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July
13, 1999
THE LINC-MUD SQUEEZE
Hamilton-Wentworth Fiddles with Public Safety
The
Region of Hamilton-Wentworth has once again decided that
creating artificial demand for the Red Hill Expressway
is more important than public safety. Last week, the Region
opened the "Linc Extension", a new road joining the four-lane
Lincoln Alexander expressway (the Linc) with the four-lane
Mud Street. But incredibly the new road is only two
lanes wide, forcing motorists travelling at expressway
speeds to perform the dangerous maneouvre of merging into
a single lane.
Why
has this new road been constructed in this strange and
dangerous way? There is plenty of regionally-owned land
on both sides of the road, so why not make the road the
same width as the two roads it connects?
TRAFFIC
CRISIS INTENTIONALLY CREATED
It
appears that once again politics, not common sense, is
in command at the roads department. Another traffic crisis
is being intentionally created to try to convince Hamiltonians
that an expressway must be built in the Red Hill Valley.
Unfortunately this is not the first time.
- A
proper Linc Extension could have been completed along
with the rest of the Linc in 1997. Instead a "dead end"
was created at Dartnall Road which directed expressway
traffic to a four-way stop. The resulting traffic chaos
forced changes and likely led to the decision to finally
build the Linc Extension.
- At
the other end of the Linc, the Region rejected the advice
of the Ministry of Transportation and decided to connect
the new expressway to the 403 by means of the out-dated
and dangerous Mohawk Road interchange. This resulted in
particularly dangerous and irritating backups that extended
long distances along the 403. The Region was required
to spend $600,000 for a temporary ramp and has recently
announced it will construct a new $9 million replacement
interchange at the location.
- The
Region's pro-expressway collaborators on Stoney Creek
City Council have refused for over two decades to upgrade
the King to Queenston portion of Highway 20. In 1997,
a 20-year-old "secret deal" was revealed by the Stoney
Creek News. The deal commits Stoney Creek to not making
any traffic improvements whatsoever on Highway 20 until
the Red Hill Valley expressway is constructed. The deal
was revealed after staff recommended adding a fifth turning
lane to the King to Queenston section in 1996 to deal
with a large number of left turn accidents on the roadway.
These improvements have never been carried out, the same
fate that met other recommendations for improvements going
back to the early 1980s. Highway 20 remains as one of
the only major roads in the region without such turning
lanes. The continuing problems there are frequently used
as justification for a valley expressway.
Allegedly
the artificially created problems on the Linc Extension
are "temporary" and will be solved by the north-south
valley expressway. No doubt these problems will now be
blamed on Sheila Copps, Friends of Red Hill or whatever
whipping boy is currently in vogue, but the truth is hard
to hide. When work on the extension began last summer,
the region's most optimistic predictions were that construction
of the valley expressway would start this summer and take
three years to complete. Consequently, it is clear that
the Region fully intended that this problem on the Linc
Extension would continue for a minimum of three years.
What
is even worse, is that the "pinch" on the Linc Extension
cannot be corrected without tearing out at least one overpass
(built at the same time as the Extension), something that
will have to be paid for by the taxpayers. The taxpayers
will also have to pay for any lawsuits against the Region
arising from accidents caused by these stunts.
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