I blame the wackos

Vincent J. Curtis

18 Feb 2019

[although this is Hamilton specific, it contains observations about environmentalism in general.]

  

Trouble with the Red Hill Expressway?  Water doesn’t drain away quick enough?  Road weaves too much?  Asphalt a little slick?

I blame the wackos – the environmentalist wackos who have afflicted the Expressway project since the 1970s.

You have to be of a certain age to remember the vigor and intensity of the opposition to building a road that became part of Hamilton’s official transportation plan in 1963.  Remember the save the valley campaign of the 1970s and early 1980s?  The professional integrity of every engineer who supported the plan was unscrupulously attacked.  The NDP government of Bob Rae withheld funding.  When construction finally began, wackos were trying to live in trees to halt it.  This die-in-the-last-ditch resistance was based ostensibly on environmentalism.

The environmentalist wackos claimed that the rare Red Hill flying squirrel would go extinct if the road were built.  The wackos claimed that the Red Hill valley was a “lung” of the city, purifying the air, and the city would be overwhelmed with air pollution if a road was run down the “lung.”  No objection went unused.

The Consolidated Hearings Board of 1985 recommended approval of the project to the Ontario government with a proviso that the design of the road take into account some of the concerns of the wackos.

An important thing to understand about environmentalism is that it places a higher value on the “environment” – whatever that means - than it does on human life.  One concern of the wackos was that storm run-off from the road would “scour” the bed of the Red Hill creek, whose course, being natural, mustn’t be touched.  Well, some modification was inevitable, but the engineers took the rate of run-off concern seriously.  There are large catch basins at the top of the Expressway that collect run-off, and the flow into the creek is throttled.  The initial design didn’t work out so well, and some flooding of homes occurred.

The banking of curves in roads is important in the speed at which those curves can be safely taken.  The greater the banking, the higher the safe speed.  But the higher the banking, the faster the run-off of water.  If the degree of banking were low to reduce the speed of run-off, and hence the “scouring” of the creek bed, it would mean that water would remain on the road longer and the safe speed of the curve would be lower – wet or dry.

If, in addition, the road were made curvy rather than straight in order to accommodate the existing creek bed and to reduce the rate of run-off, you create a road that imposes more lateral forces on the traffic than is necessary.  Lateral forces that engage with the low banking in the unnecessary curves.

Two other gestures to the wackos were: to call the road a “Parkway” rather than an “Expressway” and to set the speed limit at a low 90 kph.  Under normal conditions, a highway speed of 100 kph would be expected, and I’m sure a speed study would show that average traffic speeds are at least that or more.  The difference between normal highway speed and posted speed limit tends to create a differential of 30 kph under normal conditions, on a curvy road with low banking.  On dry pavement in daylight, no big problem.

On wet pavement or at night, a large speed differential could become a problem if drivers don’t adapt to the conditions and if slow drivers don’t politely stay in the right lane.  Straight road, less of a problem.

It’s rich to watch vengeful wackos laugh in grim triumph as the city encounters alleged problems with the Expressway.  If the city is having problems is it because the traffic engineers who designed the road didn’t follow the purest principles of good road construction but shaved at the edges to accommodate the concerns of the wackos?

The climate of recrimination created by wacko tactics in the past may be corrupting management of the problems caused by accommodating wacko concerns.

-30-

Vincent J. Curtis testified in support of the Expressway before the Consolidated Hearings Board in 1985.

Spec reported Matthew Van Dongen confirmed my point about margins of safety being compromised by meeting environmentalist's objections in an article headlined, "More light needed on crash-prone Red Hill." 20 Feb 2019.