As of this morning, construction has begun on the redirection of Queen St. The City posted their plans online so they can be reviewed by people like me. The idea is to make access in and out of the new parking garage easier. Unfortunately, this has some drawbacks and will cause complications in other situations.

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.

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Is it open yet?
No.

When will it open?
Rumored to be May 2011.

Are they hiring?
Not yet, but they will probably start hiring about 2 months before opening.

Where will it be?
Top of Regent St. on the UNB Woodlot.

UNB woodlot? Isn’t that environmentally sensitive wetland?
No. Other parts of the woodlot are, but not the area where the Costco is going.

Can NIMBY groups still block the construction of it?
No, it’s fully approved and the building permits have been issued

What’s the best way to get there?
You should avoid the Regent/Prospect intersection if possible. If you live in the city, you won’t have much choice, but if you come from away, you can easily avoid it.

From Woodstock and further places North-West, don’t turn off at the Fredericton exit (Hwy 8), keep going on TCH#2 towards Moncton, and take exit 285 (Hwy 101). At the end of the ramp, turn left, drive through the woods and Costco will be on your right.
From Oromocto and further places South-East, don’t turn off at the Fredericton exit (Hwy 7), keep going on TCH#2 towards Edmundston and take exit 285B (Hwy 101N). At the end of the ramp, turn right, drive through the woods and Costco will be on your right.

Will it kill other businesses in Fredericton?
Probably not. Downtown businesses won’t be affected as they won’t be directly competing with it. Some stores in the malls may have some difficulty if they can’t compete on price. However, the Costco will bring in more people from farther outside the city who will presumably go to other stores as well.

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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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The City of Fredericton just spent $150,000 on a traffic study.  Was it money well spent? It’s hard to say, there are definitely several things wrong with it:

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.

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As of June 26, 2010, the SMT/Acadian/Acadien bus terminal is located at 150 Woodside Lane, which is here:

View Larger Map and get directions

Unfortunately, there isn’t much to do around there if you’re stuck waiting for another bus. I doubt there’s even wi-fi available. You are within walking distance to a Tim Hortons and some car dealerships. Maybe you could take a test-drive while you wait?

Getting there by public transit is kind of a pain as the service isn’t very frequent. During morning and afternoon rush hours, there’s one every half hour, other than that, you only have one bus every two hours. On Saturdays, it’s every hour in the rush hour and there’s no service on Sundays. Here’s the bus schedule, look for Woodside/Serenity. You’re much better off just taking a cab or finding a friend with a car to drop you off.

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Technically, it only means they’ll take the cash instead of the land for public purposes (see here).  This shows that many of Fredericton’s PAC members believe that two dumbs don’t make a smart.

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.

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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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Both Fredericton and Saint John have a similar problem: a rickety old bridge that needs repair. They also both have a walking trail underneath and a liability of concrete falling off the bridge and onto the trail users below. Saint John simply decided to close the trail, which angered a lot of people.  Fredericton on the other hand built this:

A scaffolding cage similar to the kind that you see on sidewalks when they are working on the facades of buildings.  That should hold up to pretty much anything short of the bridge landing on it.

* Keen eyes will also see that the bridge’s catwalk is being held together with old tourism signs featuring the Keddy’s (a defunct local hotel/motel chain) logo.

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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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