Raise the Hammer

We have one of these at King & Macklin.

Impressive indeed. Shows what can be done if the will (and money) exists.

My question when it comes to the call for increased infrastructure for cyclists is the weather. I'm certainly not against the ideas forwarded, and those bus stops are an excellent idea, but the situation in Hamilton is that cycling is really only a viable option for around 50% of the year for the majority of people. So how much money do we spend, and how much congestion does lost car lanes create for the benefit of better cycling for half a year or less?

Imagine those bus stops on King, Main or worse a two way street like Queenston. You're going to lose minimum one lane of traffic, likely two all year round. Traffic in this city is already bad and not getting better by the recent decisions put in place. Things like that horrendous bus lane down town, the decision years ago to add more street parking down town at the cost of car lanes.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for greener transportation and a healthier population, but we have to be careful not to make the city a disaster (more of a disaster) to operate cars and trucks in, we can't afford to hurt businesses or make the city a less attractive destination for people. There has to be a balance, that's something that I think gets overlooked regularly when looking at things like this and anyone that brings it up gets labelled a villain for somehow being against green transportation or safe cycling.

Absolutely. Everybody knows the Netherlands are a tropical paradise where it never ever snows or rains or has any other inclement weather.

And as for the bus lane - you know the bus lane is a dry-run for the LRT right? LRT will close two lanes on King. And you may note that King is only two lanes wide in the International Village. That means zero car lanes there. That's actually the plan.

Hamilton's 1-way grid was built at the height of the steel boom when there was far more traffic in this city. If you actually compare the number of cars per-lane to every other city in the province, Hamilton's main lanes are completely underused. And that's expensive. It costs a lot of money to maintain those roads. A lot a lot. Like, "hundred million dollar deficit in road maintenance" a lot. And bike lanes are cheaper to maintain than roads because they don't wear out as fast.

and the space. if you try this in a "city" you have to tear down someone's home or business. both videos as in the burbs. and according to this site the burbs are not part of the city.

If you clear them, they will ride.

Another example close to home.

Ottawa’s segregated bike lanes are maintained throughout the year. The bike lanes are plowed to the same bare pavement standard as car lanes, says Jocelyn Turner, Ottawa’s media relations officer. The city uses a mechanical sweeping broom, plow and snow blower to clear snow. After that a liquid anti-icing spray is applied to the bike lanes to minimize the use of environmentally-unfriendly roadway rock salt.

Like all cycling infrastructure, these protective islands are very cheap to build.

The total annual cost in The Netherlands of construction and maintenance of all their excellent cycle infrastructure is a not-so-whopping 30 euros per person. About $50 in Canadian currency. Dirt cheap.

The entire City of Hamilton could be transformed with Dutch style infrastructure constructed to the design engineering standards of the CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic for a fraction of what was spent on the Red Hill Expressway.

Not only is cycling infrastructure cheap, but it pays for itself in reduced health-care spending. What a great bargain for the taxpayers!

Yes, it was such a pity about the number of homes and businesses that had to be torn down at King and Macklin.

Oh wait... that number would be zero.

both videos as in the burbs.

Incorrect, the same bus/tram separation exists, even smack in the middle of big cities like Utrecht or Amsterdam. The infrastructure is standardized across all of NL. Simply awesome, I could barely tell the difference between rural and city cycling, it was all comfortable. Just way more people in the bike lane with you in the city.

Or you could give up some of the roadway devoted to automobile traffic.

There seem to be people cycling in the snow in this video:

http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2010/1...

And after a whopping 45 cm of snow Copenhagen seemed to be able to keep the bike lanes clear.

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2010/12/ult...

In short, snow is not a big deal if we are prepared for it.

There has to be a balance, that's something that I think gets overlooked regularly when looking at things like this and anyone that brings it up gets labelled a villain for somehow being against green transportation or safe cycling.

Of course there has to be a balance, but the scales are basically lying on the ground and weighted down by elephants in favour of cars. This concept just evens things out.

but the situation in Hamilton is that cycling is really only a viable option for around 50%

This is precisely because the city doesn't have enough infrastructure and doesn't maintain it. There are lots of people in Toronto who cycle year round, and Toronto also doesn't have really great infrastructure or great winter maintenance of what it does have - and yet people put their coats and scarves on and ride their bikes. Despite the lack of infrastructure, 'the majority of people' rode for around 75% of the year in a really hard winter. People will ride their bikes in the winter, but you need good infrastructure that is maintained with a priority towards cyclists (i.e. you can't store plowed snow in the bike lane). Also, there is a higher bar for safety in the winter - 1m bike lanes or shared lanes are a lot less fun when you are trying to avoid ice patches. Separated lanes are way better.

Traffic in this city is already bad and not getting better by the recent decisions put in place.

Wait, what? You do realize that Hamilton has a nickname of 'the 20-minute city', right? Its actually just as fast to drive through the downtown from end to end as it is to drive around on the QEW - there is no city with actual traffic issues where that is possible. You can't seriously say that Hamilton has bad traffic. Maybe its bad in the sense that when you do interact with other cars they are speeding down Main St. and it is difficult to change lanes across a 4-lane highway..but that is not 'bad traffic'.

There has to be a balance, that's something that I think gets overlooked regularly when looking at things like this and anyone that brings it up gets labelled a villain for somehow being against green transportation or safe cycling.

This happens because what you are calling 'balanced' is in fact arguing against a balanced approach, which would consider all modes of transportation to be important. An approach to road design that accommodates automobile safety but doesn't incorporate safety for cyclists and transit users intermingled is by definition unbalanced. Articles like this are in fact calling for more balanced road design that no longer caters to fast vehicle traffic at the expense of all other modes of transportation and at the expense of local land use.

Also, if you had suggested pre-1920s that all roads be covered in asphalt, people might have said 'Now, we need to be realistic about the cost and maybe it isn't affordable to make every road better for cars and horses' and yet here we are. Why not for bikes?

Comment edited by AnjoMan on 2014-06-16 12:57:32

According to Google street view, King and Macklin is a good example that is almost up to Dutch standards. The only thing that is missing is the concrete protective island.

Right now, at King and Macklin, the area between the bus lane and the cycle lane is protected with nothing more than paint. Which is really no protection at all. Bus passengers waiting there are exposed to car drivers going right by them at high speeds. Scary!

I strongly suspect that, in reality, bus passengers wait on the sidewalk. Since zero extra sidewalk space was provided for a waiting area, this creates conflicts with pedestrians using the sidewalk for transportation. Particularly if people are using baby carriages or wheelchairs.

Another source of conflict arises when the bus arrives. Passengers will then be impatient to cross the cycle lane en masse, creating conflict with cyclists.

A proper Dutch style protective island removes all these conflicts. Passengers have a safe place to wait for the bus, so that they do not obstruct the sidewalk. Passengers cross the cycle lane when they arrive, not when the bus arrives, so they have plenty of time to wait for a break in cycle traffic.

No conflict, no stress! That's Dutch design!

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2014-06-16 13:00:33

"The infrastructure is standardized across all of NL."

This is an extremely important point. There are national standards for infrastructure, so everyone knows exactly what to expect everywhere. This is an important part of the Dutch Sustainable Safety program.

It also allows best practices to be deployed across the country. Nobody reinvents the wheel. They use the best engineering design every time.

"It is absolutely necessary to get all the details right in order to consistently achieve safety for all street users, and to ensure that walking, cycling or public transit are the fastest, easiest and most convenient ways of getting from A to B for wherever people are going." The fastest, easiest and safest way from point A to B is by car!

Dutch cities used to be like that. Here are some beautiful before and after videos.

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/200...

Right now, Hamilton is disturbingly like the "before" photos. They changed. We can too.

Average wage in the Netherlands is $28CAD. Tax rates are 37% to 52% Sales tax is 21% Hamilton can't afford the taxation to accomplish this. Also I don't know anyone who makes $28.00 and hour! Gas costs 2.58/l .At those rates they all ride bikes because they can't afford to drive!

The entire construction and maintenance costs of cycle infrastructure throughout The Netherlands is 30 euros per person per year. About $50 Canadian. Transforming the entire City of Hamilton - every street, every intersection, everywhere - with proper Dutch infrastructure constructed to the CROW design engineering standard would cost a fraction of the cost of building the Red Hill Expressway.

And it would then pay for itself with reduced health care spending.

Residential neighbourhoods can be transformed with nothing more difficult than steel security bollards to eliminate cut-through car driving. That's a cheap and effective way of keeping dangerous cars away from people, particularly children. That is one of the key reasons why UNICEF has determined The Netherlands to be the best country in the world to raise a child.

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2014-06-16 15:15:36

It actually is a raised curb. It has to be a minimum height for the buses. Waiting for the bus here is no more dangerous than any other stop featuring only a curb to separate traffic.

I'm speaking purely of the stop design here. The bike lanes are another story.

To me the only failing of the King at Macklin design itself is that there isn't a clear indicator to pedestrians to avoid standing in the bike lane. Also, while it includes the full 3 "zones" (pedestrians, cyclists, and bus-waiting) bus-waiting strip is a bit narrow so it's no surprise that they end up ambling into the bike lane.

That and the fact that this kind of consideration for pedestrians is only shown in pedestrian/cyclist interactions instead of pedestrian/car interactions.

I certainly do not blame waiting passengers for wanting to stay well away from high-speed car traffic. Particularly when there is no concrete safety island to wait on. When it comes to safety protection, I'll take concrete over paint every day.

The problem is that conflict is designed in to this infrastructure. The whole point of Sustainable Safety is that the infrastructure is designed to engineer out conflict.

If I was really a transportation geek I would get my tape measure tomorrow morning during rush and go to King and Macklin and measure the width of the safety island and take a count of where passengers were waiting.

Shocking that Copenhagen has enjoyed success in cycling rates despite having their own manual that is not the CROW...

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2014/01/cop...

There are great lessons in there as well. My point is that there are things to be learned and applied from all manner of resources. Being a zealot for one design manual and one only makes you narrow minded in a way.

(This is a quibble btw. I agree with the basic argument presented by the author.) (Also the author really ought to go see Main at Macklin. Its quite good.)

And this is exactly the type of attacking offensive behaviour I was alluding to. Let's get a couple of things straight. 1. I never said this, or any bike infrastructure was bad. I said we need to think it through and all the implications first. 2. I never said what we have now is balanced, it's far from it, but I don't want to see a big bandwagon jumping effort and have the balance swing the other way either. Like it or not most of the traffic in cities our size is car/truck traffic and our businesses are supplied by trucks.

You can call us the 20 minute city but I guarantee that doesn't apply at rush hours and it sure as hell doesn't apply on Barton, or King down town where it's been reduced to two lanes. It applies on King and Main where they're multiple lanes in each direction. Our two lane streets are awful traffic and down town is an absolute joke since the bandwagon forced giving the 5% of the traffic that the HSR represents 33% of the lanes. THIS is exactly the type of thing I'm against rushing into, ask the down town businesses what they think of it, most of them have flyers in their windows against that stupid lane.

If you'd take a second and realize that just because I'm not jumping up and down screaming that this should happen NOW doesn't mean I'm against it. Pick your battles and make sure those you choose to battle are actually the opposition, attacking someone for having slightly different viewpoints makes you look foolish.

I also am going to stand by my opinion that the vast majority of cycle traffic in this city is only ever going to be for 50% of the year, there are a certain number of "die hards" that will cycle year round, they are a small minority of cyclists though. Toronto has more cyclists and more year round riders simply because that city is a nightmare to drive in, I know people that won't go there because of it, that is precisely what I don't want Hamilton to become.

Comment edited by calder12 on 2014-06-16 21:17:07

With an 18% national cycle mode share, Denmark is second only to The Netherlands at 27%. Second best would, of course, be a huge improvement over what we have now in Hamilton. And who can fail to be impressed by the adorable "Cycle Chic" photos from Copenhagen.

And yet, those Cycle Chic photos do give a hint of why Denmark is second best. Where are the elderly people? Where are the children?

The answer to these questions is that Danish infrastructure is very good, but the Danes have too many unprotected and narrow bike lanes. Further details are here:

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/200...

But really, watching #1 criticize #2 just shows how far behind Hamilton is.

The only real advantage to being 40 years behind is that we have no barriers to adopting the best design engineering standard. The Dutch CROW standard that gives protection to all people, from 8-80 years old, so that everyone feels safe cycling to all destinations from A to B in Hamilton. Then we will have children going to school like this

Comment edited by KevinLove on 2014-06-16 21:37:41

Yes, I fully agree. I wasn't suggesting it's balanced now, I just don't want us throwing the balance in the other direction for traffic that is really only in use 50% of the year. That's all. I'm all for evening it out and making our streets safer for cyclists.

Great piece with yet another simple way we could balance our transportation options. Hamiltonians are famous for always finding a reason to say no to anything but the drab status quo, but perhaps we'll luck out in this falls' election and see some new blood with ideas beyond 1970.

"...the bandwagon forced giving the 5% of the traffic that the HSR represents 33% of the lanes."

Calder12 appears to be unaware that the single bus lane carries more people than all the car lanes on King Street- combined!

I'm not attacking you. I'm not suggesting you are anti-bike. I'm just pointing out that the claims you make are not universally accepted. You can continue to claim that Hamilton has a congestion problem, that cyclists generally only ride 50% of the year and that somehow having infrastructure that is actually safe for all modes is unbalanced, but you have to be ready for the fact that people will disagree with those claims.

What you are calling 'attacking, offensive behaviour' is nothing more than disagreement with your point of view.

I would also like to say that Toronto does not have more bikers because 'its a nightmare to drive' here. The simple fact is that cycling is cheaper and more fun than driving, and there literally is no way that any city could accommodate the number of people commuting in Toronto if they all drove. There is so much in Toronto that people want to be there even though it is impossible for them to drive there.

Cities are by definition dense and crowded. What you want for Hamilton (not to be a 'nightmare for driving') is essentially that it not really become as dense and thriving of an urban place as it needs to be in order to succeed. I know people who won't go to Toronto because its a pain to drive, but I also know that the reason they think this way is because they drive there every time, and because they can't imagine a different lifestyle from their own. Its their own limited viewpoint, not a problem with the city, that keeps them away. Are we to design our cities to placate those who are unwilling to imagine what it would be like to live in the city?

Your point?

Comment edited by calder12 on 2014-06-17 08:30:16

Well, I apologize then it certainly seemed like you were taking offence, but you're still under the impression that I'm saying anything is balanced at the moment.

I do disagree that we'll magically have lots of cyclists year round too with the addition of these lanes. I live on Main Street near down town, do you know how many cyclists I saw this winter? None. Not one single cyclist once the snow started falling, now I am sure there were some but if I can live on the street and not see any that would say to me that there aren't that many. Cycling in the snow and sub zero temperatures may be more fun for some, I'm going to go out on a limb again and suggest those people are still in the minority of cyclists.

I am not suggesting that we not do something, quite the contrary. I am all for the bus lanes on Hunter, although they need work they're a good start. I'm all for making the streets safer for cyclists AND drivers since uneducated and dangerous cyclists cause accidents too. But I am not for making a city, that by your own claims, has decent traffic flow for the majority (and you're right I should have mentioned the specific issues and not generalised the whole city as bad) and ruin it. How would lanes like this work on Barton St. (or second most populated bus route) or Queenston Rd.? These are streets where even during slow times we can't afford to lose entire car/truck/bus lanes and during rush hour it would be a disaster.

The places these special lanes would make the most sense are the places where putting them in would do the most damage to traffic flow overall. There are all kinds of places we could do it without impeding traffic but then those places wouldn't make enough difference since they're not heavily travelled.

Hamilton is not the Netherlands, we're more populated and just going by the video alone showing those spots built entirely different. You'd have to either take car lanes or take buildings to make these lanes happen in 80% of the city. Which makes sense to you?

You'd have to either take car lanes or take buildings to make these lanes happen in 80% of the city. Which makes sense to you?

Taking car lanes makes sense to me, especially on streets left one way. A 747 could make an emergency landing on almost any arterial in Hamilton. The jetliner would even obey traffic as it would most likely get all the green lights :)

Kidding aside, council did say recently it was a good idea to reduce maintenance by painting bike shares and lanes over some of the surplus lanes left over from the industrial halcyon days.

50% of the people does not equal 50% of the traffic. The bus lanes are causing serious congestion down town, if you haven't seen it you must not drive down there often. The number of people the vehicle holds should have no bearing on how much of the road it's given. Why would it? What benefit is there to anyone other than bus drivers? I take public transit, the buses aren't faster with this new lane, they don't run on time more often that I can tell.

I fully agree on the one way roads there is a lot of space we can use, it's those routes like Queenston or Barton, that are major bus routes, that I think we'll have issues.

Well if you're taking everyone's opinion then I assume you'll take mine that I notice no difference at all in times.

I never suggested that public transit wasn't more efficient, so what that graphic has to do with anything at all escapes me. A bus holds more people and is a more efficient means of transportation. That's obvious and was never in question. Whether said bus, which does relate to significantly less traffic than the cars down town do requires an entire lane is what the question was.

I put forward AGAIN that down town driving is basically a parking lot during rush hour, it was bad before it is a lot worse now. Making driving down town worse will not increase public transit users, it will just hurt down town businesses, and again a lot of which have signs in their windows asking for that lane to be removed.

Given your attitude here I really hope you are paying attention to both sides because it honestly sounds to me like you're looking for reasons to defend the lane and not evidence.

Comment edited by calder12 on 2014-06-17 09:38:34

I live around the corner from the bus lane. Newsflash: King is still a gross, dangerous freeway 24-7.

Absolutely we should be dedicating road space for everyone, and taking into account the number of users on the road. To suggest that 3 of 4 lanes for the fewest users is somehow out of balance is deadly accurate. We should be taking another lane away and giving it to more transit or bikes.

I've chatted with staff and drivers who I know. Their schedules are pretty much on time, but there is a 30-60 minute period each day where they get bogged down in the International Village, which puts them slightly behind. However, once they hit the bus lane, they are back on schedule by the time they hit Dundurn. Simple solution that the city simply refuses to touch, both on Main and King - deprogram the lights. The lights on King are backwards (from every normal city). Instead of turning green from west to east to allow cars to move through John, Hughson etc.... they turn green from east to west. So, traffic bottled up at John has a green light while the cars in front of them are still sitting at a red at Hughson and James. This of course, is our freeway timing meant to allow people to drive through the city with their eyes closed.
In proper cities, the lights change in the opposite sequence.

Bay St needs to go two-way ASAP. This would allow us to extend the bus lane through the International Village and direct through cars to Cannon, Hunter or Wilson. International Village would take on a great vibe with only 1 car lane. Would be more local traffic, not people roaring out of town. Again, many cities intentionally re-direct through traffic. We encourage them to blast down King St.

Just so everyone is on the same page here, we're talking about downtown Hamilton, Ontario.

Downtown Dundas and Ancaster are slower at rush hour than downtown Hamilton. No surprise, they have safe, two-way complete streets. Something their councillors oppose us poor people from having downtown. We don't deserve good quality of life apparently.

Just to be sure I'm on your page. Slower traffic = good quality of life?

I have lived in Durand/Kirkendall for 25 years and have worked in the core that entire time.

Downtown is NOT "basically a parking lot during rush hour". Never has been and still isn't. Normal cities have rush hour traffic that has to stop for red lights. In Hamilton this gets described as gridlock or as you describe, "a parking lot".

Only in Hamilton can driving through the core of a city unimpeded at all times of the day been seen as an ideal. Now if you could find free parking too.............well that would be nirvana.

Crosswalks. Use them. If you're still having issues then you've got an issue with drivers following the road laws, not a road issue.

You have to live in reality, ideally we would all use public transit but that is neither realistic, nor in many cases practical/possible.

Comment edited by calder12 on 2014-06-17 11:09:57

It's also important to recognize that for much of the year car transport is also not a viable option, without spending gobs of money (Hamilton budgeted about $21 million/year) making it work.

They tried. There's zebra crossing lines across the bike lane where the bus doors line up. They could put up signs, but why bother? There's enough bike traffic there that it becomes obvious what each area is for. There are signs for cyclists to yield to pedestrians which is appropriate.

I also am going to stand by my opinion that the vast majority of cycle traffic in this city is only ever going to be for 50% of the year, there are a certain number of "die hards" that will cycle year round, they are a small minority of cyclists though.

50% of the year? So, April to September? What's wrong with March, October, and November? All one needs is a pair of gloves and a scarf. Even the three potentially snowy months of the year are perfectly fine of cycling most of the time for distances of a few kms.

I admit that riding a sport bike, as most people do, makes winter cycling more complicated than it needs to be - but fortunately traditional city bikes with enclosed chains and upright posture are becoming easier to get find.

Comment edited by moylek on 2014-06-17 15:20:19

Well, fast traffic = reduced quality of life for many of Hamilton's neighborhoods as well as all of Hamilton's cyclists and pedestrians...so I suppose that the reverse would be true as well.

Every time a car hits a pedestrian or a cyclist because they are going fast, the quality of life for that pedestrian/cyclist is reduced or eliminated.

I disagree. My daughter, a Mac student, has remarked on how much faster the buses can travel now with the bus lanes (and she was happy about it).

Sure, I'll just use the crosswalk on the West side of Dundurn or Locke... waiiiiiiiit a minute.

Oh right, because using an EXISTING crosswalk, like on the east side of either of those streets is a huge hassle... oh wait right that would make sense... nvm.

Which is why places like North Hamilton have reduced speed limits on their residential streets. This makes perfect sense, eliminating car and truck traffic doesn't make as much sense to me.

Hamilton has good traffic flow, it's good for business, I honestly don't see the benefit to the city or it's residents by going out of our way to change that.

Of course we would all have far more time to walk or cycle if we were unemployed so I suppose there's that.

I'm being facetious, but at the end of the day all I want is balance. Not knee jerk reactions which governments are prone to making. Make sure that proposed changes are good for EVERYONE. Being a cyclist entitles you to equal rights, not more rights. And for the record I walk and take public transit nearly everywhere I go.

"places like" the north end? let's be honest - the north end is the ONLY neighbourhood with reduced speed limits throughout. and it's a trial... AND the trial wording prevents any other neigbourhoods from enjoying the same treatment for years.

If fast streets are so good for business, then why is it that our tax burden is unevenly carried by residential taxes? Why does the downtown consistently underperform? how long does the experiment have to go on before we realize it was a failure? it's been 60 years....

The same people who want to keep the fast cut-throughs are complaining about their property taxes. Newsflash: high taxes are the cost of destroying residential neighbourhoods and business areas by making cut through traffic the #1 priority.

Comment edited by seancb on 2014-06-25 14:57:07

I'll believe that fast traffic is great for quality of life once I see Lloyd Ferguson move a motion to convert Wilson St to 4-lanes one-way with timed lights. Ditto for Russ Powers and King St in Dundas.