Tag: Rapidway

Categories
Urban Planning

Designing a complete street for everyone

the Complete Street

VivaNext is of course a project to bring rapid transit to York Region. But our goals are much broader than simply expanding transit (as important as that is for us): our long-term vision is to help York Region, as it grows, to transform beautifully from its suburban past, into its urbanized future.

When I think about the most livable cities of the world, including here in North America as well as in Europe, one feature that makes them distinctive is the way major streets are designed for everyone, and not just for cars.

This approach is captured by the urban design concept known as “the complete street.” That’s the long-standing philosophy behind European urban design, but it is also becoming very influential in North American urban design. The complete street reflects a belief that streets should anticipate and accommodate the needs of all users – pedestrians, transportation users, cyclists and drivers. It means that streetscapes should be designed to provide a welcoming, functional and safe environment for everyone, no matter how they want to get from A to B.

The complete street concept is consistent with York Region’s vision for its urbanized future, especially along its major corridors and emerging urban centres. So the vivaNext streetscape design principles reflect similar values and priorities.

As our work progresses along the Highway 7 rapidway, it’s becoming easier to see how these design principles are going to transform the look and function of the street and its boulevards, for all users.

To begin with, our streetscape design emphasizes the importance of having an attractive public realm, to encourage people to want to spend time in these newly developed public spaces. By offering wide boulevards, with their attractive paving, good lighting, shade trees, amenities such as comfortable benches and generously planted landscaped areas, pedestrians will know that they are truly welcome.

With York Region’s predicted growth, there will be many more people living, working and commuting all along our major corridors, meaning many more pedestrians will be using the sidewalks and intersections. So our streetscape is designed to make everyone truly feel safe and comfortable – after all, Highway 7 and York Region’s other major corridors will continue to be very busy thoroughfares for other vehicles, even once our rapid transit system is up and running. Pedestrians will feel buffered from adjacent traffic by the wide planters placed between the sidewalk and curb. They will have protected places to wait at intersections, and in the median where there are two-stage crossings. All sidewalks and vivastations will be completely accessible. And cyclists will have safe places to ride, and convenient racks to lock up their bikes.

By creating a complete street, our new streetscapes will be walkable, accessible and welcoming for all, no matter how you prefer to get around York Region.

Categories
Fun & Games General Live-work-play Rapidways Uncategorized Urban Planning

VivaNext has Olympic spirit!

vivaNext Olympics

The summer Olympics bring together the best and brightest of athletes around the world in a variety of summer sports, ready to compete. As we cheer on Team Canada in the vivaNext office, we notice some similarities between the dedication that each athlete has to his/her sport and the dedication that we have to our new vivaNext rapid transit system.

Athletes, whether participating in summer or winter Olympics, are forced to endure the elements when it comes to practice. Whether braving through cold to ski or melting in the heat practicing beach volleyball, these athletes continue to give it their all. Likewise, vivaNext has to work with the elements as we go through construction. In the summer months, it’s important that our construction workers stay cool under the hot sun. On days when it rains, construction can be at a stand-still, forcing us to work even harder the next day.

Just like any athlete, we have a team of coaches and supporting staff that are making the vivaNext vision a reality. From the engineering to communications teams to onsite supervisors, our success is a group effort. Although only the athlete may receive a medal, it is often a team effort, with coaches included, to help them reach the podium. Similarly, it is a team effort to ensure that the vivaNext transformation is a success.

And of course, there is something to be said for the speed at which athletes that cycle, row, or run track travel. They are constantly looking to move faster and improve their travel times. Our rapidways will help reduce congestion and provide a reliable rapid transit network along our corridors as well. We’ll reduce travel time by up to 40%, and make reaching your destination easier and more efficient.

At the vivaNext office, we are supporting Canadian athletes through our own office Olympics. Departments are virtually going head-to-head to earn medals for different sports. How are you supporting Team Canada? Is there an athlete that you’re rooting for? Let us know by commenting below!

If you’re interested in learning more about the vivaNext projects, visit us at www.vivanext.com. You can also sign up to receive e-mail construction updates here.

Categories
Community Events Rapidways

Davis Drive Open House Results

Click here to see our open house information on our websiteDid you attend our Davis Drive open house on May 15? The event saw a great turnout, with residents and vivaNext representatives discussing what’s coming next for rapidway construction along Davis Drive.

If you weren’t able to attend the open house, all of the materials that were shared are available on our Past Meetings page, so you can read up on the latest information that you may have missed. You can also sign up for project updates.

Thank you to everybody that came out to learn more about vivaNext construction. It was great to speak with residents about the future of the Davis Drive rapidway. Be sure to check back on the vivaNext website for information about any upcoming open house events. We hope to see you there!

Categories
Community Events Uncategorized

Join us at our Davis Drive open house!

Join us at our Davis Drive open houseAs you may have noticed, construction on Davis Drive is well underway. As construction continues each day, we want to make sure you are in the know about what is happening in your neighbourhood. Please join us at our open house meeting on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 to learn more about the rapidway construction in Newmarket along Davis Drive.  You’ll have the opportunity to read up on maps and information boards, and speak with vivaNext representatives about what is to come for Davis Drive. This is a great chance to learn about how rapidways will benefit Newmarket and you as a resident.

Don’t worry if you can’t make the meeting though. We’ll post all of the materials from the open house on the past meetings page of our website. Also be sure to sign up for project updates, so you can receive up-to-date information on construction.

Join Us!

Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Time: Drop in between 1 and 8pm

Location: Bethel United Church
333 Davis Drive, Newmarket

Categories
Construction Rapidways Stations

Building for the future: here comes the first Highway 7 rapidway station

Installing vivastation canopies along Highway 7If you’ve been driving along Highway 7 East lately, you’ll notice an exciting development taking shape on our Highway 7 rapidway: the installation of the first of 22 vivastations.

And like everything else on the vivaNext project, the station that we’re going to be building in the median at Leslie and Highway 7 is the product of literally years of design, planning and preparation. Here’s a primer on the stations, and how they’ll be installed.

Like their predecessor at Warden Station on Enterprise Boulevard, our vivastations along Highway 7 are going to be beautiful, strong and very functional. The curved viva blue glass that makes up the canopy is surprisingly rugged – this glass is curved, tempered and laminated for strength, which prevents it from breaking into sharp pieces if it is cracked or broken. Reliability was our first priority in sourcing the manufacturer: our glass panels are actually being made by the company that makes nearly half of the world’s windshield glass.

Although the canopy is made up of nearly 100 individual panes of glass, each will be connected to its neighbour by small fasteners, known as “spiders” – so visually, the glass will look like it’s all one piece.

Supporting the glass underneath is a three-piece structure made of Canadian-fabricated steel, constructed just outside of Paris, Ontario. With durability in mind, the steel will be finished with a high-quality automotive-grade paint to minimize long-term maintenance costs.

Before the station components are delivered, a concrete platform is poured and set, and the connections built into the platform are prepared.  Then the canopy’s three steel structural sections are brought in on a wide-load tractor trailer and  installed. It takes about a week to align the sections perfectly and do some other prep, in advance of the glass being delivered and installed.

Each station includes two platforms/canopies – one for eastbound passengers and one for westbound passengers. Our schedule calls for the construction of one station canopy a month, with eastbound and then westbound canopies being built along the Highway 7 East rapidway throughout the rest of this year. There are a number of steps involved in getting the platforms ready before the glass and steel can be delivered; each platform requires about 12 weeks of work including excavations, installing electrical cables and concrete work.

One of the strategic decisions we made in the beginning for the vivaNext program is to build our rapidway segments consecutively, enabling our designers and construction experts to assess the experience of the previous segment and continually fine tune the design and construction methods. Lessons learned from our experience building the Warden Station have helped us find ways to modify the design, to make the canopies easier and more efficient to install. And because minimizing traffic impacts along the Highway 7 corridor is so critically important, our team has focused on finding strategies to install these huge canopies in a very small space with minimal lane closures.

Beyond providing rapid transit users with a comfortable and convenient experience, our vivastations are going to give a defining look and feel to Highway 7, as it becomes increasingly urbanized and developed over the next few years. We think that’s a milestone that’s really worth celebrating.

Categories
Construction Going Green Uncategorized

Protecting our trees to keep York Region green

Crew works on transplanting trees
Tree buds are an early sign of spring, their canopies are beautifully green in the summer, and we all love their colours in the fall. For many of us, the mature trees on our streets and woodlots are attractive features of York Region’s established neighbourhoods.

So when we develop the rapidway construction schedule and plan, in addition to all the other construction tasks, one of our priorities is to protect and actually increase the number of trees along our routes.

As we design and build our rapidways along Highway 7 and Davis Drive in Newmarket, here’s what we’re doing to take care of the trees we have, and plan for new ones to ensure they continue to thrive into the future.

To start with, we all have a shared commitment to making sure our construction activities minimize impacts to our natural environment. This is a formal commitment that is made early on, in the Environmental Assessments that need to be completed and approved, long before work can begin.

One of our commitments is that our construction activities minimize impacts on trees. At the stage of final design for a rapidway segment, we walk the route with our Arborists to do a careful inventory of all the trees, inspecting each and tagging them, to make sure every tree is included in our construction drawings.

For those trees that are near the construction right-of-way, we look at ways to protect them by installing special protective fencing. We will also look at alternative construction methods where we can to work around a tree, or avoid harming its roots or branches.

For trees that are in the construction right-of-way, we identify any trees that could be safely dug up and replanted somewhere else. Then we work with the local community to identify locations to transplant the trees.

There are some trees that just can’t be saved, either due to a tree’s poor health or other factors. But our commitment is that for every tree we remove, we will replace it with at least one – if not more – new trees.

So this means that once the Highway 7 and Davis Drive rapidway projects are complete, there will be 45% more trees along Highway 7 East and nearly 27% more trees along Davis Drive. Highway 7 and Davis Drive will each be significantly greener when we’re done, and all in all, this adds up to more spring buds, and more fall leaves, for us all to enjoy in the future.

Categories
Construction

VivaNext’s underground world

Underground conduit being installed

Recently at one of our weekly project meetings, I was thinking about how much time our designers and field engineers spend discussing and planning for things that are invisible to most people, and in many cases aren’t even directly related to our rapid transit project.

Every foot of our design work for the vivaNext construction project has had to take into consideration a dizzying array of underground utilities, their service connections to customers and residents, and unknown buried utility lines that may or may not be abandoned. Interfering with or changing any of those elements isn’t an option, because they’re part of the critically important infrastructure that everyone living or working in our Region depends on. We need to either work around them, relocate them, or bury them even deeper before we can do our own work.

So here’s a primer on everything located out of sight, in the underground world of vivaNext construction.

First, let’s think about all the things that everyone needs – water, electricity, heat, sanitation. In York Region, the larger the infrastructure the deeper into the ground it goes. All utilities need to be a minimum of 1 metre below ground.

Storm sewers are installed 2 metres below the curb while watermains are placed under the middle of roads at depths of 4 metres or more. There are two main water lines on the north and sound sides of Hwy 7, as well as storm sewers running up every street Highway 7 intersects.

Gas mains are installed 1.5 metres deep as close to property lines as possible, and when they cross under roads and creeks they’re as deep as 2.5 metres.

Telecommunication conduits can be installed in the boulevard at a depth of 1 metre due to their smaller size. As the population grows, so does the demand for telecommunication services, so quick access to these lines is important.

Then there are all the other things people want in their homes. How about a phone line? Or a line for your computer? And don’t forget the cable you need to watch your favourite TV show. During our construction projects, we’re coordinating with all the private telecommunications companies, as well as York Telecommunications Network (YTN) which provides connectivity to Viva bus stops. Where a lot of telecommunications lines need to be installed, they’re placed in a concrete encased duct bank.

And then there are the culverts, catch basins, manhole covers, oil grit separators for the storm sewers, and the fire hydrants. Add the underground elements for our landscaping, including tree soil cells and irrigation lines, plus foundations for bridges and other structures. That pretty much covers the main elements that are underground – and we didn’t even mention the utility work taking place above ground!

So if you ever thought it was taking a long time for us to begin building the above ground part of the project, you’ll know why we devote so much time to locating, designing around, and in some cases relocating, underground components before we can build on the surface.

Categories
Rapidways Uncategorized Urban Planning

A turn for the better: navigating the new traffic signals

Intersection traffic patterns on Highway 7If you’re like me, traffic signals are one of those things that you automatically respond to without spending a lot of time thinking about them – if a light’s green it means you can go, and if it’s red you can’t. But when something is new, sometimes it helps to understand the reasons behind it. We’ve introduced new traffic signals on Highway 7 at the Leslie and West and East Beaver Creek intersections in December 2011, and want everyone to understand why they’re there and how they work.

As part of the vivaNext plan, rapidway lanes are being built in the middle of the road, making it much wider than it was in the past. The widening for this section of Highway 7 is now complete, so we’ve installed the new traffic signals at three of the intersections.

The new traffic signals include a protected left-turn arrow, which only allows left turns from Highway 7 when the left-turn arrow is green. During the left-turn arrow signal, there is no straight-through traffic in either direction and no pedestrian crossings allowed.

The reason for installing the protected left turn arrow is because of the increased width in the road. With the rapidway running down the middle of the intersection, the left turn lanes aren’t opposite each other.  The protected left-turn arrow allows left-turning traffic to turn without the hazard of oncoming traffic.

When the protected left-turn arrow is lit, drivers in the left-turn lane can also make a u-turn in the intersection. In sections of road with rapidway lanes in the centre, drivers will access addresses or streets on the opposite side of the road by making a u-turn at an intersection. Intersections with the new traffic signals have a special “U-Turn Permitted” sign under the “Left Turn Signal” sign.

During construction, video detectors will sense traffic in the dedicated left-turn lanes and extend the duration of the left-turn arrow. Once construction is complete, a magnetic sensor known as a “loop” will be installed in the pavement to detect traffic and extend the left-turn arrow duration.
At times, it might take a bit longer to drive through an intersection that has the protected left-turn arrow, but overall, our corridors are changing for the better. As our population grows, Highway 7 will become increasingly urbanized (see our blog about how Highway 7 is changing), and Yonge Street and Davis Drive will follow, each with their own local character. Instead of feeling like highways designed for cars, each street will feel like an urban area, with interesting destinations. The new traffic signals will be there to ensure drivers and pedestrians can navigate safely to their destination.

Diagrams of intersection traffic patterns:
Six-lane road, like Highway 7
Four-lane road, like Davis Drive

Diagrams of u-turn traffic patterns:
Six-lane road, like Highway 7
Four-lane road, like Davis Drive

Categories
Construction General

Davis Drive – noticeable change in 2011

Davis Drive in 2011

Davis Drive was a busy place in 2011, with lots of noticeable work done to prepare for rapidway construction. Rapidways will be built from Yonge Street to just past the hospital, and most of our work has been along this section.

Davis Drive will be widened starting in 2012, and we needed to do a few big things first: build retaining walls, widen the Keith Bridge, and relocate utilities.

Widening Davis Drive will mean moving sidewalks and boulevards farther apart. In locations along the south side of Davis Drive where the ground slopes toward the road, retaining walls were needed so that we can move utilities. Five retaining walls are now built using stone blocks or textured concrete, with railings to be added to walls over two feet in height.

A new section of the Keith Bridge was built in 2011, including 106 tonnes of rebar steel reinforcements, and 110 truckloads of poured cement. Even though the final touches are still to come, the historical architectural features are noticeable in the new bridge construction. The Keith Bridge will be fenced this winter, and traffic will move to this bridge section at a later date.

Utilities, such as hydro, gas, sewage, and telecommunication lines, need to be moved to prepare for road widening, and in some cases they needed to be relocated as part of the Keith Bridge or retaining wall construction. Geotechnical testing – examining the condition and consistency of road and boulevard surfaces – has also been underway along Davis Drive so that our engineers know what to plan for when they widen the road.

This winter our contractors are working on 2012 construction schedules and continuing with utility relocation and geotechnical testing. When warmer weather arrives we’ll be ready to begin widening Davis Drive, and you’ll begin to see the overall transformation of Davis Drive into a welcoming urban place.

Happy Holidays everyone – we’ll see you in 2012!

Categories
General Press Rapidways

Transit ridership is way up: great news for everyone

Viva passengers getting on and off the bus at Warden Station in Markham

If you’re reading this blog, you have likely already seen the news release on our vivaNext.com website, describing the steady increase in transit ridership in York Region. But just to restate, on June 14 we announced that Viva ridership has increased 26% since this service was launched in September 2005. Overall ridership for both York Region Transit (YRT) and Viva Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has increased by 10.5% from January to April 2011, compared to the same period in 2010.

This increase is great news for a number of reasons, whether or not you’re a transit rider.

First, the more people take transit, the more successful our services will be – more riders means more revenue, which in turn can be put back into our route planning and frequency, making services even better for riders.

Second, more people leaving their car keys at home and boarding YRT\Viva means less air pollution for everyone. We all know how important air quality is to our health – especially during hot summer months.

Third, every loaded bus is equal to 70 cars. So even if you’re personally not a transit rider, every time you drive alongside a bus loaded with passengers, that’s 70 cars that aren’t in front of you. The result is less congestion and easier driving for people who need to get around by car.

The fourth, and in some ways the most important reason, is that increased ridership suggests a culture shift – a really important one for the future of this region, and how we manage growth.

There’s no doubt that the culture in York Region, in the past, was quite car-based. That’s not at all unusual in an area that expanded quickly as part of the GTA suburban growth; where new subdivisions were designed for people who travelled by car, and where it was convenient to drive to most places.

But that kind of urban design can only happen when there’s lots of room – room for big wide roads, room for huge parking lots, and room for all the homes and driveways. Not to mention room for all of the cars. With the growth coming to York Region, that design just isn’t sustainable – we don’t have enough room to accommodate everyone without making some adjustments. So going forward, our new growth will be managed with urban, higher density developments, clustered along major roads. These new developments are being planned to make it very convenient for people to live, work and play without needing to get in a car. Our vision is that people will be able to travel between their job, shopping and recreation while using transit.

The fact that our transit ridership is going up shows that our long-term plan is working, and that people are finding it easy to get around by hopping on board YRT\Viva.

With our rapidways and the Spadina Subway extension already under construction, and efforts being made to get funding for the Yonge Subway extension, transit is only going to get better and better, which is great news for all of us.