Quote:
Originally Posted by Acey
To me and to most people, including the people who build roads, what makes a road safe is things like sightlines, gradients, loop radii, surface, proximity of obstructions if a vehicle were to leave the roadway, etc. Everyone is welcome to write their own definition, but I'd fundamentally disagree with the statement that Stoney Trail is "not safe" because it lacks little parking lot signs every few hundred meters that are not codified in our Highway Geometric Guide. "I'm northbound a couple hundred meters past Costco" should be enough for my tow truck driver to track me down.
It's called HTCB, high-tension cable barrier. Stoney has a TON of this... like the entire freeway where it's required. I'm guessing you only drive a small portion of Stoney SW/TTN Trail, i.e. a portion where it's not required because the median is 3 miles wide.
The purpose of HTCB on QEII is to minimize head-on collisions where there are narrower grass medians.
On SW Stoney, how much higher is the rate of serious accidents than that which was expected?
Signage sucks, yes. I fundamentally disagree with every other part of this statement. The "overbuilt" i.e. wide median of the SW was from the original design that left room for an outer ring road that has since been scrubbed, we've talked about that already... they claim to have felt time constrained because of the TTN deal if they had tried to do a new design for the whole leg.
Aside from that, what else specifically is overbuilt? What safety features are lacking besides the parking lot markers not required by any road code? Where else was the ball dropped? |
I am full agreement with you on something like "Northbound, just passed the Costco" Except the problem with that is that you have no idea how many people don't have any directional awareness about anything. Probably why people use GPS to get around their city where they grew up in.
With markings there is zero guess work for anybody, not just locals. It's a requirement for safety in some of the busiest and safest roads in Europe. Germans and Swiss aren't guessing it's 400 meters from the Costco if it's actually 180. This isn't some expensive luxury item. What happens for people who are not familiar where they are, just passing through in the middle of the night?
As for the median and the cable, if you envision what happens if you go into the ditch at those speeds, what will happen? Sure the width will prevent a crash from oncoming traffic, but what happens to you or me? You have power and signage poles everywhere just off the road. That is unsafe considering the wildlife, the road conditions in the winter, medical events, drunk and distracted driving and more.
The road was built in modern times and at considerable expense. We should be going for the highest level of safety systems to prevent collisions.