Manitoba twins Trans-Canada Highway before Saskatchewan!

[vid]

What is a traffic calming measure?

Glimmer of hope for 4-laning of highway?
Tb News Source | October 26 2007

There is some new reason to hope the four-laning of the Trans Canada Highway through th Northwest may become a reality. While in Nipigon Thursday, the Prime Minster responded to a question about the issue from Shuniah Reeve Maria Harding and while Stephen Harper wouldn't comment on specific projects, he indicated his government is aware of the need to address the highway issue in the Northwest.

The funny thing is, A LOT of Canada's new reporters have gone through Thunder Bay Television/TBSource during their educations here, and THIS is the quality of media they're producing!! Anyway, they are working on four laning the 11/17 through parts of Shuniah, but that highway won't open until about 2020.

[feepa]

Originally Posted by vid

The "Harbour Expressway" in Thunder Bay has 6 sets of lights along it's 3.6km stretch.



Our highway by any other name would be a street.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressway
An expressway is a divided highway for high-speed traffic with at least partial control of access. However, as explained below, the degree of access allowed varies between countries and even between regions within the same country. In some jurisdictions, expressways are divided arterial roads with limits on the frequency of driveways and intersecting cross-streets. In other jurisdictions, access to expressways is limited only to grade-separated interchanges, making them the full equivalent of freeways.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by vid

What is a traffic calming measure?

A traffic calming measure are things such as speed bumps, speed tables, corner extensions, etc. Basically anything to force you to slow down and to make you think twice about short cutting through a residential area if the nearby main road is clogged. That's why I asked you about this when you said Thunder Bay has 106 sets of traffic lights.

[Mrj]

Originally Posted by Dalreg

Pretty sure Saskatchewan will finish first in the race. But if they need the bragging rights let them have it. We here in Saskatchewan know the TRUTH!

I think we have to give credit where it's due. When I drove Calgary to Winnipeg 10 years ago there were hundreds of kilometres in Saskatchewan on highway 1 that were 2 lane. Now there will be zero very shortly. Manitoba has only twinned about 50km west of Virden in that time. Sask has simply done a phenominal job of building that road. Now of course to be fair Manitoba had already twinned to the borders save for the 2 short stretches west of Virden and east of Falcon lake, but the MB gov't has generally been dragging its heels on these sorts of upgrades...

Nationally we need to take Sask's cue and chip away at the project by consistently putting money into upgrading the long two-lane stretches of the TCH in Ontario, and the expensive mountain terrain in BC. It's not just traffic count that's important - these are very long stretches of highway, and the sheer length makes them acts as a choke point. A long term project to build a few km of twinned road per year between the Manitoba border and Sudbury would take a while to see results, but once things start to snowball...

[vid]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

A traffic calming measure are things such as speed bumps, speed tables, corner extensions, etc. Basically anything to force you to slow down and to make you think twice about short cutting through a residential area if the nearby main road is clogged. That's why I asked you about this when you said Thunder Bay has 106 sets of traffic lights.

I look it up after making that post, and I found this site.

As for speed bumps, we only have those at the entrances of parking lots and in front of a couple new schools. We do not have any traffic circles. We do not have any speed tables. We don't really have chicanes (Unless you count the ones caused by having high voltage lines run down a street to be a chicane?). We don't have raised intersections. We don't have chokers. We do have closed lanes, but mostly around retail developments, to separate them from residential zones. Some streets have centre islands, but they aren't for narrowing. They usually occur near intersections to separate turning lanes from other traffic, and on hills when a street is split in half due to the slope. (ie this intersection, where the SE portion is about 30m lower than the NW portion)

Also, Thunder Bay has about 10 sets of lights that aren't at intersections, they're lights put in to allow pedestrians to cross. They're mostly located downtown and near highschools, and there is one near Intercity Mall. Along the street in front of the mall in that picture, there are three more lighted intersections, or four along a 500m stretch.

Obviously, this city doesn't know how to plan itself. As evident by buildings subdivisions and hospitals in swamps, airports beside mountains and shopping malls on arctic disjuncts.

Originally Posted by feepa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressway
An expressway is a divided highway for high-speed traffic with at least partial control of access. However, as explained below, the degree of access allowed varies between countries and even between regions within the same country. In some jurisdictions, expressways are divided arterial roads with limits on the frequency of driveways and intersecting cross-streets. In other jurisdictions, access to expressways is limited only to grade-separated interchanges, making them the full equivalent of freeways.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/incomplete
Adjective
incomplete
1. Not complete; not filled up; not finished; not having all its parts, or not having them all adjusted; imperfect; defective.

The city isn't sure what to re-name it yet. It was supposed to be an expressway, that's why it's right of way is so large and expands at intersections to accommodate interchanges. If you looked at the picture, you'd notice that.

[Nutterbug]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

It's embarrassing we have freakin' traffic lights on our highways. Harper needs to announce a major national highway initiative where within 10 years you could go from Vancouver to where ever the TCH ends in NL without encountering a traffic light, etc. In other words an actual real freeway. This would create a ton of jobs, improve safety immensely, help lower the cost of products, etc. We should be ashamed that we are the only industrialized nation that does not have a national highway plan.

They should then rename it Interprovincial 100.

The northern Yellowhead TCH route should become Interprovincial 104 or 106.
Manitoba Hwy 75 from Winnipeg to the US border should become Interprovincial 29.
The QEII and Hwy 4 in Alberta should become Interprovincial 15.
Hwy 99 in BC south of Vancouver should become Interprovincial 5.
The 401 in Ontario can become Interprovincial 94.

[J-MAN]

I think twinning the trans canada to saskatchewan is long over due... but thats about it,
northern ontario is far too coslty to twin for a country of 30 mill

the praries reallly dont need any freeways ether, if i was going to travel to ontario id take the interstate system

[Only The Lonely..]

Originally Posted by Corndogger

Let's look at some facts first and then decide if we should let the government off the hook. The Federal Gas Tax brings in about $5.5 billion/yr. of which very little goes to building or maintaining highways. My goal to turn the TCH into a freeway in 10 years would have about $60 billion (factoring in increased miles driven) in financing from this tax alone not to mention what should be put in from general revenues, vehicle registration fees, and whatever taxes they charge truckers. Also, don't forget how much could have and should have been over the last several decades.

It's obvious we could have coast to coast freeways in this country and it would not involve increasing taxes one bit. Sure some left-wing social program that more than likely has next to no support would go unfunded but big deal. A decent national highway system would benefit every citizen despite what people like Layton and Suzuki might say. The party that finally wakes up to this idea will have a guaranteed vote getter in every region of the country. We need to get going on this now for all of the reasons I mentioned before.

Amen..

How much money do we spend on lost causes like the gun registry or defending the arctic.

[Only The Lonely..]

Originally Posted by Canadian Mind

If we do that, make it at least three lanes. I don't wanna get rear-ended by some idiot doing 200 while I'm passing a semi at 150 myself.

I'd much rather simply see the speed limits for all prairie highways (Yellowhead, Deerfoot, and #1) be set at 130 or 140. so I can still pas the semi truck at 150 without as much fear of getting clobbered.

I think we could all agree that arbitrarily capping the limit at 100 or 110 from MB through AB is pretty silly. The drive between Calgary to Winnipeg could probably be executed with fewer than 5 movements from your wrist.

Nothing but straight and flat for 12 hours. Surely we could handle speed limits between 120 - 130.

[Only The Lonely..]

From Wikipedia.

Montana
From December 1995 through December 1998, Montana had only a "reasonable and prudent" speed limit on rural roads, meaning that speeds that were not reasonable and prudent were illegal and ticketable. From December 1998 through June 1999 (6 months), Montana had no rural highway speed limit whatsoever. However, a law prohibiting reckless driving, applicable to extreme speeds but less stringent than the previous "reasonable and prudent" standard, still applied.

Sounds good to me..

[vid]

Police here would hate that. The OPP loves hiding in the bush to ticket people when they speed by. Funny thing is, when they have to get back to town or somewhere for a call, they speed, and almost cause accidents.

[Corndogger]

Originally Posted by Only The Lonely..

Amen..

How much money do we spend on lost causes like the gun registry or defending the arctic.

If the Liberals had invested in defense instead of gutting it for over a decade we could have had at least one base in the far north and some nuclear icebreakers. We had better get our butts in gear up there because there are way too many valuable resources that we can't afford to lose. There could literally be trillions of dollars worth of resources up north and we might lose them because we are too cheap/stupid to spend billions to defend the place. We should at least partner with the US and let them defend the area in exchange for the rights to buy as much of the resources as they want. The last thing I want to see is the Russians and Chinese setting up bases in the north.

[Canadian Mind]

mmm, trillions.

seriously, if there is 10 trillion dollars worth of resources up there, that is 9.5 years worth of Canadian Budget. if we secure those, anything we do to invest in protecting the north would easily be payed off.

[newflyer]

Congrats to Manitoba and Saskatchewan for getting the job done!!

I drove from Calgary to Winnipeg last July and saw all the highway construction. I also noticed something different.. on some of the Saskatchewan portions, they seemed to be building two completely new sets of lanes beside the old and crumbling (soon to be closed?) stretch of highway. If this is the case it should make for great driving in both directions. This whole develpment could not come soon enough, as passing on busy single highways can be very hairy and dangerous. I saw a few close calls on my most rescent trip and it will be great to see fewer deaths on that horrible portion of the Trans Canada.

[vid]

"seriously, if there is 10 trillion dollars worth of resources up there, that is 9.5 years worth of Canadian Budget."

The ECONOMY is a trillion dollars. The budget is barely 250 billion.

[Canadian Mind]

well i fucked up there didn't I?

It's the equivalent of 9.5 years of our economy if it was just about what we got from the north, and nothing else. Imagine what it would do to our budget.

[rrskylar]

So just how much of the Trans-Canada highway in eastern SK is still left to be twinned

[Greco Roman]

Originally Posted by rrskylar

So just how much of the Trans-Canada highway in eastern SK is still left to be twinned

My gues would be around 50 km, just passed the Man/Sask border and around the Moosemin area, at least that is what it was when I drove there back in October of 2007.

[AuxTown]

I think it's great that Man and Sask are doing such a great job twinning the Trans-Canada, but where are all these people going?? Is there really enough traffic to justify the costs? I can just imagine all the cars zooming at 110km/hr piling up in Kenora when the good highway ends....

[vid]

They twin it so that people can get the fuck out of there at optimal speed.

In many places in Northern Ontario the speed limit is 90 or even as low as 70.