Raise the Hammer

Bob's argument says traffic will be better at EM, worse at WH.

Really? How about asking some traffic engineers. here are some basic facts about traffic movement.

EM location facts: 1. Maximum capacity per lane is 1800 vehicles per hour (1 every 2 seconds) and every factor that is suboptimal reduces that number (stoplights generally cut it in half). 2. Linc/Red Hill has two lanes in each direction so maximum capacity is 7200 per hour. 3. 7000 vehicles are expected to park at EM stadium

-Assume on a friday night baseline linc/RH traffic is 40% of capacity, or 4 lanes x 0.40 x 1800 = 2880 veh/h, leaving 4320 veh/hr capacity for special events such as a CFL game. -assume, generously, that there are the equivalent of 1 southbound lane and 2 eastbound lanes in addition to linc/rhce. e.g. upper mt albion (southbound lane) can maybe handle about 0.3 x 1800 veh/h due to the short green light at rymal. -assume again 40% capacity, leaving 60% remaining, so 0.6 x 1800 = 1080 veh/h sounthbound and 2x0.6x1800 = 2160 veh/h eastbound. -assume all the east (linc) and north (RHCE) feeder lanes are at capacity leaving the stadium, and there are two accesses at full capacity (e.g. mud street and dartnell, with no stoplight controls, i.e. lots of traffic cops facilitating movement

therefore there are 4320 + 1080 + 2160 = 7560 veh / hr capacity leaving the stadium. 7000/7560 = 55.5 minutes just to empty the EM stadium parking lot. this is, i believe, a conservative estimate and will in reality be longer.

The WH case would be way too complicated to calculate, but like IWS, parking would be distributed in a large area with multiple streets in and out. 403 access is main and king (2.5 km), york (2.8 km), aberdeen (4.3 km), also multilane rounds such as main eastbound, burlington st, and 4 sounthbound mountain accesses. More importantly, they lead to where the fans live, unlike the southbound roads from EM.

What this means in english is that, without a shadow of doubt, the WH stadium, like IWS today, will have much less of a problem than EM moving vehicles in and out of the stadium.

I suggest we get Hart Solomon and the city traffic dept. to weigh in on this, correct my numbers, and compare the two sites.

And don't get me started on financial viability, as the most relevant CFL comparison stadium to WH - Percival molson in montreal, has sold out for the last 10 years despite being downtown with poor parking. Bob conveniently evades this comparison. And the economic spinoff benefit for the city favours downtown, by a factor that likely exceeds the Ticat's losses that so concern Bob. However, this is all just guessing until Bob releases the economic viability numbers, which he probably does not have the balls to do.