[All] Hwy 7

Tue Apr 8 11:15:09 EDT 2014

all good points- I hope you can bring them forward to the appropriate Councils/Councillors very soon - If you want a shock to realize how one portion of this planned highway is really drastic, expensive, and nuts if you ask me, go to the very back of Golf Steakhouses' parking lot that overlooks the Grand River. Picture a highway coming from up high on your right off the end of Wellington Street, going over the river several hundred feet above it, either by a bridge or 'with fill' as Robert says below (would that still require some kind of low bridge so the water can still flow through it I hope?), stretching from the high point on your right over to a low point on your left near where the monument place is - Nelson Stone Centre and the Ram Dham Hindu Temple on Bridge Street. This is a gigantic undertaking. It is quite a slope, so good luck in winter driving with exposure on all sides to winter weather. Their examination of other less disruptive and expensive alternatives, some of which are suggested below, is well -warranted, should be encouraged (still!), and could save us, those who have to foot the bill, million$. Heaven knows they've had tons of time to consider much less costly options, so I don't know why they keep insisting on this one.

Lori S. 

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Robert Milligan 
  To: Eleanor Grant 
  Cc: * GREN2 
  Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2014 12:43 AM
  Subject: Re: [All] Hwy 7

  Hi Eleanor (& All), 

  Good thinking — I also have been involved in preventing a possible new Hwy 7 (dating back twenty years or so). Our views are somewhat similar and complementary — although I’ve never had the opportunity to have a discussion with you!

  A 4-lane Shirley Av / BC Rd (full length service road space limitations?) could have been continued along Shirley Dr so as to meet Victoria St (near the GR Bridge). But “conveniently", Shirley Dr was designed to be a very narrow 2-lanes with some buildings too close to the road (ordered from on-high?). As a result, use of a limiting Shirley Av / BC Rd connection to Victoria St N at Lackner Blvd is almost a necessity. A possible traffic circle at Victoria/BC/Lackner could minimize traffic light delays. And an agreement with CN/GEXR could prevent possible longish freight delays during peak hours — if by some miracle a new era of railway/municipality cooperation is ushered in.

  The RMW is likely planning to use fill — not an expensive bridge — in extending Wellington St. through the ravine.  I’d suggest the same in extending to Shirley Av. In fact, this would be a small step towards a stage 2 where part of RMW’s Hwy 7 plan (see KW Mapart) that extends over to Ebycrest Rd and beyond could be curved down towards current Hwy 7 so as to meet it near Spitzig Rd. — thus giving a faster by-passing connection of Victoria St. And perhaps the same type of by-pass idea could be used in Guelph to connect with the Hanlon Pky.

  The pressure to build a new Hwy 7 is at least coming from developers who own land along the route, and from Chair Ken Seiling, a former Mayor of Woolwich Township, who seeks it as part of his legacy, etc. (guess what I mean by etc).

  Robert M

  On Apr 7, 2014, at 2:46 AM, Eleanor Grant <eleanor7000 at gmail.com> wrote:

    Hi All - 

    A little essay I'm composing on Hwy 7.  I'd appreciate corrections and fact fill-ins ....

    Eleanor

    ----------------------------
    2014 April 7

    Paving over prime productive farmland for any purpose must always be seen as a last resort and something to avoid if at all possible.  With this in mind, the cities of Waterloo Region are trying to solidify their Countryside Lines and contain all development within them.

    So it's troubling to see further steps now being taken toward building an 18 km new Highway 7 across Waterloo-Wellington - a highway the need for which has never been amply demonstrated.

    The construction date has been postponed several times, and is only promised again whenever an election is looming.  This may have given opponents the false hope that the highway would never be built after all.  
    But the March 29 WR Record carried a notice that the Initial Design Report for the project was now completed and would be on view at Kitchener City Hall starting April 9.  And a few days later an Ont government pre-budget document announced that construction would begin in 2016.  Which Kitchener Centre MPP John Milloy, the government house leader, quickly corrected to 2015, perhaps under pressure from local business interests.

    This date is getting too close for comfort.

    We all agree that doing nothing is not an option.  The present highway narrows to 2 lanes from Spitzig Rd, just outside Kitchener, to Wellington Rd 32.  It's a bottleneck for truck traffic and commuters, and makes access to the area's greenhouse businesses difficult.  Crashes and fatalities are increasing.

    Yet no explanation is ever provided for not simply widening the road.  If this stretch of Hwy 7 - apx 10 km - were made 4 lanes, plus turning lanes where needed, the bottleneck would be eliminated.  One set of traffic lights and a short service road could provide access to the businesses.  

    One more thing would be needed: improved access to the Conestoga Expwy, bypassing Victoria St.  [perhaps by a bridge over the ravine at the end of Wellington St to avoid the 2 turns on Shirley, and widening Bingeman Centre Rd.  Is the rail crossing near Victoria a concern?  I remember being delayed there for 9 minutes when on my way to work in Guelph one time.  Also if B C Rd became a highway, would access to small businesses along there suffer?  A service road to them perhaps? ] 

    Until improving the present road is tried, no money should be spent to take land out of cultivation and build a controlled access highway that's not needed.  Improving the present highway is all that would be needed for a generation or more.

    By a generation from now, other significant things may have changed which would make intensive road travel between Kitchener and Guelph less needful.  For example:

    - All-day 2-way rapid GO train service between Kitchener, Guelph, and Toronto, also recently promised by Premier Wynne.  We hope the political will will be there, whoever is in government, to complete this ambitious project of buying tracks and upgrading them for rapid publicly-owned passenger service.  A much better use of public money.

    - Access to GO trains through a good bus grid in both Guelph and KCW, plus frequent and rapid light rail through KCW.

    - Park-and-ride GO stations at Breslau and perhaps also at the edge of Guelph.

    - A shifting of the manufacturing centre of gravity south to Maple Grove Rd.  If this is accompanied with good transit, including a good bus grid in Cambridge and connectivity between Hespeler and Guelph, there could be fewer commuters on the Kitchener-Guelph highway.  [But I can't figure out how truck traffic will get in and out of Mpl Grove.  And by removing more and more commuters from highways, are we simply building highways for trucks??? ]

    The present 10-km bottleneck on Highway 7 is annoying as heck to those who must drive it regularly - yet the difference in travel time is actually small.  If you could drive 10 km at 100 km/hr it would take you 6 minutes, while if you have to drive it at 50 km/hr it takes 12 minutes.  A saving of 6 minutes!  Is this a drain on the economy, or just on our nerves?  Education about this fact might calm people down.  The extra 6 minutes can be planned for and spent listening to favourite music, for example.

    For the sake of 6 minutes, do we really want to tear up a beautiful productive farming community interlaced with pristine wetlands, and spend over $400 million on construction?  (Where are all the people who objected to the cost of the LRT!)  And leave a strip of land between the two highways that will be useless for any purpose but ribbon development of the most unsightly kind?

    It would be helpful to know where the pressure is coming from to build this white elephant and avoid widening the present highway.  Is it too late to smoke them out, and have this long-overdue public conversation?

    -------------------------

    (Damn I wish somebody would find a Jefferson salamander in Hopewell Creek:)

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