This is a very boring article about City streets. Read it at your own peril.
Historically, Precinct K has never been a very populated place. Only one stubborn senior still lives in the area covered by Qualico/Waterside’s current Precinct K DASZ. That is one more person than those who lived in the Fraipont grain field south of Island Lakes in 2014. No one but the rabbits lived there in 2014.
Less than thirty people live in the remaining bits of Precinct K. What should I call our area now? Precinct K South West? If I can arbitrarily call Qualico/Waterside’s new area Sage West, how about I call our area Creek Bend Estates?
Creek Bend Estates currently has three City streets within it. Creek Bend Road. Sioux Road West. Aimes Road. The hyphen was somehow dropped from Aime’s Road. The City does not like possessives in its street names.
While it is almost a new street, no one lives on Aimes Road. No one will ever live on Aimes Road. While I still wish that they had built an Active Transportation pathway on the new Aimes Road Bridge, I will not spend any time here discussing that street. Even the City and Province argue over who owns it. It is, sadly, quite an ugly child. What then about the lovely named Creek Bend, the former Crescent Road before Unicity was created, and its sister Sioux Road West?
In the early 2000s the old John Bruce Bridge over the Seine River, just off of St. Anne’s Road, was converted into an Active Transportation bridge. Traffic engineering consultants hired by the City had successfully made the case that the historic John Bruce (Jean Bruce) Road, with a right-of-way only 20.117 metres (66 feet) in width, was too narrow to accommodate future suburban traffic from Ladco/Manitoba’s Royalwood Phase 2.
At the time, those same engineers told me that the old Creek Bend Road Bridge to the south was probably going to be part of a future AT system. Creek Bend Road is also 20.117 metres wide (66 feet) in width. I was told that a new Aldgate Road extension and bridge to its north would be much better and safer for everyone concerned.
The Aldgate Bridge was, of course, never built. While engineers may design the world, they do not actually own it. The current Villas on the Seine condo residents, members of the CBRA, now live in the proposed bridge’s right-of-way. It is quite a lovely community. I may even live there one day myself.
Qualico has informed us that Creek Bend will be widened between the CPKC railway tracks and the new Southside Drive extension to Creek Bend. As an improved collector road, the roadway would need to be widened. Southside Drive in Royalwood to the north is currently 24 metres (78.7 feet) wide. It is not too hard to imagine that Creek Bend would also be widened an extra 12.7 feet within that area. Save Our Seine successfully asked that the new Creek Bend AT trail be placed on the north side of the road, in the new right-of-way lands to be given by Qualico to the City. Now going by the new retention pond, it will be a lovely path.
It is unknown if Qualico will make the same land dedication from the proposed Southside Drive west intersection towards the privately-owned lot at 275 Creek Bend Road. Probably not. As this area will not be a collector road, they can build new lot driveways that directly front onto the City road within that area.
The City previously took a small land dedication in front of 99/101 Creek Bend in order to increase the road width there to 22.059 metres (72.4 feet). That made the sharp turn just before the new bridge approach much safer. While designing a safe Active Transportation pathway along that sharp turn will be a bit tricky for engineers in the future, I am sure they will figure it out. Engineers like challenges like that.
Surprisingly, the existing Creek Bend Road right-of-way is an impressive 30.175 metres (99 feet) wide within the urban Creek Bend community west of the Seine River. It almost looks like an ambitious road improvement project had been abandoned just before its execution.
The biggest surprise one gets from examining the existing streets within the Creek Bend Estate area is Sioux Road West. Aerial photography shows that much of the gravel road is actually encroaching on the adjacent CPKC railway right-of-way. You can see that the relocated Canada Post box is located quite far from actual City property.
Sioux Road West is a mere 10.058 metres (33 feet) wide. That is the same width as the 265 Creek Bend (Smith Farm) flag-lot driveway found to the west.
(Fun Fact. If the Smith Farm driveway was ever converted into a standard residential street, something like Bonavista’s Whitehorn Crescent, 18 metres (59 feet), a landowner from an adjoining property would have to convey some of their land, at no cost, to the City.)
I do not know if Sioux Road West is even legal under new federal railway safety guidelines. The Lac-Mégantic railway disaster is still fresh in many people’s memory. If the street is still legal, the City would probably need to expropriate land from private landowners to the west in order to improve it. For example, Pebble Beach, which also parallels the CPKC railway in Southdale, is 18.288 m (60 feet) wide.
Was this article as boring as promised?