Now, when are those in power going to acknowledge that we need a ring road?

Trucks cannot be expected forever to go down into the valley (bowl) and then be expected to climb back out again.

What is it costing them in braking, in gas and in safety?

Not only that but how about the safety of citizens?

The present road system is not fair to anyone.

So why does it continue?

The good thing is most loaded trucks are coming down Peden Hill and not up or this would be a far bigger problem.

Loaded with 63,500 KG (140,000 pounds) going up Peden Hill does not happen without chains on days like today if you hit the light red at the bottom of the hill. In rush hour it could be deadly if you start to slide before you can get chains on your truck. Its amazing no one has been killed as of yet in that kind of situation.

This has been a problem for many decades ... 4??? maybe even 5 .... and it is not only when it is snowing, but anytime when the road is slippery and even just wet.

Now we have even more industrial traffic. Most respectible communities have chain-up areas ... others have reader signs which tell one ahead of time what conditions to expect up ahead so that one can take alternate routes.

The camera obviously close to being in the right place. In fact, there are two camera postions. I am assuming they were not put there by the toss of a coin. In fact, the second camera shows that there is some special interest in this hill. Are they not monitored?

http://www.th.gov.bc.ca/bchighwaycam/index.aspx?hideFramework=False&cam=98

Do we have an emergency warning system in town, such as when hydro is out and incidents such as this.

On sunday I was listening to one of the radio stations on my battery powered radio that I am supposed to have on the ready for emergencies. I normally do not listen to the radio, but turned it on in the naive thought that I might find out some news about the weather and hydro outage situation. I was listening to a local easy rock station that provided me with exactly that for nearly an hour until the electricity came back on. Nothing about an outage anywhere.

How about a station or two or three that provide traffic information when there are jam-ups like this?

I was out shopping at one of the box stores wondering why all the traffic. They were using Cowart west to get onto Ospika.

A ring road is required for many reasons. It has been for some time. Peden Hill is a substandard road in many ways. How long do we have to put up with substandard "bypasses", substandard grades, and substandard road maintenance?

How about unacceptable air quality, unacceptable maintenance of roadside vegetation in town, excessive gambling opportunities, lack of control of development which is complicit in the degraded conditons of parts of downtown. I could go on and on and on. It is starting to get to the point where the negative aspects of this town outweigh the many postive aspects of this town.

Owl, the problem is we have to many politicians in it for the career and not the community. I figure this is because PG has historically been a working mans town and we don't have enough community people that are willing or have the time capacity to step foreward. Most local politicians don't have a starategy past the next election cycle.

Our Mayor is a prime example with his Cameron Street bridge facrce, and his seat on the board of a company he used to win an election with development subsidies and hype.

Good to see your coming around to the ring road concept. For me I have spun out on Peden Hill before with a loaded B-train and usually it happens at the first turn where it gets steep for a few hundred feet and the guy in front of you loses his gear. The camera does not show this section, but I presume if the hill is pluged up the camera can show any part of the hill and people will still get the overall picture. To me it makes no sense that the camera is pointed to show the traffic going down the hill, when it should be showing the traffic going up the hill at the corner where the spin outs happen?

In a few more years you will have more loaded trucks going up the Peden hill to the Port of Prince Rupert, and hundreds of more cars from Benchland stoping traffic at the bottom of the hill to get on and off the highway compounding the problem.

Chadermando ... I am not too sure where you get the idea from that I did not support the ring road concept. I have been a supporter or that all along. That is what I was trying to say on the other thread which was closed before I was able to get back to posting my ideas of waht this community should be striving for and how it might be achieved.

Anyway, here are the routes as superimposed on google views. Exact alignments will, of course depend on grades and land ownership at the time of land assembly. These were posted just after the editorial in the Citizen which supports the route which has been shown on future road plans for some decades.

http://flickr.com/photos/26306372@N00

The city of PG has lots of traffic, and sits in a large bowl.
No way out of town that does not requiree pulling a long, and steep hill.
The Hart, Peden, university way, foothills, BCR, or jail hill are the only routes.
And every single one has multiple problems.
I was caught in the mess on university way, as i tried to avoid peden hill yesterday going home.
I have studded winters on my van, and i literally chewed and clawed my way up.
not a plow or sander insight...it was ugly to say the least.
The truckers need to learn to chain up.
I was a long haul trucker for years, and I always chained up during ugly storms like we had yesterday to climb peden hill.
Also they need to remove the light at the bottom of it.
Forcing people to stop as they start to climb up, or attempt to stop as they come down a hill that steep is insane.
This is not Texas, we get snow and ice here many months of the year.
I curse that light daily.
If they need a frigging lite at least put it on the other side of costco by the Mohawk gas station.

So you think the problem lies in the trucks heading UP the hill?? Yes, I agree, it does. For the reason that if they start to slide backwards, everyone behind them is in trouble. But the experiences that I have had (of which are very very many), are the #*%&$$d's coming DOWN the hill too flippin fast to even bother to TRY and STOP at the lights, and guess what???? I am not just talking about the lights at the bottom of the hill, I am also speaking of the lights at Ferry Ave crossing. What we need is stricter enforcement on WHO gets a trucker's license, or any license for that matter!! Whatever happened to the saying "Driving is a priviledge, not a right".

and Marty, if they are doing the speed limit coming down the hill, and they are aware that there is even a slight possibility of having to stop - they can. They just need to plan ahead and stop thinking "I am bigger than everyone else, I will survive whatever happens". Add that to "gotta make my tonne mile rate" and you got a disaster just looking for a place to happen. Check the stats, there have been a lot more places for it to happen lately. Stupidity and arrogance are the leading causes.

Fair enough Owl. I was left with the impression before that you did not support a ring road until we reached 500,000 population in 3010. lol

If anything it gave me an antagonist to reply to.

I am actually surpirsed how many people I talk to about that are in favour of it.

So far I have not found anyone opposed, other than Palopu and possibly one or two others on here. It is good that Rustad is on board as well.

Perhaps the thing that is required now is to see whether the province supports it, and whether they support it enough to put in a strong request to Ottawa for a cost sharing proposal.

I gather that the Yellowhead route component is federal, but there are some cost savings to be had if that component of the traffic which links with Hwy 97 south from 16 west do not travel via peden hill and the casino intersection, for instance.

The link to the Hart would be entirely provincial I would think.

Some information about most of the Highway hills in PG. The inforamtion is taken from the PG GIS map on the internet on the City web site.

PEDEN HILL
7.5% grade for the steepest 10 metre climb
S curve cut into ravine which prevents sufficient sightlines to see what is coming up ahead, so should be going slow just because of that. Speed limit is 60, I believe.

UNIVERSITY HILL
6.5% grade for steepest, with average not much less than that.
Bottom curve is most dangerous part of road from my point of view. Poor visibility of what is ahead just at that part, otherwise good sightlines.
Speed limit I believe is 70 with 50 at bottom curve.

HWY 97 AIRPORT HILL (BCR)
Fairly steady grade of about 4.8%. Relatively good visibility. Long curve at the bottom which is much better than Peden Hill and UNBC.
Speed limit 90

HWY 16 AIRPORT HILL
about 4.7% bridge grade; then 4.3% from pickering to boing rd.
best sight lines of all the hills.
speed limit 90 on upper part, 70 on bridge.

HART
From the bridge to hofferkamp is about 3%, with a long curve with slightly degraded sightlines.

Speed limit??? 60 or 70???

Anyway, Peden Hill is by far the worst situation in PG for many reasons. It is also the one which appears to get the most complaints and likely has the most incidents and close calls.

Excellent research Owl.

You missed Cranbrook Hill at 12% with limited visibility and a speed limit of 50km.

I agree though that for main highway traffic Peden Hill is by far the worst in all categories from traffic volume, to grade, to visibility, to orientation with a non stop traffic light at the bottom of the hill.

For this reason alone, Benchlands Development should never have been approved. The city should have focused on development around an Ospika connector instead. Benchalands exasperates the problem and delays the potential to alleviate the growing problem.

I agree 100% with your post two previous Owl.