwy to the Barnet Hwy. Or a high speed passenger only seabus connecting several ports of call, but I don't think there would ever be enough passengers to justify it.

A small ferry with road expansion

[trofirhen]

The new Gateway crossing, when finished and fully operational, will carry large volumes of traffic northwestward, westward, and possibly be heading for downton peninsula, the West Side, and a percentage going over the LGB. What therefore would be the main c/d system for this traffic? Would, and could things remain the same, with First Avenue loaded with westbound traffic, among others? Powell and Cordova still the best in/out CBD and west routes? Won't the volume increase? Won't there be structural issues that will have to be taken into consideration? If anyone's up to speaking to this ...... great. Thanks.

[fredinno]

Ok, yeah, here's the 3rd Crossing I promised. There's a cost analysis and a map of the proposed 3rd crossing. I found Skytrain was impossible to add to the plan, so I decided to add Commuter Rail instead.

The cost of new 10 lane ITT is $4300 in the GMB replacement project (2014= $2.0B, and for a 6 lane ITT, it is $3460 Billion (2014= $1.61B), with 600 meters total tube length
The above costs also include the cost of widening HWY 99 from the HWY 99-91 interchange in Surrey to Bridgeport.
Adding new lanes to an existing freeway can range between $2 and $10 million per lane-mile. Since this is built on existing ROW, it's reasonable to assume the costs are on the lower end.
The length of the new expanded highway is 19.43mi, therefore, the revised costs minus highway expansions are (assuming $3M per mile) are $1.493B (2014$) for the 6 lane ITT and $1.650B (2014$) for the 10 lane ITT. The marginal costs of new lanes for ITT seems small-which makes sense, since it's really the marginal costs of building more of the same type of segments.

The cost per km for the 6 lane option is $2.488B/km and $2.75B/km for the 10 lane option.
The extra costs of ITTs takes them out of this analysis.

8 lane bored tunnels for the GMB would be 1.8B, minus 30% contingency (with contingency-$2.34B- and $2.20B in 2014 dollars), and excluding any costs in terms of highway widenings past the bridge area proper or design costs. The length of the bored tunnel is about 1670m, however. The primary additional costs seems to primarily be the additional length of the bored tunnel, with it actually being cheaper per km.
The difficulty is getting enough headway to get the tunnel under the sea from the south. If the depth to bedrock is the same as on the Fraser River, CRAB Park would need to be completely destroyed, and new land would likely need to be reclaimed in order to provide enough headway, on top of which a new Helipad would be built.
The curved connection I settled on is what I came up with to compensate for the limitations of the site.
The cost is $0.0823B/lane-km, using the costs of only the marginal tunnel costs themselves as a baseline to calaculate it, and the tunnels also have a $717.8M fixed cost.





For the planned 8 lane NS tunnel (2 lanes commuter rail, 6 lanes general traffic) the cost is on the lines of $3.35B (2014$). The cost of the 6 lane option, meanwhile (4 lanes general traffic, 2 lanes commuter rail, or 6 lanes general traffic) would be about $2.693B, both excluding the cost of adding the commuter rail proper (only the space would be added).
Adding the cost of the conector Hamilton Street expansion and extension results in a ~$7.8M increase in cost. It's impossible to find the cost of the land reclaimation needed, property aquisition costs, or environmental mitigation costs on Mckay Creek. Either way, the tunnel is by far the biggest cost and is pretty much a good indicator of the overall cost, -5%.

For comparison, the Lonsdale Line shown here (http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show....php?p=8372660) is $2.4B-$3B (2015$), depending on how you crunch the numbers.



There's no way to know for sure the costs of the actual thing without a *modern* feasibility study into the idea, but this should give an idea of potential costs.


BTW, the proposed commuter rail I'm planning here would be similar to something like Toronto's proposed Smarttrack, though modified to be diesel-operating.



As for the Main Street bridge across the North Fraser, I've decided to give up on that en lieu of just expanding both Prior Street back to 4 lanes and expanding the Knight Street Freeway and bridge to 6 lanes.



On the Map:
Red: Property aquisitions required (ONLY FOR the ROADs)
Blue: Commuter Rail (Dark Blue is Tunnel)
Grey: Hamilton/Main Street (Dark Grey is Tunnel)
Black: Reclaimed Land

EXTRA
Cost of new section of Hamilton Ave ($0.495M)
Cost of 216th Street interchange ($6.194M)
Cost of expanded section of Hamilton Ave ($1.0998M)

I can't add cost of properties now due to the DNV's assessment service being down.




Sigh.
I spent way too much time on this.

Funny thing, in the diagram on the "FINAL" GMB study, it seems a bored tunnel approach can fit on Deas Island (though a tight fit). I'm not sure as to the rationale behind extending the tunnel and thus making the bored tunnel option worse.




Side Notes:
-I'm gonna add this to my master plan at some point- it doesn't seem completely unreasonable to advocate for in my opinion.
-The 4 road lane option also assumes most traffic flows into a 8+ lane Upper Levels and Skytrain to the North Shore, along with no development above the 1200ft limit to mitigate traffic congestion.
-The curve is to avoid a deep section in the center of Vancouver Harbour.
-New roads and Commuter Rail are not to scale.
-A Kingsway Extension would be built to divert more East-West traffic away from Main Street.
-Cordova and Powell west of Main would be expanded by 1 lane each (by taking it from parking) to accommodate the new traffic flow.
-LGB and the LGB Road would be closed under current plans by the City of Vancouver.
-There would be a significant negative environmental impact on MacKay Creek.



Sources:
(GMT)
https://blog.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads/s...FINAL_corr.pdf
https://engage.gov.bc.ca/app/uploads...-July-2016.pdf

https://blog.midwestind.com/cost-of-building-road/

[FarmerHaight]

Originally Posted by VancouverOfTheFuture

can you remind me, is this the waterfront cut off by a railway/rail yard that wont be going anywhere in the future? is this also the one where front street is so much lower than the downtown that something akin to the laurel land bridge could be built overtop of it & the railway to give even better access to the waterfront?

nahh that cant be the one.

people think so linearly and 2 dimensional.

***Moved from the Patullo Bridge thread***

Yes, that is the one.

Front Street by Westminster Pier Park is about 8 metres wide. The four lane SFPR is 25 metres wide. There are 20 metres between the two railways which Front Street runs between. So either the NFPR wouldn't be built to modern standards, or it would need to be elevated over the railway, or tunneled under, or stacked. That would not only be expensive, but once you add the interchange with the Patullo it would visually dominate the riverfront.

Then we can add the noise and pollution of the extra vehicles. Sure, the vehicles might spend less time idling downtown, but since when are faster vehicles less disruptive?

And sure, could pedestrian improvements like additional bridges over the railway be added to a multi-billion dollar project like this? Probably, but ask anyone who has spent time on the Empire State Trail how pleasant it is to be stuck walking or running or biking between an expressway and a river, and I'm sure they'll tell you how nice it would have been to only have a couple trains pass by them per hour instead of thousands of vehicles.

[waves]

Sometimes I poke around with Road Fantasy's. Thought I would share. Some are well known and others more wild. Nothings very serious but I had fun with it.

• Boundary Bridge
• New Queensborough to Marine Alignment
• Some new small local bridges from Richmond to New West
• McBride to Hwy 1
• Redirect Oak St Bridge to Granville Street
• Park Drive One way NB
• Roundabout at 41st Ave and the Boulevards in Kerrisdale
• Redirect Hwy 99 to Hemlock and Fir. Reduce lanes on Granville in that zone to 1 bi-directional - more parking and walking space.
• One way 12th and Broadway.
• Exit SB on Hwy 1 to Rupert to include new dedicated lane exit to Lougheed and Boundary. No more merge conflict point with 1st ave SB entrance.
• Redirect NB Hastings Hwy 1 entrance into the McGill entrance.
• Fix various bad radii and curves on Hwy 1 in North Van
• Remove NB Main st-Hwy 1 entrance in North Van.
• Seymour-Belcarra-Brunette Bridge (wilddd I know)
• Freeway Hwy 15 to I5

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?m...XI&usp=sharing

[mcj]

I like a lot of what you have here.

We certainly underutilize one way roads throughout the region. Something I think we should also consider is implementing dedicated freight lanes for tractor trailers.

From a New Westminster perspective, you're actually missing the one big ticket item that's outlined in the city's current transportation plans which is a tunnel under 3rd Ave for connecting truck traffic from Stewardson Way to Brunette Ave (with a connection at McBridge for traffic over the Pattullo).

The road link you have from Ewen Ave in Queensborough to Royal Ave in Downtown New West pretty much parallels the proposal for a pedestrian bridge in that same location (imo a better solution than a road bridge at that location).

I like the 91 to Marine Way connector and 20th street local road connector. We will have to rebuild/replace the Queensborough bridge at some point in the near future. This could be a better location for the replacement(s) and open up the lands south of 22nd St station to transit oriented development. Although the Annacis Island Connection would require expropriating the Annacis Island Swing Bridge from the railways (I believe CN owns and operates it).