Joborule
Active Member
Is it anticipated that Centre St north of 16th Ave to 64 Ave will still have 4 lanes of traffic for vehicles? I thought it's intended for it to be 2 lanes the whole corridor, and the intersections for turning may be widen for turning lanes?A key problem with a political process that is so easily manipulated by vested, current stakeholders and individuals is that the real trade-offs - the ones that could have materially changed the cost or scope - couldn't really seem to be really considered. Consider two examples for which is cheaper. Both create an equally fast and effective LRT system:
Want a cheap, fast and effective transit for all 40km? Easy - get rid of all car access/expansion but keep the route at-grade and give it green light priority at every intersection. Make all funding conditional on zero expropriation of private land and 100% transit priority. Perhaps that's a bit harsh for a real-world example, but I think the principle of it is clear enough.
- LRT added to Centre Street at grade, removing car lanes. To appease some current stakeholders, land is expropriated to allow road to be widened again. This cost is added to the LRT project budget.
- LRT added to Centre Street at grade, removing car lanes. The roads department is free to add expropriation and expansion of Centre Street to a future projects list where it get ranked and sorted with all other roads investments. Spoiler alert: vehicle capacity would never be prioritized again on this route so the expansion project would never happen.
Centre Street should be converted as a transit corridor, and N-S traffic for North Central to downtown should be encouraged to use 14 Street, Edmonton Trail, and Deerfoot Trail instead.
I hope that's what their plan is. Centre Street being a 4 lane road is completely unnecessary with the LRT in place. In the Livingston/Carrington area, they're actually making Centre Street a transit corridor where the train and active mobility is the priority. The street would only have 1 lane in each direction, and for more through traffic, they'll be deferred to neighboring one way streets. So there is precedent in the planning department to do this.