Different government agencies are developing individual green manuals for their jurisdictions, since each jurisdiction faces unique climate and construction constraints. These manuals are much like the LEED manual; the points system for constructing sustainable buildings. Buildings are a simpler than highways, while the foundation may change the general construction as the building goes up remains the same. It’s why each road jurisdiction necessitates its own individual manual.

What can we expect on the greener roads?

• Reduced raw material: recycled pavements, long life pavements, life cycle assessments of the road structure, etc
• Improved Human Health and Safety: intelligent transportation systems, pedestrian and cycle friendly road and highway intersections, etc
• Water: reduced water use during construction, proper storm water management, etc
• Optimized land  and habitat use: crossings for wildlife, minimize the width of roads and clear zones, protect streams and wetlands, etc

Greener roads will continue to evolve. Our traditional way of road construction cannot continue, not just due to the environmental hazards, but the cost to build and maintain our current infrastructure is not possible.

Gridlock isn’t the issue. The issue is lack of a provincial public transportation network. People live in the suburbs because it’s cheap, they have more space and can afford bigger homes.

Isn’t that the tradeoff? One trades the freedom of space for the freedom of time?

But the fault doesn’t lie entirely with the commuters. They are forced to drive their cars to and from work since there is no viable transportation network in and around the cities. By downloading public transit infrastructure to the municipalities the result is a disjointed  system. Transit systems should be uploaded to the provincial governments and a costsharing agreement should be worked out between the provinces and the municipalities, based on ridership demographics.

While I endorse gridlock as an election issue, it should not be a standalone issue. It should be raised with public transit and land use plans; it should be a part of the connectivity issue.

A little history…

The Allen Expressway was originally designed to be a connection from the 401 all the way down to the Gardiner, known as the Spadina expressway. Construction began in 1963. Homes were demolished, neighbourhoods destroyed and air pollution was increasing for surrounding residents. Opposition continued to mount. Modifications to the Spadina Expressway were made in 1964, it meant the expropriation and demolition of more homes. by 1966 the city opened the first section from Wilson Avenue down to Lawrence, with a massive, highly efficient connection with the 401. Construction down to Eglinton continued but in 1969 a group led by Alan Powell and Jane Jacobs known as the “Stop Spadina, Save Our City Co-ordinating Committee” (SSSOCCC) formed committed to halting the progress of the Spadina Expressway.

Based on the Eglinton terminus the SSSOCCC won.

What does Toronto really need?

Does Toronto need a buried expressway? Didn’t we learn enough from Boston’s Big Dig? The multi-billion dollar project was way over budget, has not improved efficiency and has not helped reconnect citizens to the waterfront.

Toronto needs roads to function more efficiently, better bus transportation on existing roads and traffic engineers to work together to get our city moving again, from pedestrians, to cyclists, to buses and finally vehicles.

Toronto needs a mayor who can think about what the citizens really need. Do they need their taxes raised to fund more projects? Or do they need a mayor who can work with what the city already has and make it better?

Give me a KISS

Do you remember when you were much younger and someone told you to follow the KISS principle? Keep It Simple Stupid. While I was driving back from class I thought of a few things the city could do before it was forced to construct an underground expressway

• Eliminate illegal parking/stopping on streets during day hours: Bathurst was crawling today. Why? Because a delivery truck decided to park facing south on the northbound lanes. Instead of two lanes of traffic, it was reduced to one. In addition the one lane competed for right turn space, since the driver had parked so close to the intersection. Flow would have been uninterrupted without the truck illegally stopped.
• Dedicated Pedestrian Crossing at all major intersections: I wrote a blog on this before. The Dundas square intersection almost ‘gets’ it. But instead there should be no pedestrian crossing when traffic is moving. It is safer for pedestrians to cross when the intersection is completely stopped.
• Eliminate Street Parking: You cut capacity in half with street parking. Facilities can be built in nearby areas. I see the other side of the argument, that it hurts businesses where street parking has been eliminated. However, the loss of business due to congestion is likely greater than the cost of lost business.
• Dedicated Bus and Carpool lanes: Their benefits are well documented and require little infrastructure for implementation.
• Signal Timing: Ever feel like you get a green light as the one in front of you turns red? City Traffic Engineers need to set routes as ‘main lines.’ Consecutive green lights would allow people to come into and out of the city easily.

Instead of dreaming of elaborate, expensive, complicated infrastructure, lets go back to the basics. Instead the city should work with its existing infrastructure. Make the roads move efficiently. Make buses move along those routes efficiently. Make it attractive to live in the city again. Work with all the great infrastructure that exists in the city before we bring in more.

Maybe Rossi has a vision. Or maybe he thinks a massive elevator will transport vehicles up to meet the Gardiner.

It seems like most north-south routes through the core of the city are under construction (Bayview, Mount Pleasant, Yonge and Avenue). And a select few east-west streets are also under construction, namely the Gardiner Expressway and Bloor Street, Toronto’s main lateral arterials.

Construction is only adding to an existing gridlock problem. Last week the National Post reported that Toronto was rated the 2nd worst city in the world for traffic congestion by IBM. Johannesburg took the #1 spot for worst traffic. Residents perceive that traffic is getting worse (9% of commuters felt the quality of their commute had declined) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) estimated that Toronto lost $3.3 billion last year in productivity due to the congested roads.

Toronto’s gridlock is getting worse, between the increase in population and the increase in construction it is excruciating to travel through the city by car. And currently there is no public transit solution worth considering (would you rather be stuck on a crowded bus or in your own car?)

Someone said to me the other day,

Is all the construction a conspiracy by David Miller to convince Dalton McGuinty and Queens Park that we need Transit City Now?

The solution is not just a mass transit upgrade for Toronto. Part of the solution also includes a cultural shift (i.e getting people out of their individual cars and back on to buses, getting people to move back into the city and out of the suburbs). It should also include more bike lanes, but bike lanes with a buffer from traffic; Toronto’s driving culture still isn’t capable of sharing lanes.

Regardless of the outcome, Toronto is stuck with massive delays, congestion and, thus, pollution from the added construction to the gridlock. And while I understand that there is a huge infrastructure gap and the roads NEED to be fixed a better construction mitigation plan should have been sought out.

The two presenters were PAULA HAMMOND – Secretary of Washington State DOT & Chair of AASHTO Climate Change Steering Committee & CINDY BURBANK – Vice President Climate Change Practice Leader, Parsons Brinckerhoff

If there was one thing I really took away from this presentation to combat climate change in the Transportation is to go with the ‘low hanging fruit,’ the things that are easy to achieve. Here were Cindy’s suggestions for starter initiatives for GHG strategies:

• Eco-driving programs
• Carpool/Vanpool Programs: provide them with priority parking in our lots
• Telework promotion
• Traffic Signal Synchronization
• Adaptive Signalization
• LED traffic lights
• Lower Carbon Pavements
• Reduced roadside mowing
• Partnering with local governments to better coordinate land use/transportation planning
• Truck stop electrification
• Roundabouts

Hammond was the first presenter she is the Chair of the Climate Change Steering Committee, which includes 17 state DOTS. The group is diverse and includes members from environmental planning, highway engineering, rail transportation, aviation, public transportation and the Centre for Environmental Excellence. Known as Climate Change Technical Assistance Program, Their Goal:

To Supply AASHTO members with timely information, tools and technical assistance to help them meet the difficult challenges that arise related to climate change

Along with her colleagues in Washington this was the approach Paula and her team used for GHG Mitigation

• Increasing travel option to reduce vehicle miles traveled per capita
• Supporting improved vehicle technology
• Lowering the carbon content of fuel
• Improving the efficiency of the transportation system
• Adding capacity to complete critical corridors and support concentrated growth and transit oriented development

Although they are just entering into their climate change mitigation strategy Paula and her team had these Lessons Learned to offer up:

• Have a plan up front – being proactive instead of reactive
• Structure your program using defined priorities
• Don’t recreate the wheel
• Take some credit – get the word out about good and innovative work

.. tomorrow Part 2…

Are the highways safer?

I have to say that as I mature I’m finding the roads to be more frightening. Compared to the average person I do drive a lot, and lots of it is on multi-lane highways and more semi-urban/rural 2-lane highways. I just don’t feel as safe on the roads anymore.

According to the statistics accidents causing death were down by 29% from 2007 to 2008 and the total number of overall crashes decreases by 21%, but still amounted to 16,274. And compared to the 10-year average for traffic incidents, the 2008 value was 24% below the average. It would appear that the roads are getting safer.

Programs in place making our roads safer

Several programs were implemented this year in an attempt to make the roads safer. To name a few

• Truck Speed Limiting Devices
• Stricter Drinking and Driving Laws
• Increased and Focused Enforcement
• License Suspension when speeding 50km/hr over limit

What more can be done

Is it ever enough? As a perfectionist I think that there is always more that can be done to make the roads safer. For instance

• Closing the highway: during heavy rainstorms or other extreme weather incidents the highways should be shut down, stop the cars on the side of the highways and don’t permit others to get on the roads.
• Variable Speed Limits: Have speed limits that vary throughout the day, the highway could move at 120km/hr in the late night but be maximized to 80km/hr during daylight, peak hours
• Variable Lanes: Force SUV’s and trucks into one lane and allow smaller, fuel efficient vehicles to have access to their own lanes. Not only is this safer it is an incentive to trade in a gas-guzzling machine for a more environmentally friendly machine.

What is a perpetual pavement?

Defined by the Washington Asphalt Pavement Association,

“a perpetual pavement is an asphalt pavement designed and built to last longer than 50 years without requiring major structural rehabilitation or reconstruction, and needing only periodic surface renewal in response to distresses confined to the top of the pavement.”

Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway is an example of a perpetual pavement; although we have repair to the surface every year the pavements below haven’t had major reconstruction since it was built 54 years ago.

The real difference between a regular pavement road and a perpetual pavement road is the amount of extra asphalt in a perpetual pavement. The sub-grade is virtually unchanged and there is usually an additional 30% more asphalt in the intermediate layers. You can download a tool, PerRoad 3.3, from the Asphalt Pavement Alliance that allows you to enter in the values for climate, truck percentages, average use and number of asphalt layers that will calculate an approximate value for how much extra asphalt is needed in the design. And as a quick design check you can use AASHTO93 to see if these values seem to reliable; data to date demonstrates that the PerRoad software is reliable.

Some Advantages of Perpetual Pavement Roads:

• Lower lifecycle costs
• Minimal disruption to traffic: you can mill and overlay the surface during lower traffic demands (i.e. at night)\
• Provide a consistently smooth and safe driving surface
• Can be environmentally friendly by incorporating recycling technique
• Typically more flexible than concrete roads, which allow them to ‘move’ with climate and load changes

Concrete vs. Asphalt

I am currently working in the concrete department of a transportation agency and have read quite a bit about concrete roads. I think I’ll leave this one for now and later right another post comparing the two. But  in the end I believe that there is a place for both types of roads depending on the roadway situation – loads, climate, truck vs cars on the roads, flash flooding.. – all of these play a role in deciding what type of road to design.

What is diamond grinding?

The seminar I attended yesterday was on diamond grinding; a process where a machine chews up the concrete, creating longitudinal lines in the road leaving the surface smoother and more level. Basically a cylindrical cutting head, with many little diamonds as teeth, is attached to a machine that runs over the driving surface and creates the longitudinal lines in the road. This process is really only meant for concrete roads; the asphalt is too soft and would tear away with a diamond grinding machine.

But diamond grinding doesn’t just improve the drivability of the road, it also enhances the safety. Those longitudinal lines increase the surface friction of the road, which helps with the drainage of water at the tire-pavement surface. It also helps to decrease the noise of a highway; as a concrete highway surface wears it becomes ‘polished’ and quite loud. By restoring some friction with diamond grinding the noise is decreased.

The biggest advantage to diamond grinding is the cost savings. It is significantly cheaper to diamond grind a highway that to put on an asphalt overlay. The asphalt overlay would require bridge clearances to be changed and moving most guide-rail, curb and gutter – all of which adds up to significant costs.

Why aren’t concrete roads used more in Toronto? (and this gets a little technical)

SALT. NaCl. Cl-Chloride is an element that has deleterious effects on concrete. When the chloride penetrates the concrete it attacks the reinforcing steel of the road, significantly decreasing the strength of the concrete. The break down of the concrete is also contributed to the alkali reactions that break down the cement paste and aggregates.

To make it simple think of most freeway/highway bridges. Often you see reinforcing steel that is sticking out from the concrete face. The chlorides have attacked the steel causing to rust other reactions take place and the concrete breaks down and your left with exposed, rusted steel. But on a road this is so much worse, because the heavy trucks and cars breakdown the weakened concrete even further.

That’s why we have asphalt coverings on our concrete roads, to protect the concrete from the salt.

Concrete takes top prize

In the end I think concrete is a better solution to roads. This diamond grinding process can be done three or four times significantly increasing the life of the road. Plus when they do the diamond grinding to improve the roads there are minimal traffic closures and disruptions. Concrete roads have a much higher upfront cost but over the lifespan of the road, concrete is significantly less than an asphalt road.

I do feel for the protesters but holding a city hostage is no way to have your cause heard. I think the social injustice in countries like Sri Lanka, Darfur, Peru, Bolivia, and sadly the list goes on are crimes upon all of humanity, but do not create injustice to the residents of Toronto who have done no wrong and to the many that support charities and causes like that of the Tamil protesters.

How Does this relate to traffic?

The protests last night demonstrated what a huge part the Gardiner Expressway plays in Toronto’s road infrastructure. The city was grid-locked downtown without the use of the Gardiner. It should be one of the ‘quietest’ times with respect to traffic, instead it took hours to cross the east-west boundaries of the city. And to control the situation the DVP southbound was closed, further congesting the city.

Preserving the Gardiner is essential to Toronto’s road infrastructure. Last nights unfortunate incident really brought this to light.