There’s a lot of debate going on about a new subdivision that’s proposed for the Kingston Peninsula. As it is in an unincorporated area, there is really not much that the residents can do as they are pretty much unrepresented when it comes to municipal matters. Here are some pros and cons for the project:

Pros:

• Lots will be inexpensive, which will open up home ownership to many more people
• They will have a nice view (for now)
• Unincorporated areas have no by-laws or zoning so you can do whatever you want on your property

Cons:

• Unincorporated areas have no by-laws or zoning so your neighbours can do whatever they want on their property
• How much longer will the ferry lineups be?
• When the ferries are down, or frozen over, residents will have to drive to Hampton to get to Saint John. How much more traffic can that road handle?
• How are they going to get their water? Will there be 100 septic tanks? Will there be a private sewer system (we all know how well those work out)

Eventually, there will be a bridge. It’s just a matter of when. When it does happen, it’s well known that there will be more and more subdivisions going in on the peninsula. Residents will say that it will become just like Quispamsis, however, I disagree. It will become worse than Quispamsis because there will be no planning and no oversight.

If the people of the Kingston Peninsula really want to stop rampant development, they should petition for incorporation. If they elect a mayor and council, they can have some recourse over what goes on their community.

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The people at UNB in Fredericton have been sitting on some land that has recently been going up in value as the city grows around it. They have also had to endure years of funding cuts meaning they aren’t able to fund their programs as well as they’d like to. By putting 2 and 2 together, they were able to come up with a solution: lease 50% of the land to gain some revenue.

As with any type of development, there are people who will be against it for whatever reason. In this case, the people protesting it are wrong for the following reasons:

1. The claim of urban sprawl

The protesters use this as an example of urban sprawl. In fact, it is the exact opposite of sprawl as it’s making use of land already in the city limits. If that land wasn’t developed, the box stores would have to go farther out of the city and that would be less ideal. Cars would have to be driven more, therefore more fuel burned. Also, without access to city water and sewer, they would have to have a well and septic system, which aren’t as good as city services.

2. The loss of recreational use

The protesters claim that by developing the land, they will lose access to the lands for recreational use. The trouble is, that land was never intended for recreational use. UNB didn’t put up “no trespassing” signs so people were allowed to go there. Nobody ever had the “right” to use it for recreational purposes.  Besides, the extra tax revenue will allow the city to expand and develop the Killarney Lake park, which will be significantly large.  Of course, there will still be 50% of the woodlot land left to use, some of which will be developed into actual parkland.

3. Costco is actually better for the environment

Buying in bulk saves packaging and cuts down on waste. Even the building itself has less of an impact than many smaller stores. The spartan interior means fewer materials in the landfill when the time comes to tear the building down. The bare concrete floor eliminates harmful flooring materials and the chain-link fence based interior partitions can be recycled.

4. The Knowledge Park Drive Extension

This new road, which goes through the property will allow access to some of the 50% conservation lands which can then be used as parks. This will allow many more people to use the land for recreational purposes. That road will also cut down on congestion on Regent St. between Prospect and the malls. Saving congestion saves gas.

Conclusion

If they really want to stop development, there are other ways:

• Insist that UNB gets much more funding from governments. This will put a damper on development
• Insist that better use of existing land be made. New buildings downtown need to be taller. Stand up to the NIMBYs who protest developments (such as the apartment buildings at the end of Church St and the Sobeys on Regent)

Telling people to change their lifestyle is not the way to go about this. Neither is telling a private organization what to do with land it owns.

Links: UNB Woodlot site – UNB Woodlot Development Protestors

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These aren’t examples of obsolete intersections or places where traffic grew too quickly.  These are examples of things that were designed badly.

7. Bishop Dr. near Hanwell

Why are the lanes so wide?  There’s enough room for 2 cars in each lane.

Update: Jan 2012: FIXED! The lines have been adjusted so that you now have two clear lanes to drive in.

6. Oromocto’s Gateway Roundabout

A well designed roundabout is an excellent device to control traffic flow.  It is most useful in intersections where there is a lot of turning traffic.  It really helps if you have all of the streets actually going into the roundabout.  There’s no reason a roundabout has to be a perfect circle, ovals still work as well.  Only 3 out of 4 roads going into it, not so much.

5. Two Nations Crossing

The city had the perfect opportunity to make a high speed east-west highway on the North side that would eventually connect to the Marysville Bypass. This would have made a ring road around 75% of the city (assuming it connects to the old TCH by the Princess Margaret Bridge).  In fact, all they would need is a bridge at the end of the Ring Road to connect to the old TCH and we’d actually have a true ring road that goes all the way around the city. This would solve many traffic problems for years ahead.  Unfortunately, city council can’t think any farther ahead than their 4 year term so they decided to not limit access to the road and it will soon be full of box stores which will plug up the traffic on that street.

4. Uptown traffic lights not being timed

Every try to go up Regent St in rush hour? Traffic doesn’t move a lot because each of those sets of lights run on sensors and none of them are linked to each other. They also only have sensors at the stop lines so they can’t predict if a wave of traffic is coming up the street.  The simple solution here is more sensors and linking them so you can get a good amount of traffic up Regent St. on each cycle.

3. Non-continuous street names

• Forest Hill / Beaverbrook / Dundonald / Waggonners Lane
• Gibson / Canada
• Union / Main

When cities become amalgamated, or streets rearranged to join up, they are reluctant to change the street names for fear of annoying people. This, however, make it really confusing for newcomers and tourists. They just need to suck it up and make the residents change their addresses.

2. Spaghetti Junction

“Spaghetti Junction” is the only name I know of this intersection that won’t cause this post to get blocked by filters. Originally, there was a train track running through it which made it difficult to work with. Now, there’s only a trail which can easily be moved. There’s no excuse for this mess, it’s confusing, badly signed and difficult to navigate through during rush hour. Please hurry up and replace it with a roundabout.

1. The drivers

You can design the greatest road system around, but you’ll still fail when 25% of the drivers don’t know how to use it. It’s common knowledge that Fredericton drivers are terrible, there’s even a Facebook group and a live MergeFailCam. For some reason, city police overlook these offenses. It isn’t about money as the city doesn’t get to keep any of the fine from a speeding ticket. They run ads on TV telling people how to cross the street, but they won’t run ads telling people how to merge.

Much congestion could be solved in a few key places:

• When taking the ramp to exit to Regent St from the Westmorland St. Bridge, drivers tend to stop at the end of the cloverleaf when attempting to go on to St.Anne’s Pt. Bvd.
• When at a traffic light downtown, drivers will enter an intersection when there is no way out and block traffic
• When heading north on Westmorland towards the bridge, drivers will stop and let Queen St. traffic in front of them. They do this despite the fact that the Queen St. traffic will soon have a green light of their own
• When heading South on Regent St., turning right on to Arnold Dr. (in front of Walmart), drivers stop despite having their own lane.
• When taking the Regent. St. exit when coming South from the old TCH (#8), drivers stop when it joins up with the Vanier, despite having their own lane.

Enforcing the basic rules of the road (and educating drivers) will clear up some of the traffic headaches that are experienced.  Doing so can even save on costly expansion projects. It will most certainly cut down on road rage. For some mysterious reason, these rules aren’t enforced. Perhaps all the decision-makers are bad drivers?

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Someone decides to spend $50,000 on a report to see what’s wrong with the transit system.  Many people are questioning the value of that report.

Along with stating the obvious, they did seem to miss a few things.

• The biggest thing that they missed was any mention of Saint John’s very successful transit system. It has a much higher ridership and it even serves the outlying communities. Moncton, on the other hand has a terrible transit service with even worse ridership than Fredericton’s, yet it got included. I guess they don’t want to be embarrassed by our neighbours to the south.
• Ridership will be low when you don’t advertise. The majority of the $3,000 marketing budget goes to printing the schedules. Saint John has always spent a lot on advertising, they even have a jingle (which you can listen to on their web site).
• They also seem to forget that the transit service does have competition: Taxis and carpools. When making decisions regarding the transit service they need to take these into account. For instance, taxis are air conditioned, buses are not (unless they start buying buses with air conditioning). Taxis don’t make you cross the river twice while you go to 2 points on the North side.

There seems to be a general attitude problem. They believe that public transit is only for the downtrodden. In fact, it seems that nobody at the transit system cares about their job (some of the drivers are an exception to this). Let’s look at some examples:

• The destination signs are inconsistent. Some show what direction the bus is going in, others don’t. 11S still says “K-Mart Plaza” even though the K-Mart has been long gone for over 10 years.
• This destination sign below is broken. I actually took this picture over a year ago (I’ve been meaning to blog about it since then, but never got around to it). The sign still hasn’t been fixed. Really, how much does a new sign cost?
• 
• One of the buses has the destination sign on the side that is stuck on “Special”.
• Many buses don’t have signs on the side at all.
• Here we see an example of seat repair, stuffing garbage bags to fill the space where the foam should be. They didn’t even bother to use duct tape:
• 
• Here, we see 2 different fonts. It’s obvious that they repaired the door at some point. Nobody bothered to tell the painter which font to use.
• 

Their biggest failure is their inability to listen to what people actually want. Recently, transit users have been asking for the 3 following things:

• Service to Two Nations Crossing
• Sunday service (and better hours during the week)
• A bus that stays on the North side of the river.

Those would be the most obvious things to implement, yet only 1 of the 3 was ever under consideration. The report claims that the survey of existing transit users showed low interest in the Sunday service or the North side run. It looks like they didn’t factor in the fact that the people who want these things aren’t able to take the bus, therefore they did not participate in the survey. Please, can we order some common sense with the next report?

So here’s 2 easy ways on how to fix the transit system:

1. Listen to what people are asking for
2. Copy Saint John Transit as much as possible.

Update: Here’s an update to some of what was posted here.

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