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October 30, 2017 4:40 pm

Fresh Pavement Finishes UNBC Connector Trail

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 @ 3:59 AM
Machinery   smooths  fresh asphalt  on the  granular trail  near  UNBC
 
Prince George, B.C.- While the City of Prince George is under a great deal of pressure to make major repairs to the roads in the community, some residents were surprised to see the UNBC Connector Trail getting  some brand new asphalt.
 
The work yesterday was the completion of a project that was started last year.  Funded by a Provincial grant of  $300 thousand dollars, the grant   was to pay for paving of the trail from Ospika to the entrance of the University.
 
The City’s Superintendent of Operations, Bill Gaal, says UNBC had planned on logging the east side of the roadway opposite the Cranbrook Hill Greenway entrance, so paving of that section of the trail was put on hold until the logging had been done.
 
There was $102 thousand dollars left of the grant money to complete the trail paving plan, and that money was used yesterday to pay for the completion of that project. 
 
Still, the trail paving may not sit too well with those who travel Tyner Boulevard, as just a couple of hundred metres east of the trail project  drivers will experience   a major crack in the roadway remains .   Gaal has taken note of the exact location of the crack and says City Crews will be on it a.s.a.p.
 
Below:  major crack in Tyner Boulevard, just  east of  sign that advises work ahead on  UNBC Connector Trail

Comments

Good place to pave! OMG this city’s priorities suck!

did you read the story?

Sorry, no just the headline at the time.

Google Earth may be a good tool to keep track of where the big cracks are!

So the pavement assessment system that the city spent a ton of money consists of telling Bill Gaal that there is a crack in the road and he puts it in a notebook….they have a lot of gall:)

I wonder how many people use this trail? 5? 10?

What a colossal waste of taxpayer’s money.

See people on the trail walking and biking all the time. With more and more houses going up in the area I’m sure it will get well used.

This trail will get tons of use by students and other commuters looking for off street bicycle/walking paths. Good clean excercise and it will reduce the wear and tear on the roads as well. Good job PG.

All the big machinery running up and down Tyner Bvld as they are putting in the new subdivision sure hasn’t helped the road surface any…

Did it have to be paved? Can we get a grant for potholes?

I

Tyner has more than just the crack shown in the picture. There are major potholes still in that street.

I am noticing more and more than there are some huge sinkhole versions of potholes in many places in my normal driving places that have been there for at least over a month that are just not getting done. I really do not understand why. There are enough city vehicles driving around the city. Each and every one of them has a cell phone on board that could locate those things and, like any good reporting system get them repaired within a few days and no more than a week.

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Google earth will not track potholes due to aerial photos not being current enough …. 3 to 4 years and older ….

The City’s PGMap is better since they have higher resolution photography and more frequent. They now have 2010, 2009 and 2006 plus some earlier ones on as aerial base layers as well as earlier ones.

As best as I can tell, the public version no longer has info about road maintenance/conditions on it. They do, however, have that information.

I vote we name this “Dan Rogers Trail”.

“Gaal has taken note of the exact location of the crack” Maybe someone should go around and note the exact location of all the other cracks and potholes and then the city crews can be on them a.s.a.p. too.

Sure glad he has the exact location of it because it might be hard to find amongst all the others.

The “trail” that is currently getting the most use is not the enw trail along Tyner, but the sidewalks on both sides of University going up/down the hill.

So why does this get used? In my opinion because:

1. higher population base at the bottom end than the Tyner trail has.

2. it provides meaningful exercise to walk up a slope.

3. When starting from the bottom, the climb comes first, then there is a pleasant “recovery” trek down hill.

I use this new trail system a lot. it is an amazing asset and I am happy to have them.

Good to know. I use Tyner and University at least twice a day, so I see how many are using the trail on those occasions.

I also know that Tyner has had potholes in the same location for many months.

I also know that there are two different pots of money for two different pojects – one is a trail and the other is a road that needs to be maintained.

I think it is fair to say that at the moment more and more people are focused on needs rather than wants. I get that and agree.

I also get that we have to have a balance of needs and wants. However, it appears that there has been an inbalance towards wants rather than needs, or we are not effective in the work we do, or we are not paying enough in taxes.

All that considered, it is time to shift the balance needs more than wants for a few years until we figure out what the root cause of the inbalance has been.

In fact, part of it might be like the person who goes into a store and gets something on sale because it is such a bargain. They end up spendign so much on the sales of things that may not be needs but are more wants, that they have no money left to buy the things they need. But, hey, they made such deals in the process.

I can look at the City in that fashion at the moment. They are like a shopaholic and hoarder that buys stuff because they arfe such a bargain that they get subsidized 50 cents on the dollar, but have a piece of infrastructure that is totally underutilized.

My take on our current situation.

BTW, I have not seen any moose in the area since the trail was built. Almost without fail, we would encounter one or more moose per week, especially near the northern end of Tyner, when driving the road towards dusk.

We miss the moose. Walkers are just not the same. ;-)

BTW, infrastructure maintenance programs are just not the “in thing” on a federal basis.

They are more into continuation of “participaction” which failed to get the weight of the population down, and so called green projects which are supposed to give us less greenhouse gases. The results of that, of course, are impossible to measure.

In the meantime, roads, bridges, transit systems, water and sewer systems, buildings, power plants, etc. are in need of maintenance and/or replacement, in some cases without the population growth we once had to pay it forward.

I go to the university quite a bit and no matter rain or shine, I see people on this trail, and not 5 or 10.

Kudos to them for exercising and for reducing health care costs.

Currently patching like crazy beside the new trail…..moral of the story….if you want your road patched get a shiny new bike trail beside it

I fully support creating this trail as it is well-used and there are many people in our community who choose or have to walk rather than drive. This group of people is growing and pay taxes too. However, it does bother me that the sidewalks around town are in worse shape than the roads (seriously!!) and the sidewalk repair budget is nil. Maybe we should be focusing on repairing existing walking areas that are part of people’s transportation network within the city, rather than a trail that is more recreational in nature.

The moose are still, seen them and there are tracks. Why did the trail have to be paved, it was just fine before?

“Kudos to them for exercising and for reducing health care costs.”

Let me see. Walking, jogging, etc within 10 metres of a busy road … means:

1. Breathing more and breathing more “deeply” the mnore effort is put into the exercise of walking/jogging

2. The air immediately adjacent to the road naturally contains more of the emissions from vehicle exhaust than a trail which was in a park or green space, or even a local residential road which has fewer vehicles.

Just in case we forget we have such healthy chemicals as carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, benzene, formaldehyde, a cocktail of polycyclic hydrocarbons, and a helping of other particulate matter coming from cars and even more from those diesel trucks we like to drive.

So, while such exercise is considered healthy, it might not be all that healthy in that location.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/82347.php

But hey, why look as such things in a logical, streetwise fashion, eh?

Just think, the number of people who do not think about such things and using the trail will likely only increase at the same rate that the traffic will increase…. :-(

On the other side of the university is that “$18 million dollar road” paid for yet? A few more months to go? Good!

The $300,000.00 from the Goverment covers what costs. What was the Cities portion for this trail??

http://www.princegeorge.ca/cityhall/mayorcouncil/councilagendasminutes/Agendas/2011/2011_07_25/documents/Plng_Tyner_Boulevard_report_MERGED.pdf

That is a link to the presentation to Council regarding the Tyner Blvd trail which was funded by $100,000 from the feds specific to bicycle trails. That is likely why the trail is paved to accommodate differnt types of bicycles.

The other $200,000 came from the City’s Community Works Fund. At least, that is the way the rewuest to Council reads.

I do not know what the Community Works Fund could have been used for. I sure wish that it would have been used for maintenance of roads rather than continuing to build additional infrastructure in the middle of nowhere far in advance of there being a significant population base there to use it.

SMART GROWTH principles are not just for the downtown. They can actually be applied elsewhere.

There goes another arrogant remark by Gus ….. eh JohnnyBelt?

Palopu … a good question …. clarity of information and ease of information access is not a PG City Hall strong point.

I support this project and projects like it. Prince George absolutely should be able to have trails and good roads at the same time.

“But hey, why look as such things in a logical, streetwise fashion, eh?”

Your little article and study only mentions that the study was done with people around 60 who suffered heart attacks and was geared towards people with coronary heart disease present. Although it makes mention of diesel fuel particulates, nowhere in the article does it mention the effects on a healthy heart. The subjects in the article hardly represent the average person who uses the trail, and although there is a lot of diesel engines nearby, they are not exactly the exclusive engine used near the trail.

Near the end is the following quote, “”Because of the overwhelming benefits of exercise on heart health, we would still encourage heart patients to exercise regularly, but preferably not when there is a lot of local traffic around. Heart patients can look out for pollution levels on their local weather forecasts,”

Your argument is flawed, and very streetwise. Too bad you didn’t actually read the article. Nowhere is there a mention on healthy hearts without existing Coronary Heart Disease in the same conditions, or even a cross reference of existing studies.

You can be logical and streetwise all you want. I’ll trust that witchcraft known as research.

I do have to give you kudos though in that you actually used a peer-reviewed article.

Sorry that one reference to a study was not enough for you. There are tons of similar studies over large and more diverse populations. You just have to do you own research since people like “JohnnyBelt” do not like long posts.

Start by looking at this one, and I mean START … then continue from there. Maybe along the way you can answer the question of where would you rather be when someone pees in the pool you are in. Next to him or 25 metres away.

http://chase-canada.org/2012/01/25/traffic-corridors-air-pollution-human-health

If you prefer a peer reviewed report, that too is avaialable, as are many others.

The abstract from the peer reviewed report from those who do not like going to links.
There is growing evidence of a distinct set of freshly-emitted air pollutants downwind from major highways, motorways, and freeways that include elevated levels of ultrafine particulates (UFP), black carbon (BC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and carbon monoxide (CO). People living or otherwise spending substantial time within about 200 m of highways are exposed to these pollutants more so than persons living at a greater distance, even compared to living on busy urban streets. Evidence of the health hazards of these pollutants arises from studies that assess proximity to highways, actual exposure to the pollutants, or both. Taken as a whole, the health studies show elevated risk for development of asthma and reduced lung function in children who live near major highways. Studies of particulate matter (PM) that show associations with cardiac and pulmonary mortality also appear to indicate increasing risk as smaller geographic areas are studied, suggesting localized sources that likely include major highways. Although less work has tested the association between lung cancer and highways, the existing studies suggest an association as well. While the evidence is substantial for a link between near-highway exposures and adverse health outcomes, considerable work remains to understand the exact nature and magnitude of the risks.

If you need more, just ask. I know, sometimms it is difficult to think of obvious probable association for those who do not understand the basic ill-founded 19th and 20th century thinking of “The solution to pollution is dilution”. ;-)

Oops, forgot this one http://www.ehjournal.net/content/6/1/23

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