76 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

The upshot is that the Bay Street bridge is becoming a bad bottleneck and will only get worse as time goes by.

I believe the largest contributor to congestion is the light immediately at the foot of the bridge on the Vic West side. Planners suggest that extending the right-turn lane further onto the bridge, blocking left-turns and extending or reconfiguring the lights would solve a lot of problems.

[UrbanRail]

I worry about the potential for very expensive costs involved with anything to do with the Johnson street bridge.

Meanwhile, there will come a time very soon where something will have to done about the Bay Street bridge. With all the new construction on near Bay and Tyee, there is a lot more traffic on the bridge. People living on the west side are commuting to other areas in the CRD, not just to Downtown or Selkirk.

Meanwhile the new offices there are drawing people from everyone else to commute to the neighbourhood for work.

The upshot is that the Bay Street bridge is becoming a bad bottleneck and will only get worse as time goes by.

Bay needs to made two lanes each way from Government all the way through to Esquimalt Road- this includes twinning the Bay Street bridge. Come to think of it, Bay should likely be made an arterial all the way through to Royal Jubilee.

This sort of a changed Bay will be able to divert more traffic away from the Johnson St bridge and into the downtown core.

Building the

Any new design for the Bay St bridge should include future provisions for a tram link between Vic West and the Downtown core.
I dont think the residents along Bay St will want to see it become a 4 lane road with more traffic. What is needed is a new crosstown bus route along that road similar to the #26.

[Bernard]

Yeah, I sort of did get cut off,I am in waiting mode for a baby to be born.

My concern about the Bay St bridge really goes to the quickly arising problems at the corner of Tyee and Bay. That intersection is becoming a serious traffic problem. Short of adding more lanes into the intersection and good left turn bays, I can not see what a functional solution would be. Adding lanes would mean increasing the size of the bridge and that quickly demands four laning Bay on the eastern side.

A surprisingly large number of the people that live in Vic West work out on the Peninsula. Vic West seems to have attracted a lot of high tech workers. The flow of people in and out of Vic West is going on in both directions in the morning and afternoon.

The traffic over the Bay St Bridge is already slowing the bus down on that route.

As to trams, planning for something that is highly improbable makes little or no sense. Trams are wonderful and pretty ways to get around, but they are simply too expensive, slow and inflexible to ever become a reality. They also tend to create more traffic problems in their wake than is desired.

[G-Man]

What about extending the bridge over Tyee. That way Tyee would be just a North/South street and better intersection could be built at Alston and Bay.

Or have the bridge turn the corner so it only accepts traffic from the North side of Tyee while the South side would elbow into Bay.

Just some thoughts

[VicHockeyFan]

They wanna seize this guy's crappy car over toll bridge fraud?

 

http://www.vancitybu...escaping-tolls/

[todd]

They wanna seize this guy's crappy car over toll bridge fraud?

 

http://www.vancitybu...escaping-tolls/

 

The price on the scrap metal from the 1993 Geo Metro should just about cover the bridge toll

[nagel]

Tolls are stupid.

[Nparker]

Tolls are stupid.

On the contrary, I think user pay is quite fair.

[nagel]

On the contrary, I think user pay is quite fair.

Selective user pay is stupid, and that's what tolls are.  You don't pay a toll to drive down Mason.

 

It would be reasonable to pay based on km driven in BC, but that's not what's happening.

[Nparker]

Selective user pay is stupid, and that's what tolls are.  You don't pay a toll to drive down Mason.

 

It would be reasonable to pay based on km driven in BC, but that's not what's happening.

Then all public projects over a certain $ amount should be fully funded by the province.

[nagel]

Then all public projects over a certain $ amount should be fully funded by the province.

But it's more fun for them to cherry pick what they care about.

[Nparker]

But it's more fun for them to cherry pick what they care about.

It's more about partisanship dictating where the money goes. 

[nagel]

It's more about partisanship dictating where the money goes. 

Yup that's why we generally get no consideration in Victoria.  Libs aren't going to cough up money to perpetually orange ridings.

[DavidSchell]

Any new design for the Bay St bridge should include future provisions for a tram link between Vic West and the Downtown core.
 

 

Totally agree ... one only has to look at cities like Portland or Calgary to understand how efficient a well designed Light Rail system is for moving people from higher density districts to other parts of the city.

 

Now is the time to start planning not after everything is built up and when we are dealing with much more congestion and of course much higher costs.

[D.L.]

It would be reasonable to pay based on km driven in BC, but that's not what's happening.

 

That's what a bridge toll is. You want to drive 5 km across a large bridge, you pay the $5.

[nagel]

That's what a bridge toll is. You want to drive 5 km across a large bridge, you pay the $5.

[D.L.]

What is it you're trying to say Nagel?

[Bingo]

What is it you're trying to say Nagel?

 

Sounds like a toll of $1 per km or about 13 cents to cross the Johnson Street Bridge.

[nagel]

What is it you're trying to say Nagel?

I just thought it was ridiculous to say a toll over one bridge is the same as charging on a per km basis for all of BC.  I thought I was being clear, that it would be for all driving in BC...

[Mike K.]

We are already charged, in the form of gas and carbon taxes.