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Roads: Fantasy Proposals

What I would really like to see, is the city doing away with "P" parking and Taxi Parking zones on major arteries in the city, like Richmond and Adelaide, along with a few strategically put barriers between the road and side walk to prevent / redirect passenger pick up and drop offs to side streets. Improving transportation to and from the city makes little sense, if the majority of your time is spent in grid lock once you get there, because of outdated policies and a few peoples convince. On the other hand may be, I have the wrong idea and the city should do the exact opposite, and make the left most lane of the DVP, Gardener, 427 and 401 available for P parking, I am sure this would be a great revenue opportunity for someone ...
 
junctionist said:
Windsor's west side and university would be better off without the noise, blight and physical barriers created by the Ambassador Bridge. I feel that building an expressway to make it easier for cars to reach the Ambassador Bridge would be a bold step in the wrong direction to further ghettoize the Sandwichtown neighbourhood instead of revitalizing it. The Gordie Howe International Bridge will remove much of the traffic from Huron Church as is.

It's in Windsor's best interest to let the Ambassador Bridge's business slowly die off, so that the west end can be revitalized. If the owner of the Ambassador Bridge wants to take a gamble on an ill-advised new crossing, so be it. It will probably just accelerate the bridge company's decline. There's no need to waste money supporting the Ambassador Bridge with a freeway connection.
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I do absolutely agree. The Ambassador creates an interesting dynamic in the area and is certainly a net negative. However, I believe that allowing the construction of the second span will result in an improvement for the area. As someone who lives in Sandwich Town right now and crosses under the bridge every day to get to classes at the university, the area is just full of blight and needs some revitalization. It's been this way since at least the 90s. The city itself rarely likes to invest in the west end of Windsor, as it's generally a lot poorer than the other parts. Any major investments in Sandwich Town and the west end will unfortunately have to come from elsewhere. As part of the approval conditions for the new Ambassador Bridge span, they need to provide additional money to revitalize local infrastructure and create new park land in the area. The Gordie Howe Bridge also had the same conditions, and has some funds allocated to repairing and modernizing roads and infrastructure in Sandwich Town and some other sections of the west end. Ultimately, allowing infrastructural investment in the area would probably draw greater benefits, instead of just leaving it as-is.

Creating a highway connection through the neighbourhood would likely come along with the exact same conditions. The Herb Gray extension had to do a lot for the local area when it was implemented, and is now, along with Highway 3 running parallel and over the 401, one of the nicest road systems in the region. The truck traffic has been isolated to the 401 below grade, and the roads above grade are quiet and friendlier. The area was incredibly hostile prior to this, and now contains some of Windsor's best park and trail infrastructure over top of the buried sections of the highway. There is no reason that the same success cannot be emulated in Sandwich.

On the direct path of the potential highway, there are 14 small homes (7 of which are abandoned), an abandoned office building, a McDonald's, 2 small parking lots, an old bus terminal, a section of a plant, and a part of a railway terminal for a BP oil storage facility. The neighbourhood on the northern side has a buffer zone already between them and the railroad, and the neighbourhood on the southern side has a park bordering a majority of the corridor, as well as some rental properties. Many of the neighbourhoods stemming from the roads that cross the corridor are also full of abandoned and blighted properties. Ultimately, there is not much of significance that would have to be torn down, and there is a lot that would be improved. Any roads in the area that would need to be redone would be much better than what exists currently. Many of these roads haven't seen maintenance in decades, with many lacking curbs and road paint in some cases. College Avenue, the road running parallel to this corridor, was voted Southwestern Ontario's third worst road this year. Adding a highway right next to it would absolutely constitute a rebuild. Some sections could also be buried for restoring the parkland on top.

The largest rework would be the rebuild of the Huron Church/College intersection right in front of the bridge. This intersection is huge, as Huron Church is 9 lanes wide here. This is easily the least pedestrian friendly intersection in Windsor, and it is only this large because of the bridge traffic. If the bridge traffic were redirected directly westward from the future western border plaza (which is currently about to begin construction) to the potential highway, it would allow the city to cut down Huron Church to probably half the width, and open up currently underused corners of that intersection for redevelopment into something more pedestrian friendly, and allow the university to expand further westward.
 
^ Given that we're spending a few billion on a new bridge, with the Ambassador's owners planning on another span, is there enough crossing traffic for both? Honest question as my experience down there is limited. I thought the whole idea was to get traffic away from central Windsor. An added bonus was getting a better connection to I-75 which, as I recall, can be a tad dodgy.
 
The Gordie Howe will be more for redundancy than replacement. Just having one bridge across isn't enough anymore. It was determined a while ago that there needs to be a 4th link across the border in the area. The other options to get across (the tunnel and the truck ferry) are not adequate enough to handle overflow traffic from the Ambassador if the bridge is shut down due to an accident, or if the bridge is congested. The Gordie Howe is expected to become the new main crossing purely due to convenience, but the Ambassador will still have an important role as a secondary option.

It's true that traffic crossing the border has been declining since 2000, but these new bridges are designed to have incredibly long lifespans of around 125 years, so it's better to ensure adequacy further into the future, rather than ending up with a repeat of the current Ambassador Bridge situation. Even the Gordie Howe is expected to reach capacity sooner rather than later, as the bridge is being built with the capability of expanding from 6 to 8 lanes.
 
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MisterF said:
Better yet, just build the Bradford bypass.
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Well, they're still stretching subdivisions northward here, and they're going to build a school that backs onto where the bypass is going to go, I'm a little more pessimistic about whether it will be seriously considered again...
 
The land is still reserved by MTO and York / Simcoe Regions have it in their OPs.. I think it'll come back.

The 404 extension to Beaverton is probably more or less dead though. *maybe* you will see an extension to 48 near Sutton at some far distant point in the future.
 
north-of-anything said:
I always thought so as well, so I chose what I thought was the worst area for that and tried my best.

View attachment 196983

This one preserves more of the existing grid. The Jane-Weston intersection is altered slightly to make SB Jane - WB Weston turns less awkward, and allowed Buttonwood Avenue to finally connect to Weston Road.
Bartonville West now intersects with Victoria Boulevard, while Bartonville East simply connects with Weston and Ray at 90 degree angles. Sedan Avenue is extended from Nickle to Craydon, with a few more cross-streets added from Cobalt to Nickle, and from Craydon to Victoria, while Nickle and Rutherford lose access to Weston Road.


View attachment 196984

This proposal involves a complete redevelopment between Cobalt, Jane, Weston, Ray, and the GO/CP corridor. Cobalt is unchanged, bar an extension along the rail line that ends just shy of Ray Avenue. Nickle Street now bisects the block between Cobalt in the northwest and Ray to the east. The SW-NE roads, starting at the closest to the Jane-Weston intersection, are Mahoney Avenue, Craydon Avenue (across from Ernest Dockray), Rutherford Avenue, Bartonville Avenue East (across from Bartonville West), and Victoria Boulevard. I envision a design like this to lead to a New Regent Park-style mid-to-highrise development, so it would most likely rrely on the implementation of a Jane or EgWest rapid transit line.
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Jumping on this. Am wondering what could be done with the Albion-Walsh/Wilson-Weston-401 area. The ramp from Eastbound Albion to Southbound Weston creates a lot of basket weaving at the 401 ramps. Could Albion-Walsh-Wilson be lowered to create an at grade intersection with Weston? Maybe by shifting the roadway slightly south and downgrading the existing roadway to local roads (to allow access to existing properties) to accomplish this?
 
Birchmount Park.png


This is an idea I've had in mind since hearing about the Six Points reconstruction project - there are an unsettling number of this kind of urban interchange east of Yonge (that being, more than 0). So I redesigned this intersection to have a roundabout, with the Scarborough War Memorial located in the middle of the roundabout - it could be anywhere, but I think here it looks nicer, and any location would be more pedestrian friendly than where it is now. Part of the freed-up land would be used as a yard for rapid transit along Kingston Road. Kennedy Road would be extended at a sharp angle to terminate at Kingston Road, allowing two-way access between Kingston and the Highview Avenue neighbourhood. The land between the carhouse/LRT yard and Kennedy Road, if I did not underestimate the amount of space required, could be developed or left as a park.
 
How many lanes would that roundabout be?
 
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