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Steeles RT

afransen said:
Do we even need fancy paint? Some conventional striping and HOV decals/signs should do the job. I'm not sure you get meaningful better compliance with fancy red paint.
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I mean this as a former Bramptonian who had to drive in Brampton: people in the city are *terrible* drivers; most people in the city deserve those aggressively high insurrance rates.

Unless you really, really point it out, they're all going to drive in the BRT lanes because they are idiots.
 
DKsan said:
I mean this as a former Bramptonian who had to drive in Brampton: people in the city are *terrible* drivers; most people in the city deserve those aggressively high insurrance rates.

Unless you really, really point it out, they're all going to drive in the BRT lanes because they are idiots.
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I don't think red paint will make that much of a difference.
 
afransen said:
I don't think red paint will make that much of a difference.
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the cost of the deluxe thermoplastic red paint from Sheridan College to Bramalea GO is less than they spent on the current batch of Main Street LRT extension studies. There is no such thing as too idiot proof for Brampton drivers. Red paint makes it clearer, and make sure cops know they are free to drive in the lanes. Cops regularly driving in the bus lanes would be effective as a deterrent.
 
I live near Kenendy Road in Scarborough, I watched the progress of the bus lanes on Kennedy/Midland. It took about a month for the bus lane to turn into a "red" bus lane.

Lemme tell you the red, absolutely made a difference. Compliance of drivers (not driving in the bus lane) went from about 40-50% (no colour, just signs and markings) to about 95% of drivers driving in the correct lane as of now, with the red paint.

Drivers are sticking to the single main lane, and while it is inconvenient to not have that second lane, you notice immediately, that drivers who drive in the red lanes to bypass traffic look like a**holes (not saying they are) but they really stick out!

Also, there's been enforcement! Drivers are getting pulled over in the lanes by the cops. Wouldn't be surprised if that's just an initial blitz and enforcement dies down after a few months, but hey. the red paint works.
 
I'd be interested to see how well it works over the medium term, with typical levels of enforcement. I am skeptical. I see people weaving in and out of HOV lanes all the time on the highway.
 
afransen said:
I'd be interested to see how well it works over the medium term, with typical levels of enforcement. I am skeptical. I see people weaving in and out of HOV lanes all the time on the highway.
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I do have to wonder about how much of the nonsense in the HOV lanes comes from some combination of two lane express lanes getting blocked by trucks and the inability to pass in the single lane HOV that really functions as something of a super express...

In other words I'm not totally convinced that the issue is drivers not respecting them so much as their design having some genuine problems.

I really am inclined to think that if it's a general traffic HOV lane (as opposed to a true bus lane) that maybe it shouldn't be there with less than two lanes... and much more strongly suspect that a collector express system shouldn't go in with less than three lanes in each given how messy two lane express lanes get.

Which taken together would basically leave the following reasonable configurations*:
  • 2-3 lanes conventional dual carriageway
  • 3-6 lanes + 2 lanes HOV
  • 3 lanes local + 3 lanes express
  • 3 lanes local + 3 lanes express + 2 lanes HOV
Obviously this formula would allow for a couple more lanes in places, but even traffic engineers seem to be starting to understand that there are very much diminishing returns in traffic operations (never mind induced demand and other bigger picture issues with road widening) as a single bit of road gains additional general traffic lanes... I guess the real limit is probably six, which would leave the absolute maximum reasonable functional freeway a 6 local + 6 express + 2-3 HOV for 14-15 lanes per direction in 16 or 17 lanes of total width...

tl;dr: I think the HOV lane design is a bit of a mess, and that we should look at having fewer of them, but implementing with two lanes rather than one.

*whether ever going beyond two lanes in the HOV (especially if it's actually HOT) is reasonable is something I will leave to the engineers, but if I had to guess the answer would be along the lines of "rarely, but more often where you have HOV without a full express collector, and adding a true bus lane to the HOV will make sense more often".

PS: ugh, playing around with this gave me this awful feeling of understanding how it's possible to get into the headspace of traffic engineers. There's a lot of genuinely interesting tinkering to be had with road design, big picture be damned.
 
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Bureaucromancer said:
*whether ever going beyond two lanes in the HOV (especially if it's actually HOT) is reasonable is something I will leave to the engineers, but if I had to guess the answer would be along the lines of "rarely, but more often where you have HOV without a full express collector, and adding a true bus lane to the HOV will make sense more often".

PS: ugh, playing around with this gave me this awful feeling of understanding how it's possible to get into the headspace of traffic engineers. There's a lot of genuinely interesting tinkering to be had with road design, big picture be damned.
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I personally think HOV lanes are utterly pointless. Make them bus-only lanes? Absolutely. If we are too stupid to toll highways sufficiently that GO buses are a viable part of the regional transit network (like they are on the 407), then provide dedicated bus lanes on major highways.
 
afransen said:
I personally think HOV lanes are utterly pointless. Make them bus-only lanes? Absolutely. If we are too stupid to toll highways sufficiently that GO buses are a viable part of the regional transit network (like they are on the 407), then provide dedicated bus lanes on major highways.
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the highways are all so clogged I can’t imagine giving a whole lane away to just busses when we know they will remain very infrequent. Highways are very limited in how effectively transit can use them unless they are express services but we have a go train system for that.
 
sixrings said:
the highways are all so clogged I can’t imagine giving a whole lane away to just busses when we know they will remain very infrequent. Highways are very limited in how effectively transit can use them unless they are express services but we have a go train system for that.
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It's kind of a chicken or the egg problem, no? GO buses would become quite a lot more popular if they were actually a fast way to move around the region, particularly at peak.

A vehicle lane can move about 1800 cars (people) per hour. That's equivalent to 22 GO double deckers per hour (81 passenger). The lane wouldn't just be for GO, but also municipal transit, or private buses. If we're really worried about losing some lane capacity, it could be dynamically tolled as a super premium HOT lane. $5/km anyone?
 
It doesn't strike we could attract enough people to regional GO busses to make it worthwhile losing the highway capacity. Then there's also the optics: empty HOV lanes with occasional buses which turns people off transit improvements. I'd rather we look at regional rail possibilities in highway ROWs.
 
afransen said:
It's kind of a chicken or the egg problem, no? GO buses would become quite a lot more popular if they were actually a fast way to move around the region, particularly at peak.

A vehicle lane can move about 1800 cars (people) per hour. That's equivalent to 22 GO double deckers per hour (81 passenger). The lane wouldn't just be for GO, but also municipal transit, or private buses. If we're really worried about losing some lane capacity, it could be dynamically tolled as a super premium HOT lane. $5/km anyone?
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There is no where near the traffic that travels between region to region which is easily accessible by transit which is why drivers drive. But really how many people live directly at square one who need to have an express lane dedicated to them to get them to Scarborough town centre or Vaughan centre more quickly. If the bus starts to randomly get off at ramps along the way in order to pick up people or drop people off that kills the speed of the service. I just don’t think some trips will ever be able to be effectively covered by transit.

You want to make the far left lane a toll lane. Sure. I can get on board with that. Although that’s going to open another can of worms. No traffic for the rich.
 
Undead said:
It doesn't strike we could attract enough people to regional GO busses to make it worthwhile losing the highway capacity. Then there's also the optics: empty HOV lanes with occasional buses which turns people off transit improvements. I'd rather we look at regional rail possibilities in highway ROWs.
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One would cost tens of billions, the other would cost some millions for paint and signs.
 
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