Much of the rest of the world has come to love roundabouts. Now, councillor Mike O’Brien is proposing that Fredericton have some too.

Roundabouts can be installed at almost any intersection, but they really shine in the following situations:

• intersections where the roads don’t all line up at 90 degree intersections
• intersections with 5 or more roads going into it
• intersections where a lot of the drivers would be making a left turn

Many opponents claim that they are less safe than traditional intersections, but that isn’t actually true.

• The average speed of a roundabout is typically 25 km/h
• You won’t get head-on or t-bone accidents
• Pedestrians are actually safer because they don’t have to worry about turning traffic and they only have to look one way before crossing
• Cyclists have the option of using the crosswalks or entering the circle as regular traffic (but without a bike lane in the circle)

The two biggest hurdles will be:

• Proper design: A badly designed roundabout will cause more accidents and drivers will fear them. An example of a badly designed roundabout is the one on Miramichi/Sobeys/Esso in Oromocto.
• Education.  The CBC interview had the lead traffic engineer stress the importance of driver education. Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening as the “powers that be” don’t seem to have a problem with a large percentage of the local population not knowing how to merge. It will be up to the other drivers to honk at the ones who are doing it wrong. The Government of PEI did quite well on driver education, including a cute little Flash animation:

Hopefully Fredericton City Council won’t resist change and we’ll get to see some roundabouts fairly soon. Hopefully the first one will go at Waterloo/Beaverbrook/Future UNB Entrance/Forest Hill/Lincoln.

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1. The Coggswell Interchange

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At some point in the 1960s, Halifax decided that it wanted an expressway running through their downtown (like Toronto’s Gardiner). Once the weed wore off, they cancelled the plan, neglecting the fact that they already started building it. Did they tear down the partially completed section? Nope, they just left it there and rearranged some of the lanes so it would kind of work with what’s already there. To this day, it carries little traffic, confuses tourists and costs a lot to maintain.

2. 101/102/7 interchange

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This one fails on several levels. Despite connecting two major highways 101/102, the clover-leaf style ramps have very tight turns that require you to slow down to 30 km/h in order to navigate them. You then have very little ramp space to get up to speed to merge onto the other highway.

If you’re on highway 33, this intersection connects with the 101, but not the 102. This is probably an intentional design to make it inconvenient for people from the north end of Dartmouth to avoid going over one of the bridges and paying the toll.

3. Yield signs for everything

Rather than having a separate sign to yield, merge, or continue in your own lane, they use yield signs for all three. If you’re unfamiliar with the area, you have to guess what you’re actually supposed to do.  If you’re wrong, you’ll either get rear-ended or drive into the side of another car.

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1. Rothesay Ave / Retail Dr.

To help with traffic for Saint John’s expanding east side retail area, a new road was constructed to connect the malls to Rothesay Ave. This new road almost meets up with the Ashburn Lake Rd highway intersection. Almost. Instead of a single intersection, they got two sets of traffic lights 50m (175 feet) apart. What was in the way of the new road? A mini-home sales lot. The kind of thing that you can very easily put on a truck and move. For some reason, they didn’t think of doing that.

2. Timed traffic lights

Most of Saint John’s traffic lights are based on a timer. They have very few traffic actuated lights. Timed lights are great for synchronization, but not so good when you have a single set of lights in an area with low traffic. Some people believe that there is a conspiracy where Irving Oil wants you to sit there idling at red lights wasting gas.

3. Sensor lights that only have sensors for one street

Some intersections have traffic actuated lights, but only have sensors on the side street. The light controller has no idea how much, if any, traffic is on the main street. This means that if you pull up to a light that’s turning yellow, you’ll have to wait a full minute before it turns green.

4. Lights you can’t see from the stop line

In most places, the traffic lights are at the other end of the intersection and clearly visible. At some intersections in Saint John, if you stop at the stop line, you really have to crane your neck to see it. If you pull too far ahead, you’ll have to wait until the person behind you honks for you to know that it turned green.

5. Orange arrows for right turns

Imagine coming up to an intersection with a red light, but an amber arrow pointing to the right. One would assume that you have a right turn on red that’s about to run out. You would then hurry up and make your right turn assuming that you only had another 5 seconds of right of way. Not in Saint John. Well, not in some parts of Saint John. Sometimes it means that you can make a right turn on a red light, but only after making a full stop and making sure that it is safe to proceed. So why bother with the arrow at all? Isn’t that just like a normal red light?

6. Simms Corner

World famous. The city keeps promising to fix it, but never gets around to it.  To people who aren’t familiar with it, good luck. Too bad it’s so close to a major tourist attraction and that many tourists are forced to use it to visit the falls.

7. Rothesay Ave / Hwy 1

At some point in the 1970s, traffic engineers decided that a maze of rams and one-way streets would be better than building a proper intersection.

8. Airport Road

Instead of building ramps on all points of two intersections that are 1.5 km apart, they chose to build a connector road that runs parallel to the highway. This might work in the city, but out in the country, the locals just do u-turns in the middle of the highway.

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Found this stuffed in my door the other day:

This is in reference to the subdivision of a large lot at 1530 Lincoln Rd. Since my last post about it, the application had been revised to only be 6 lots instead of 7. This means that the application no longer needs to be voted on by city council, it only needs to pass at the Planning Advisory Council (PAC) level.  The PAC ended up denying the subdivision over the issue of the driveways being too close to a dangerous intersection.  However, City lawyers were asked to look into the PAC and see what their actual scope is. Turns out, they can’t actually deny a subdivision application that meets the zoning requirements. They can only decide whether 8% of the total property must be given up as parkland, or a cash equivalent be provided. This means that the most the PAC can do is hope they can inconvenience the developer into having to give up 8% of the land and annoys him enough that he eventually resubmits an application that solves the issue with the driveways.

The authors of the flyer seem to think that this is a human rights issue. Rather than letting this one go and trying to permanently close the loophole, they are hoping that this can be magically overturned by having a bunch of people showing up to a meeting. I’ve seen that before with the UNB woodlot and Acadian Lines bus station rezoning. Hopefully this group won’t bring drums.

To be fair to the protesters, the driveway configuration is dumb, but it will mostly affect the safety of people that end up buying those lots.  It will also affect the developer as this debate will reduce the desirability of the lots and therefore reduce the price, which will reduce his profit margins.

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To be fair, it isn’t really an engineering issue; it’s a simple case of plans that look good on paper, but may not work out so well once implemented.

The plan is to turn a single oversized lot and split it up into seven. That, in its self isn’t a bad thing; the problem is where the driveways will go.

You’ll have two going onto the Lincoln Rd. and five going onto Adams.

The worst will be the two driveways on the Lincoln Rd. Due to the small size of the lots, drivers would have to either back into, or out of those driveways. If you’ve ever been on the Lincoln Rd, you’ll know that backing out onto it isn’t the smartest of ideas.  A quick survey using Google Maps found that out of 69 driveways on that stretch of Lincoln Rd (from the Experimental Farm to the Vanier Industrial Dr intersection), 63 had an area on the property for cars to turn around. Only 6, or less than 9% did not have a turn-around. 63 out of 69 (91%) is a higher ratio than most dentists give to a brand of toothpaste. Canada Post also recently removed the roadside mailboxes with a community box as they considered stopping along the Lincoln Rd to be too dangerous.

Adams St has a history of problems, at the other end of it, there is a park with insufficient parking, which means it gets plugged up with cars parked on the side of the road. Many of these are minivans and SUVs that are parked a few feet away from the curb (I hate to use stereotypes, but this one is actually true). There’s also a badly built traffic-calming circle in the middle that only slows traffic going away from the Lincoln Rd. The intersection at the Lincoln Rd end has a steep hill, blind curve and a tall hedge that blocks your view. There’s also a blind hill and a blind curve that you have to deal with while pulling out into the Lincoln Rd.  Adding five driveways would just complicate this.  If one of those five houses decides to throw a party, there won’t be enough driveway space to accommodate all the guests.  This means they’ll have to park on the street, which if they park on both sides will plug it up just like at the other end. Since there’s a hedge blocking your view as you pull in from the Lincoln Rd, you’ll get quite a surprise to find only enough room for a single lane and a bus coming the other way.

View Larger Map- You can’t see what’s behind that hedge

Hopefully the developers will change their plans and allow for shared driveways or a space to turn around. They may have to reduce the number of lots, but they’ll be able to sell the ones on the Lincoln Rd for more as not having to back out of the driveway will make them more desirable.

The real solution is to block off Adams St. and build another exit by expropriating some of the experimental farm and making Lonewater go down to Lincoln.  There, you won’t have the blind hill, curve or hedge. This plan probably wouldn’t be popular with the people who live on Lonewater though.

View Adams Fix in a larger map

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UPDATE: Mar 8 2010 -
According to this article, the zoning request was denied and a failure was prevented. It is assumed that the developer will try again with a different (and presumably better) site plan.

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For some reason, ADI Group insists that buses must stop directly in front of Fredericton’s new convention centre. Do people actually take the bus to a convention? I don’t really know the answer to that, however, as Queen St. is one way, the doors of any bus would open on the wrong side. What’s the proposed solution? Make Queen St go two way for a block.

Needless to say, I have a few problems with this:

• It isn’t just the case of painting a few lines on the road, the Queen/Regent and Queen/St. John intersections will have to be redesigned to allow for the wide right turns that a bus will make.
• You know that people won’t pay attention and will keep going past St. John and go the wrong way all the way until University.
• Would people really take a bus to get there? There is a perfectly good hotel across the street, and they are also planning to build a new one next door to the convention centre.
• If on the odd chance they do take the bus, does it really have to go right to the front door? Couldn’t it just pull up beside the Playhouse and have the conventioneers walk to the doors? It’s only 300 feet.

That’s not really that far to walk, even for a small city.  For an even shorter walk, the bus could stop across the street and they could add a crosswalk so people can easily get across the street.

The cost to modify Queen St. probably won’t be small, and could be better spent on other traffic projects. Hopefully they don’t go through with this.

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Saw this link today:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/07/09/cellphones-cars.html?ref=rss

At first glance, it would be another law to supposedly keep us safe from bad drivers. As stated many times before on this blog (see below), Fredericton drivers are terrible. I see no enforcement of existing laws other than speeding. Things like obstructing traffic, not knowing the rules of the road and crosswalk violations are overlooked. Now we’d just have another traffic law that won’t be enforced.

For reference:

• Driver’s Handbook: Fredericton Edition
• Facebook group
• The worst traffic engineering failure in Fredericton

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6. West end of Knowledge Park Drive

This is a big mess. At the end of it, where it intersects with Arnold Dr and Regent St, the traffic lights don’t have advance left turn signals, yet most of the traffic is turning traffic. The lane markings weren’t thought out very well, there are stripes where a left turn lane should be and there isn’t enough warning when the right hand lane turns into a right turn only lane. (thanks Orser!)

5. No median on Route 8 between PMB and Hanwell Rd.

Part of the point of having a divided highway is so that you don’t have the risk of oncoming traffic ending up in your lane. With nothing but a narrow grass strip, there isn’t anything to stop a drifting vehicle.

4. Removal of “scramble” intersections.

Back in the day, downtown Fredericton was the friendliest of places to stroll about. City planners loved pedestrians, and it showed. Being able to cross an intersection diagonally was thought of as being one of the most progressive things the city ever did. Sadly, the city’s love of the downtown has long come to an end. The removal of the scramble intersections, along with the desire to collect more revenue from parking makes the downtown a different place than it used to be. We are lucky that there is still a single scramble intersection left on Prospect St., in front of F.H.S.  Hopefully it will get heritage protection status.

3. Fast lane off-ramp on TCH west of Fredericton.

Now it’s MRDC’s turn to get on the list. Why do I have to turn off in the fast lane? So MRDC can make more profit by not building an overpass.

2. Fast lane on-ramp to TCH east of Fredericton.

Cheapness comes in pairs.

1. Oromocto’s TCH ramps.

Boy, did they ever get screwed on this one. They had two full intersections, but when MRDC came in, they tore up two perfectly good ramps to give them one and a half intersections. They also didn’t finish the intersection to Hwy 7 which makes it annoying if you are coming from Gagetown and want to go to Saint john.

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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.

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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