Highway 107 Upgrades (Burnside Expressway) | U/C

[someone123]

Originally Posted by fatscat

Like I said, I am not anti highway expansion, but I'm trying to understand the rationale for it. It does feel like Bridgewater may continue to grow at an accelerated rate but it's still .. very small (~9,000 residents?)

Lunenburg County has about 50,000 people who are mostly along that 50 km or so stretch of highway leading to Bridgewater (and the ones who don't live right by the highway will rely on it for all sorts of reasons). I'm not sure what the ultimate budget ended up being but it looks like it was more in the $100M range than $1B+. It doesn't really look unreasonable to me. A twinned loop of Western NS would be harder to justify.

I don't think it's an either-or with these projects. The province needs a decent highway network as well as transit. In parts of the province the transit will run on the highways. The main routes in NS are the route to Sydney and the 1 hour or so around metro Halifax. This works out to something like 800 km of primary highways.

I could see many smaller towns in NS becoming attractive and growing. Bridgewater is one of them. It is a nice area for people who want to live in a small town that will have major services within a 1 hour drive.

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I really doubt that is true in any meaningful sense. Can you provide an example? There are certainly many routes I can think of with even 10X the traffic that are not twinned.

There is no money tree so it's all choices.

10 times the traffic? I very much doubt it! lol

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by someone123

Lunenburg County has about 50,000 people who are mostly along that 50 km or so stretch of highway leading to Bridgewater (and the ones who don't live right by the highway will rely on it for all sorts of reasons). I'm not sure what the ultimate budget ended up being but it looks like it was more in the $100M range than $1B+. It doesn't really look unreasonable to me. A twinned loop of Western NS would be harder to justify.

I don't think it's an either-or with these projects. The province needs a decent highway network as well as transit. In parts of the province the transit will run on the highways. The main routes in NS are the route to Sydney and the 1 hour or so around metro Halifax. This works out to something like 800 km of primary highways.

I could see many smaller towns in NS becoming attractive and growing. Bridgewater is one of them. It is a nice area for people who want to live in a small town that will have major services within a 1 hour drive.

Very true. I think having a twinned highway to Sydney and having Highway 103 twinned to Bridgewater and Highway 101 to Coldbrook would make a lot of since. No need to have go all the way around to Yarmouth.

[Dartguard]

Originally Posted by Haliguy

Very true. I think having a twinned highway to Sydney and having Highway 103 twinned to Bridgewater and Highway 101 to Coldbrook would make a lot of since. No need to have go all the way around to Yarmouth.

I really can't see a twinned 104 through Cape Breton as there are too many land and treaty right restrictions to deal with without literally building a brand new Twin highway through some of the highlands. Not going to happen. I agree though that the 101 to Coldbrook is low hanging fruit . All the parties involved just have to deal with the Windsor causeway impasse.

[Dengler Avenue]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

I really can't see a twinned 104 through Cape Breton as there are too many land and treaty right restrictions to deal with without literally building a brand new Twin highway through some of the highlands. Not going to happen. I agree though that the 101 to Coldbrook is low hanging fruit . All the parties involved just have to deal with the Windsor causeway impasse.

Actually there’s a plan that shows the routing of 104 from current end to Sydney. The bigger issue is building a bridge over Canso Straight.

Anyway anything new on the 107?

[Summerville]

Originally Posted by Haliguy

10 times the traffic? I very much doubt it! lol

I recall that a study was done when the McNeil government was considering tolls for some of the highway.

Traffic volumes at the time supported twinning to Hubbards and volumes were expected to grown up to exit 7 shortly afterwards with the twinning to exit 6 at Hubbards.

That was several years years ago. From my own experience, volumes going to Bridgewater have definitely increased.

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by Dartguard

I really can't see a twinned 104 through Cape Breton as there are too many land and treaty right restrictions to deal with without literally building a brand new Twin highway through some of the highlands. Not going to happen. I agree though that the 101 to Coldbrook is low hanging fruit . All the parties involved just have to deal with the Windsor causeway impasse.

I think you may be thinking of the Highway 105. A twinned highway would go along the the other side of the lake through St. Peters.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by Haliguy

10 times the traffic? I very much doubt it! lol

First example I can think of near me. Highway 17 past it's twin point near Ottawa is 17000 ADT. The west of exit 5 section is 4000. I guess most of that would go at least until exit 7 but certainly not all. So that is 5X and literally the first example I could think of. Regardless 4000 or 8000 that might use following the sprawl that it will induce doesn't require a full expressway.

107 much more likely to be used and equally likely to induce sprawl that eventually will end up at the same break points as it seems unlikely there will be any increase in capacity in more central areas.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by fatscat

What if a politician spent a fraction of that $$ to get 70 inner-city residents commuting on their bikes? Something tells me there'd be a lot more attitude pointed towards that vs. this

Are these really even competing entities, though?

The highway network is federally and provincially funded and is used for transportation of residents and goods for both locals and passers-through. For the Bridgewater example, the latest data I could find was from 2021, and AADT (Annual Average Daily Traffic - daily traffic averaged over one year) was in the range of 5300 between exits 11 and 12 (Blockhouse to Bridgewater). Between exits 12 and 13 (surrounding Bridgewater), AADT jumps to the 10,000 vehicles per day range. (Source)

Bicycle networks are funded by the city and are used by a small number of very specific local residents. I couldn't find a good source for Halifax cycling data, and I'm not sure how you would compare bicycle traffic flow over numerous small routes to one large transportation artery, but I suspect the numbers would be in the range of the hundreds per day, if you could add up all the data for the entire city (which would still be exponentially smaller than the number of other vehicles circulating throughout the city). I don't know if cycling data exists for commuting in the Bridgewater area, but I suspect the numbers would be miniscule.

So IMHO, comparison of the two doesn't really make much sense, but I can't see any reason why both modes of transportation can't coexist. They're not really competing with one another as they serve different purposes, and aren't even funded from the same budget.

[LikesBikes]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Nonsense.

With logic like that, you could say that Halifax's housing situation is better than that if other cities, therefore no action is required on the housing front.

I realize it's hard to put our biases aside in discussions like this, however.

It's nonsense to criticize government spending when it's in the billions of dollars? Also I'd like a figure for how much it'll cost in maintenance in the years to come.

Think of all the other ways government can be spending all of this money on things more important, like housing, transit, or health care. But no, the commute times of people who live in the boonies and want to go to Halifax is totally worth the astronomical costs and should never be questioned.

Plus, we know this road will just be backlogged in the future and lead to more cars in Halifax and add to congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, and making the a more unpleasant place to be.

I realize it's hard to put our biases aside in discussions like this, however.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by LikesBikes

It's nonsense to criticize government spending when it's in the billions of dollars? Also I'd like a figure for how much it'll cost in maintenance in the years to come.

Think of all the other ways government can be spending all of this money on things more important, like housing, transit, or health care. But no, the commute times of people who live in the boonies and want to go to Halifax is totally worth the astronomical costs and should never be questioned.

Plus, we know this road will just be backlogged in the future and lead to more cars in Halifax and add to congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, and making the a more unpleasant place to be.

I realize it's hard to put our biases aside in discussions like this, however.

I don't know where I'd even start with this one, but I know it will just lead to the usual rabbithole, so I'm not going to bite.

Have a nice day.

[fatscat]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Are these really even competing entities, though?

The highway network is federally and provincially funded and is used for transportation of residents and goods for both locals and passers-through. For the Bridgewater example, the latest data I could find was from 2021, and AADT (Annual Average Daily Traffic - daily traffic averaged over one year) was in the range of 5300 between exits 11 and 12 (Blockhouse to Bridgewater). Between exits 12 and 13 (surrounding Bridgewater), AADT jumps to the 10,000 vehicles per day range. (Source)

Bicycle networks are funded by the city and are used by a small number of very specific local residents. I couldn't find a good source for Halifax cycling data, and I'm not sure how you would compare bicycle traffic flow over numerous small routes to one large transportation artery, but I suspect the numbers would be in the range of the hundreds per day, if you could add up all the data for the entire city (which would still be exponentially smaller than the number of other vehicles circulating throughout the city). I don't know if cycling data exists for commuting in the Bridgewater area, but I suspect the numbers would be miniscule.

So IMHO, comparison of the two doesn't really make much sense, but I can't see any reason why both modes of transportation can't coexist. They're not really competing with one another as they serve different purposes, and aren't even funded from the same budget.

Thank you for this. It's a well reasoned response and I appreciate you taking the time to type it out (and cite some data in the process)

The point of funding is a good one in that, it is funded by an already strained municipal government so what goes to active transport is the crumbs left over. In return, we get bread crumbs for infrastructure. I'd be interested to see some funding from provincial levels towards active infrastructure (not sure if this is a thing)

Regarding cycling data. There's a Twitter account which tracks what it can (open data): https://twitter.com/BikeHfxStats

On a sunny day in August this year, we're seeing ~1,500 trips daily. This is on an area with a radius of about 6km, and it does not account for various paths + bike lanes which do not have [activated] counters (COLT, Bayers Mup, Barrington Greenway, etc). The account publishes weekly/monthly/yearly summaries too.

And this isn't necessarily for a group of "very specific local residents", but rather a range of commuters starting from the peninsula/Dartmouth to coming from the inner burbs like Clayton Park and Fairview.

So, pretty good numbers given the abysmal infrastructure! This is why I wonder what things would look like if we just spent .. a tiny bit more (a drop in comparison to highway spend!). And of course, the tradeoff here is more cars off the road.

Ultimately, I agree with you both can co-exist and they are operating in entirely different worlds when it comes to needs/planning/budget/leadership. Both "sides" have their biases and how funding should be spent, so it's not something I think is useful to debate, but rather, simply listen and understand different perspectives.

Anyway, thank you for the thoughtful reply!

[Ozabald]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

I really doubt that is true in any meaningful sense. Can you provide an example? There are certainly many routes I can think of with even 10X the traffic that are not twinned.

There is no money tree so it's all choices.

Here's an example that immediately jumps out: NB-1 from St. Stephen to Saint John.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by LikesBikes

It's nonsense to criticize government spending when it's in the billions of dollars? Also I'd like a figure for how much it'll cost in maintenance in the years to come.

For the billions of dollars statement to be meaningful it has to be put into context though, both what project(s) you are talking about and the time frame. This article gives some good information: https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/twinned-...mmer-1.6396642

The cost was $120M for the 20 km Tantallon to Ingramport portion and the completion date given for the Chester portion is 2030.

[Patrick Matthews]

Originally Posted by Ozabald

Here's an example that immediately jumps out: NB-1 from St. Stephen to Saint John.

Wasnt that twinned 5+ years ago now?

[Patrick Matthews]

Originally Posted by josh_cat_eyes

I once stumbled upon a NS DOT document showing a beaver bank bypass. It was from the 90’s, probably around the same time they thought of the 113. Always thought it was interesting that the province would be looking to build that road since it’s more of a local road. I do think it would be cool if they connected that road to Wellington though. As it stands your looking at a 20-30 minute drive from Wellington to Beaver Bank. As the crow flies, they are much closer than that.

Bringing this back to 107 discussion:

It seems the plans far predate the 1990s - the original highway plans I saw are for more logical than what we have/ will have.

There was originally a planned ring (think large scale circ through Dartmouth).
It was to go from the 103 through hammonds plains and connect to the Margeson Drive exit on the 101 (being 4 lanes instead of 2 there so far). it would then go through Middle Sackville, north beaverbank and connect through the 2 (and fall river/wellington area) and the Aerotech exit at 102. Longer term, that ring would travel from the 102 east, presumably to the 107 somewhere. It would also have long term gone south from the 103, presumably Prospect/Sambro area but that part of it is fuzzy to me.

The 107 connection being built now was supposed to be routed over the 102 (not terminate at it) and between Sackville into North Beaverbank (ish). That area was to have great highway access to justify all the development over the last 30 years, instead they are stuck with horrific infrastructure and bad options. Id be ticked if I bought there with any knowledge of the old highway plans.

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by Patrick Matthews

Wasnt that twinned 5+ years ago now?

I think around 10 years ago. I doubt there are has been a large increase in traffic volumes either.

[Haliguy]

Originally Posted by LikesBikes

It's nonsense to criticize government spending when it's in the billions of dollars? Also I'd like a figure for how much it'll cost in maintenance in the years to come.

Think of all the other ways government can be spending all of this money on things more important, like housing, transit, or health care. But no, the commute times of people who live in the boonies and want to go to Halifax is totally worth the astronomical costs and should never be questioned.

Plus, we know this road will just be backlogged in the future and lead to more cars in Halifax and add to congestion, air pollution, noise pollution, and making the a more unpleasant place to be.

I realize it's hard to put our biases aside in discussions like this, however.

So you don't believe in safe highways? Like it or not cars is how people', goods, and services move around rural Nova Scotia. I don't think there is going to be a train down the South Shore anytime soon. So, it is worth the costs for safety, and and is good for the economy.

[IanWatson]

I travel a lot for work and do a lot of work with the communities served by the 100-series highways. I know they are much-appreciated by people, myself included. I also see the opposite, which is a concern from people in these communities that having twinned highways brings previously-small communities into the "urban sphere" and makes it viable for urbanites to buy up cheaper rural properties and commute.

There is no doubt that the twinnings have made these drives safer and more comfortable. I do, however, also agree that the twinning was probably more politics and economic boosterism than it was true "need". In other words, I imagine if you took a purely actuarial view of the matter, a couple hundred million dollars spent on hospital infrastructure would probably save a lot more lives than twinning.

Of course, the world doesn't work that way, and maybe that's not a bad thing. People in other areas of Nova Scotia deserve to be taken care of too. And at the time these projects were floated, the NS economy wasn't doing as well and I suspect throwing money at roads was seen as a time-honoured method of quickly stoking the economic fires. I do have some concerns though about what happens when these projects end - Dexter Construction isn't going to be keen to sit idly by, so do we need to create more projects to sustain the road-building beast?

I think what's most disappointing to me in all of this is not that money was spent on transportation infrastructure to rural communities, but that highway twinning is the default. With a few months of "engagement" and the stroke of a pen we can have a couple hundred million dollars for highways, but if it was for an inter-city rail system we'd be looking at decades of hand-wringing and studies to prove the economic worth. I'm very hopeful that the JRTA project changes this paradigm a little bit.

Finally, I very much caution against making this a conversation about cars versus bikes. As Mark says, these are different pots of money. And they are also different needs and goals. We need good bike infrastructure AND we need good transportation options to rural communities; one doesn't replace the other. We can't build a bunch of bike lanes on the Peninsula and think that fulfills our infrastructure obligations to other communities.

[Patrick Matthews]

Originally Posted by Haliguy

So you don't believe in safe highways? Like it or not cars is how people', goods, and services move around rural Nova Scotia. I don't think there is going to be a train down the South Shore anytime soon. So, it is worth the costs for safety, and and is good for the economy.

I was too young to know the WHY the regional trains were tossed near 1992 (ish, +/-) but seeing it was to save a cumulative $200mil when one of the biggest reasons we want divided highways is due to many trucks now being on these roads... 200m<<<<<<<<<<< $ required to twin