Just a reminder that I’m not claiming to be a traffic engineer, nor am I blaming the employees of the city as they are only doing what they’ve been told. I also can’t draw very well.

The first issue is where it goes from 2-way to 1 way. Unlike Queen St. at Northumberland, there will be no concrete barrier or curb to stop traffic from continuing the wrong way. There will just be signs. We all know that with today’s distracted drivers, we’ll get a few of them heading up the wrong way.

The other big issue relates to the new left-turn lane on Regent St. for traffic heading South. To allow for this, the right-turn lane will be now shared with the only straight-ahead lane. The problem is that the straight-ahead traffic will be blocked by right-turning traffic waiting for pedestrians. This will cause drivers to swerve into the left-turn lane in order to go around the cars waiting to turn right and will probably cause accidents. During the morning rush-hour, there are quite a few pedestrians at that crosswalk. The new parking garage will probably increase the number of them.

Another problem are the double-parked delivery trucks on Queen St. that service the restaurants on that block. Will they block the new lane, or will the drivers have to cross a lane of traffic to deliver their goods?

The biggest problem is that all of this new traffic is purely speculation. They are going ahead and spending $1.2 million without any hard data to support it. I’m not going to be closed minded to making these changes in the future, as long as there is sufficient data to show they are warranted.

The biggest problem is that most of the calculations were done using simulators only. The report notes: “the simulation model was not calibrated to existing conditions to replicate local driver behaviour” (page 29).  Many of the intersections that were studied actually function much worse because of driver behaviour. Blocking intersections and stopping at merge lanes is probably one of the greatest causes of congestion in Fredericton.  While much of this could be cured with enforcement and education, it still should be factored into the planning process.

To keep this blog post short, I’ll only go over a few specific examples:

Beaverbrook Street/Forest Hill Road/Lincoln Road/Waterloo Row: They ran it through the simulator and decided to ignore it without giving any reason. If you ask any citizen as to which intersection they hate the most, you’ll get this one at the top of the list.  This would be a prime location for a traffic circle, yet that option wasn’t even explored.  The confusing layout wasn’t even examined either.  It also isn’t really a single intersection, it’s five intersections really close together; perhaps that skewed some of the statistics. (Page 29)

At Regent and Prospect, they completely ignored the existing proposal of a College Hill to Vanier Highway overpass.  They also ignored the fact that since you can’t turn left from Regent onto Vanier, you have to do a significant amount of driving around, which causes higher traffic on other streets.  In the end, they will spend $7.5 million just to get some double-left turn lanes, which doesn’t seem to have a lot of value. (page 78)

There is a lack of supporting data for the Queen St. redirection in front of the convention centre.  ”The impact” of that development is mentioned several times in the report, but not shown.  This omission still doesn’t answer the question of whether it is really necessary to spend $1.2 million to widen Queen St. (page 70)

In conclusion, they are planning to spend millions using decisions based on questionable simulator data.  Perhaps it would be a wise investment to spend some more money and do a more thorough analysis before spending millions on road improvements that may not work out.

A lot of people aren’t happy. Mostly because they feel that there was absolutely no opportunity for public input in this matter.  Even the city councilors who sit on the Planning Advisory Committee see a large gap in the process.

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.

Click to make bigger

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

Red areas are to be modified

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.

I’d also like to note this article which outlines the need for high density urban environments. Hopefully they took that into consideration when coming up with this plan. We’ll never know as they don’t have any details available on-line.

Last week, I posted an article about how the City of Fredericton doesn’t post a lot of information on its website. Imagine my surprise when I Googled something completely unrelated and find this:

http://www.fredericton.ca/en/transportation/resources/2009_ConstructionMap.pdf

It’s exactly what’s needed, but it isn’t linked from anywhere on the main www.fredericton.ca site. The file properties show that it was created on Sept 9th, which was well before my blog post criticizing them for not having it.

It’s really sad that they have this information compiled and ready to go, but they are unwilling to release it. It’s time to tear down the wall between City Hall and the people. It’s 2009, there is no excuse for this.

The solution is actually quite simple, just remove some of the parking spaces, add some concrete benches and the odd table. Hose off the drunks in the morning and it’ll be ready by lunch.

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