Red Hill Valley Parkway curve to be rebuilt to make it safer, says city staff

A tight curve along Hamilton's Red Hill Valley Parkway will be reconstructed in the coming years to make it safer, says the city. 

Engineering firm AECOM Canada ULC made the recommendation last month, after reviewing the design of the municipal highway that was the subject of a years-long judicial inquiry. The city released the report Friday.

"We know there is more work to do to rebuild trust," said Mayor Andrea Horwath in a news release. "Releasing this report and acting on its recommendations is a critical step in our ongoing commitment to transparency and accountability."

Hundreds of collisions, some where people were killed, took place on the Red Hill between 2008 and 2017.

In 2013, a city engineering director commissioned a report that found serious safety issues with the Red Hill, but those findings weren't made public until 2019. Council ordered the judicial inquiry to establish the facts of what happened and make recommendations. 

Justice Herman J. Wilton-Siegel, the inquiry's commissioner, recommended 36 "action items" in late 2023, including for a design review. 

Work to fix 'superelevation' of curve to go ahead

AECOM completed the review and found the Red Hill's "superelevation" between King Street and Greenhill Avenue is not high enough. Superelevation, also known as banking, refers to the tilting of a road so the outer edged is higher than the inner edge — like on some racetracks — to help drivers navigate turns safely. 

The 2006 design of the Red Hill specified the superelevation of the turn to be six per cent, but AECOM found it built with a lesser tilt. 

AECOM also determined the curve should be slightly wider — 440 metres instead of the current 420 metres. However, changing the curve width would mean realigning the road, which isn't proposed at this time, said a staff report at general issues committee May 21. 

AECOM recommended the city do the superelevation work, but noted there is no imminent danger to the public, the report said. The city said that work will go ahead and it will include construction costs in next year's capital budget, which are expected to be between $4 million and $5 million. 

Nine of the judicial review's 36 action items have been implemented, staff told councillors at a March meeting. They said most of the others will be done by early 2026. 

They range from improving traffic safety on the Red Hill and Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway to the culture within the public works department to how staff communication with the public.