Castanet

DashFiveGuy wrote:Originally I thought you were just deliberately being obtuse, I'm not so sure that's the case anymore. I honestly don't believe it is intentional.

My wife can attest to the fact it's unfortunately natural, not intentional

DashFiveGuy wrote:Ok, I'll throw one more project out there for comparison:
Phase 1 of the Coquihalla Highway
120 kms of 4 and 6 lane freeway from Hope to Merritt
18 highway interchanges
38 bridge and overpass structures
19 vehicle underpasses
50 pipeline crossings

Construction began in 1984 and the highway was opened on May 16th, 1986. I'll save you the math, that's 20 months, or 10 months less than what it has taken to complete the 2 small overpasses and a traffic circle of the Westside Rd interchange.

Interesting choice of comparison because the scale is so vastly different ... 120kms ain't no cake walk. That road was under a tight timeline to get 'er done for Expo '86 and as such were pushed hard ... and of course it ended up being tolled. Obviously "existing traffic" wasn't a problem, but compared to 120kms, Westside Rd's near 1km is a drop in the bucket. Not to mention 10k people working on it ... if they could afford that many people, Westside Rd would be in as fast as it took for compaction to occur. Basic project management: time, quality, budget ... can only pick 2 while the 3rd suffers. With the wall collapse, I guess we know which one they choose (albeit that was a 3rd party quality problem).

DashFiveGuy wrote:I'm guessing the unfinished 1,200 sq ft house is being built by Ledcor and WFN and you're no doubt proud of the progress they've made so far!

Actually I am ... solely for the fact I've been working on basement renos for 700 sq. ft. and it's been going on for over a year, so it's comforting to see I'm not the only slow one! Ha! ... of course if I had the cash, I would've gotten it done in a month or so.

Dashfiveguy is right....

This project is a travesty. three years to build, the retaining wall collapse, the unessesary underpass a few metres away from the overpass, no extension up to Boucherie, and don't forget the lanp swap fiasco on top of the millions paid to the WFN.

Taxpayers got taken for a ride on this one for the benefit of one very politically influencial group. end of story.

I would bet that if WFN did not have any involvement in the project,people would be way less critical of it.

Ari Gold wrote:This project is a travesty.

On a good day this shaves off 5 min (each way) from my commute, on a bad day more in the ball-park of 10-15 min (especially after work) ... multiple that by per day, factor in the number of vehicles and all their pollution (not to mention with semis), then I'd say "travesty" is a bit strong of a word, "unfortunate" is more like it ... but hey, in another month it'll all be done and people can go back to doing Mach 3 along that stretch (only to hit a red light at the next intersection, ha!).
Oh, and as for

Ari Gold wrote:no extension up to Boucherie

That's all planned in Phase 2 ... can you imagine if they had done that whole stretch in combo with the Winery Route improvements on Boucherie Rd what a nightmare it would've been?

Now that it's been brought up.........

kumazatheef wrote:That's all planned in Phase 2 ... can you imagine if they had done that whole stretch in combo with the Winery Route improvements on Boucherie Rd what a nightmare it would've been?

The winery route " improvement " is really not an improvement at all. It looks nice and all, but I wouldn't want to be on Boucherie when some one can't make the hill, or breaks down. There is no where to go once you get on the " improved " section, you can't even turn around.

johnhenry wrote:The winery route " improvement " is really not an improvement at all. It looks nice and all, but I wouldn't want to be on Boucherie when some one can't make the hill, or breaks down. There is no where to go once you get on the " improved " section, you can't even turn around.

Rabbit trailing beyond the subject of this thread ... there's now a sidewalk along that route, which I (and many pedestrians) would classify as an improvement ... oh, and also some lighting along the road and no dark corners, not to mention bike lane (narrow one at that) ... Not sure what you mean by "you can't even turn around" ... there are plenty of breaks in the median to do so ...
"Improved" can be subjective, but considering there are 3 new critical items added that didn't existed prior I'd say that it's improved.

But again, beyond the subject of this thread, would be worthwhile starting another rant thread and we can debate how sidewalks are a bad thing.

kumazatheef wrote:That's all planned in Phase 2 ... can you imagine if they had done that whole stretch in combo with the Winery Route improvements on Boucherie Rd what a nightmare it would've been?

Phase 2? Do you have a link to info on this "phase 2"? Not trying to stir the pot, just that I hadn't heard anything about it and would certainly be interested in reading about it.

I drove up the new Boucherie today and was surprised to see that the tarmac is not even all the way through as i would have expected from a "completely new road" there is one part that has a ridge as if they couldn't match the level when they laid it and then there is a section that looks like its been dug out and re done with a shovel.

Back to the phase 2 of the proposed Boucherie improvements and you gotta wonder if its just best to leave it as is or we'll end up with another 2 years of mess and detours and any improvement from the Westside interchange will be completely lost until Boucherie is done. I am sure if it had been planned properly we could have seen both intersections sorted at the same time and the replacement of Boucherie but of course it would be down to budget which i guess was not available, a bit like our 5 lane bridge that should have been 6 lane.

dodgerdodge wrote:I drove up the new Boucherie today and was surprised to see that the tarmac is not even all the way through as i would have expected from a "completely new road" there is one part that has a ridge as if they couldn't match the level when they laid it and then there is a section that looks like its been dug out and re done with a shovel.

I swear you are the most oblivious person on this forum.

THEY'VE ONLY FINISHED PAVING THE BOTTOM HALF.

Perhaps you could have noticed that with the 2" ledge on either side at the curb, the drop down, and the bump at the top... seriously, you complain about EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!

GoStumpy wrote:
I swear you are the most oblivious person on this forum.

THEY'VE ONLY FINISHED PAVING THE BOTTOM HALF.

Perhaps you could have noticed that with the 2" ledge on either side at the curb, the drop down, and the bump at the top... seriously, you complain about EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am talking about the bottom half, the brand new tarmac that has just been done, not the top end where it meets the original road. Maybe you feel it is acceptable to have closed a road for longer than expected and spent a large portion of our taxes but failed to leave it looking like it clearly should.

DashFiveGuy wrote:Phase 2? Do you have a link to info on this "phase 2"? Not trying to stir the pot, just that I hadn't heard anything about it and would certainly be interested in reading about it.

http://www.westsideroadinterchange.ca/2-Background.pdf
At the bottom there's the map of the overall area with "Boucherie Interchange" in darker purple. Sorry, it doesn't call it out as "Phase 2", that was the term used by the personnel at the open house at the fire hall a few years ago - before they broke ground on Westside Rd (attended by engineers & PMs, I believe). At that time they were still doing feasibility studies on the Boucherie stretch and I even asked them specifically:
a.) why not do a single interchange between Boucherie & Westside Rd to hit 2 birds with 1 stone:: The response was mainly cause of cost to connect everything together and increase in traffic load to service both ... and
b.) why Westside Rd first:: To which the response was that it had higher traffic volume flowing through there and the grade was much steeper than Boucherie Rd (for coming from a dead stop at a red light). And of course cost: much better ROI as it was cheaper to do Westside Rd (ex: the differences on the downward slope is a lot, not to mention established structures/businesses).

I believe the personnel at the open house said that they'd be looking at Boucherie Rd closer to 2020 ... which seems like a long ways away, but honestly it'll be here soon enough.

Just like the new bridge (and on/off connectors) people complained about after completion, and now the interchange so close to completion ... I wish people could remember what traffic was like before all that was completed. Seriously, go back in time and tell me that 45min in the dead heat of summer was a better alternative.

Edited to add:
Open house displays: http://www.westsideroadinterchange.ca/page4.html

Oh, and as a footnote, found the answer to my thought:

kumazatheef wrote:As a side thought, does anyone know if the blasting of the mountain was included in the timeline? I suspect it was a precursor; however, but can't seem to find explicit media releases on it.

From my understanding of the displays, and if memory serves the mountain was still in place when they had the open house ... the blasting of that mountain was part of this project schedule ... and I do believe they set a few records with how much rock and earth was removed to make way for Sneena Rd.

How short people's memories are; WFN proposed to build the bridge and all the improvements to Boucherie Road for $200 million before. But the Province in its wisdom refused so $152 million Bridge + $13 million Campbell Road + $42 million Westside Rd plus Boucherie whatever the final $ is for that. WFN provided a cost effective proposal but Indians willing to come up with a way to "share" in something that is beneficial to all, who would have thunk. Sorry for not providing a total but I assume most people on these forums can do math.

It looks like they have finally lifted the construction speed zone, though many drivers are still slowing, out of habit I presume.

Northbound there is no slow to 60 km/h until going down bridge hill. But going south, I can see no 80km/h sign, until past Boucherie. Perhaps northbound is 80 and south is still 60. Won't know for sure until I get poached in a radar trap.

I was wondering about that myself Ben. there was an article in the Westside Weekly a few weeks ago that stated the underpass work would be completed in late winter (Feb/March) and that until that time, construction speeds were still in effect. But like you say, there are no longer any signs so pedal to the metal baby!!

So the construction zone is no longer and all lanes now look like they should, so we should now be able to cruise through this multimillion section seamlessly, but it seems not. Tonight i had the misfortune to be coming to West Kelowna over the bridge at 4.55pm and guess what we were crawling bumper to bumper from bottom of bridge hill all the way to Boucherie. Of course the right hand lane was busy with drivers taking the Westside rd exit then through the lights and straight back down to rejoin 97 and in the process causing more issues for drivers in the right hand lane.
This was supposed to help congestion yet here we are in middle of January when half the over 60's are still out of town and tourists are sparse yet we have a line up like its middle of summer. Anyone else think this is crazy?