At last night’s council meeting I brought up the issue of University Avenue, specifically the intersection at the UPEI entrance and Brown’s Court. I travel in that area regularly as I’m currently working on site at Holland College Royalty Centre and I’ve been amazed at the now common site of bumper to bumper traffic lined up to the north all the way to the Charlottetown Mall and beyond. I’m assuming part of the “problem” is the re-designed intersection at the Peter Pan corner allowing for more effecient flow of incoming traffic from the Winsloe and West Royalty directions. This is a good problem to have; however, the bottleneck at UPEI is caused by the almost constant flow of students on foot crossing University Avenue. There are now so many students living in the apartments on the other side of University Avenue that the volume of pedestrians is virtually constant for a large part of the day. The crosswalk button is pressed so often the light doesn’t stay green long enough for efficient flow of traffic. I believe an underpass would be an ideal solution, and I stated this in council. Of course, the lights would still be required to manage vehicle traffic exiting the university and Brown’s court but it would take the pedestrians out of the equation (and hopefully convince some of the students who dash dangerously across four lanes of traffic to take the safe route). The biggest obstacle, as always, is cost — which I also acknowledged. The chair of Public Works assured me they are aware of the issue and are working on possible options to improve the situation.
What would you suggest?
I don’t believe for a second that a pedestrian underpass, or overhead pedway, or even a teleportation device will change the habits of the students who do not make use of the already existing traffic signals. The solution with dealing with the (lazy?) students who cross at areas other than the lights would be to issue fines to encourage students to use the ‘cheap’ crossing method. Otherwise, crossings have to be every 100 feet or installing moose fence, but instead, call it student safety fence. This is beside the point, though, because these jay walkers are not the primary cause of congestion. It’s the traffic at the traffic lights, and the students who do use the provided crosswalk.
A pedestrian pedway, or underpass may solve part of the problem, and in addtion efforts to lure traffic from using University avenue is in need. Perhaps the access road behind the University could meet up with the private road behind the Charlottetown mall.
Or perhaps streamlining arteries feeding the downtown area will help to relieve the traffic on University Avenue. The bypass bottle necks keep me traveling Stratford to Cornwall via downtown Charlottetown on a daily basis. My trend is to avoid University Avenue in favor of North River Road. I also tend to avoid the intersection at Allen and Mount Edward Road because the public makes their own left turn and straight through lanes while traveling North on Mount Edward Road.
That intersection is a gong show, let the force be with the poor driver who obeys the rules of the road and refuses to pass a left turning vehicle on the right by making their own straight through lane. This habit is a pet peeve of mine as drivers use the maneuver more and more often because it’s so acceptable (and expected) at intersections like this. In fact, I recall watching what was nearly a catastrophe unfold when a vehicle, stopped to allow pedestrians to cross, was passed on the right. The pedestrians, hidden by the stopped vehicle stopped just inches before being in harms way.
Chris… thanks for the comments.
Regarding the intersection at Allen and Mount Edward Road; it is definitely a problem, and the city is well into the land acquisition and planning stages required to completely redesign this intersection. I’ve seen the plan and it looks great. Some land has already been purchased, but the “bottleneck” now is negotiations with the Feds to acquire a very narrow strip of the experimental farm lands so the roads can we widened.
Here are some of my suggestions:
1. Flog with a wet noodle the previous council that approved Brown’s Court developments because of the traffic problems it created.
2. Widen University Avenue to 4 lanes.
3. Install new roadways that would link Atlantic Road, Upper Queen Street, Burns Avenue, Raider Road and Enman Crescent with Buchanan Drive and Thompson Drive so that a traveller could avoid University Avenue altogether if they were going to the Royalty Centre or Canadian Tire. (Indeed, I think Charlottetown is going to face similar problems in a few choice places such as Belvedere Avenue, North River Road, Mount Edward Road if they don’t allow traffic to flow through and across town better. I understand that its good to have a few main roads, but you can’t have both activity and easy-flowing traffic on these few main roads or else you get the problem that has arisen this year on University Avenue. If you’re going to allow build up of housing and businesses on the few main roads that go all the way across/through town, your going to have allow traffic to find other ways through. Or just allow traffic jams.)
4. Discontinue vehicle access from Brown’s Court into University and replace it instead with vehicle access through Upper Queen Street, put a pedestrian underpass or over pass in and get rid of the traffic lights.
I’m sure there are other options and it may be possible to combine some options. I think it would be important to work with UPEI to come up with a long term plan for access and traffic flow.
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/10/the-grass-roots.html
That’s an interesting essay Hans. I would tend to agree with one of the commenters though, that he didn’t elaborate enough on some pretty bold assertions… like the zoning laws will “simply become irrelevant”. He may be right, but that left me thinking “huh?”. The scale of the (very real) suburbia problem he’s talking about in the US is way beyond what most people in Charlottetown can ever imagine. I was recently in Calgary and the northern suburbs of that city are mind boggling. Miles and miles and miles of cookie cutter gated communities of million dollar homes, separated by big box super centers. The oil’s still cheap out there though. Generally, I know where this guy is coming from with this rant, but he’s not very constructive. Nevertheless, a fun read. We’re all DOOMED!!
Yeah, the article itself is a little dire. I’ve seen him explain his thoughts better in some documentaries and its probably well explained in his books, but I’d have to buy them so….. Anyway, his point, that town planners are too focussed on cars, is interesting if we accept his premise that oil stocks will have dwindled dramatically within our lifetime. I was actually just being cheeky by posting it under this topic. Nevertheless, it is interesting for civic-minded people to consider in a general way.