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November
4, 2003
HIGHWAY 20 ALTERNATIVE UNVEILED
Professors from the Civil Engineering faculty at McMaster
have unveiled an expressway alternative that uses Highway
20 (Centennial Parkway) instead of Red Hill Valley, and
which costs less than a third of the valley road. The engineers
released their proposal at a media conference on Monday
afternoon (November 3) attended by CH television, CTV and
the Hamilton Spectator, as well as several candidates for
mayoralty or council seats in the upcoming election.
The
proposal involves widening of Centennial from just south
of King Street to the QEW, plus the construction of two
overpass sections — one short one going over King Street,
and a second longer one going over Queenston, Delawanna
and Barton Street. The overpasses would be 4 lanes wide
but would be built on T-shaped pillars that would allow
a lane to be tucked under each side. This would maintain
the existing four lane configuration at grade on Centennial,
while adding an extra four lanes on the overpasses, providing
a substantial increase in traffic capacity. The proposal
also includes a truck “runaway lane” south of
King Street, and improvements to the intersection of Centennial
with Mud Street.
The engineers have costed the proposal at $60 million (slightly
less than half the $122 million promised by the province
for the Red Hill road). They suggest this means their “Expressway
20” option would not cost Hamilton property taxpayers
a cent, and would free up about $60 million in provincial
monies for allocation to other Hamilton infrastructure.
The
engineers envision that through traffic on Centennial, including
most of the heavy trucks, would use the upper four lanes,
leaving the lower four lanes for local traffic. They argue
that the proposal would significantly improve the flow of
east-west traffic crossing Centennial at King, Queenston,
Delawanna and Barton. They also propose an improved left
turn access to Eastgate Mall between Queenston and Delawanna.
Other pluses of the proposal include improvements in the
safety of cylists and pedestrians crossing Centennial.
The
City owns the right-of-ways to permit the widening of Centennial,
but this would bring the road close to some homes between
King and Queenston. The engineers noted this difficulty
and suggested that the City could purchase the approximately
40 homes along Centennial and re-sell the lands at a profit
for apartments with commercial outlets at street level.
This area is already zoned multi-residential.
They
also propose that the overpasses could include Hamilton-made
steel. They note that their alternative involves no new
cuts in the Niagara Escarpment, and avoids aboriginal burial
sites and the loss of 44,000 trees. They estimate that fewer
than 100 trees would be removed along Centennial (although
they didn’t propose to replant 5x as many).
The
engineers concluded their presentation by declaring that:
Red Hill Valley should remain a valley, while Highway
20 should become a real highway.
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