Castanet

Here is how you design a highway so that missing lines do not cause a problem. Notice how no streetlights are required on this busy highway.

Here is another example.

And another.

And yet another.

What you just paint it?

If you can not go down Drought hill going 9okm on a dry summer day or evening and you feel jittery and unsafe please do us all a big favour and quit driving. It is 100% safe if you are a competent driver. If they lower it to 80 or 70 you will have way more accidents because people will pass in an unsafe manner. We have to quit pandering to the bad drivers and post speed limits so slow that it penalizes good drivers who want to actually get somewhere.

Glacier wrote:Here is how you design a highway so that missing lines do not cause a problem. Notice how no streetlights are required on this busy highway.

Here is another example.

And another.

And yet another.

Totally, lets bulldoze all homes & businesses within 300' of the highway so we can have a divided highway all the way through west kelowna

GoStumpy wrote:Totally, lets bulldoze all homes & businesses within 300' of the highway so we can have a divided highway all the way through west kelowna

They should have done it before the houses were there in the first place. It's kinda too late now... although it is worth mentioning that they did bulldoze all the homes in Victoria to put in their divided highway.

i don't go as far as Drought hill on my commute but do notice that between Boucherie and WestLake the lighting could be better. I think the issue is the barrier between the two lanes. It prevents the light from on coming traffic from spilling over into my lane but I get the glare from their headlights hitting my eyes. That being said, I would not want the barrier removed, I am sure it has prevented many accidents from becoming even worse.

As to the width of the highway, it likely easily accomodated the traffic levels at the time when it was built. In order to expand, you are talking expropriating (sp?) from Gormans on Drought Hill, many businesses along the hwy or from WFN. Costly to say the least. The split hwys around Hope and Hinton look very nice but a bit of a pipe dream around here. I've heard rumours of a Westbank bypass and also heard politicians shoot those rumours down just as fast. A Westbank bypass along with the Peachland bypass would be nice and likely necassary in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.

Steve-O wrote:As to the width of the highway, it likely easily accomodated the traffic levels at the time when it was built. In order to expand, you are talking expropriating (sp?) from Gormans on Drought Hill, many businesses along the hwy or from WFN. Costly to say the least. The split hwys around Hope and Hinton look very nice but a bit of a pipe dream around here.

It's only a pipe dream because of how our BC government (of all stripes) acts, but if we were part of Alberta or Washington state, the highway would likely have been built with an earth median to begin with, and therefore negating the need for a light blocking concrete barrier.

Let's look at the new highway between Vernon and Armstrong, the older 4-lane section between Vernon and Oyama, and the soon to be opened section between Oyama and Winfield. Like the Westside section of highway, these sections could have been easily built with a divided grass median, but since they were not, houses will encroach around them, traffic will increase, concrete medians will be installed, lines will disappear in the winter, and unnecessary accidents will occur.

Ah, isn't it grand to save a few bucks now?

Glacier wrote:Westside is a prime example of why I have always said that separating the lanes in the beginning saves money and lives in the long run. Anywhere else in the Western world would do so, but not here in BC. We four lane highways instead of twin them just to save a few bucks right now. The same lighting issue exists between Vernon and Kelowna (and the various 4-lane sections all across the province the government loves to brag about building).

Down on the Lower Mainland, the government of the day had the forethought to build the lanes separated so that oncoming highlights aren't blinding. Trying to widen the distance between the lanes after the city has grown up around the highway becomes exceedingly expensive, but because the government would rather future governments worry about such problems they don't seem to care about such things.

The first problem is that with all of our mountains, it gets a bit tricky to free up enough space for a divided highway. It's a heck of a lot easier to do when everything is level. Oncoming headlights are an issue with either kind of highway unless the two halves are quite far apart or have something between them, and unless head on collisions are a significant problem I don't see the point of splitting the highway when it's a huge hassle to do around here.

Actually, with uneven ground it's even better to divide the lanes because you can easily terrace the lanes so that oncoming headlights aren't a problem (check out the Coq. heading north of Merritt). The land is not really that mountainous around the Okanagan, but hilly enough to terrace.

There is actually a huge difference in lighting between a concrete divided highway and a earth divided highway even when the lanes similar distances apart. The reason was alluded to earlier by another poster with respect to the oncoming light being blocked by the median on the roadway, but not at eye level.

As I've mentioned in other threads, the government is 4-laning the 450 km of highway 97 between Cache Creek and Prince George even though the road is already straight. They are obstructing traffic by adding an lane to each side instead of merely building two new lanes next to the existing lanes. The is the flattest area of the province, so I guess if they can't divide the lanes up there, they wouldn't be able to do it here either. It's unfortunate, really.

Has any poster seen the Anthony Henday. It is a massive ring road in Edmonton and so far is about 70 km long. EVERY km of the highway is lit - not just the interchange areas. The final section is under construction right now. Very few accidents considering how many vehicles travel on it every day. Take a look at this link for the only photo I could find which happens to be a night shot. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/7368768.bin

As for Drought Hill... if we can't go around it.. why not simply go in it?

I mean, Montreal has it's many 4-8 laned Highway tunnels going under downtown (Tunnel Ville-Marie), and under the St. Lawrence River (Tunnel Louis-Hyppolyte Lafontaine)

In France, there's a tunnel I think 70km long right in the Alpes Mountain to Switzerland.

Is there not a tunnel under the Manche between France & Angleterre?

Why can't we do it here? Too expensive? I think saving a live has no cost, and enlarging the highway requires blasting rock anyways..

OK, no point disputing the various advocates of driving around at excessive speeds, as we gotta be back on target anyway. But the solution to the Drought Hill mess is fairly simple: Reroute onto the Connector, then rebuild the Trepanier exit, and build a high level highway straight south to come out at around Hardy St. And make sure that it's WELL LIT! Yeah, it's expensive and engineering-difficult but I've driven across the USA dozens of times and I've seen Interstate stretches that go through mountainous stretches that would make that highway look like a service road.

I do agree, the road is very dangerous, espscially when it'S wet and when oncoming traffic blinds you. Then the whole thing looks like this:



Dangerous considering speed limit is 80-90km/h