Raise the Hammer
By Ryan McGreal
Published June 29, 2012
As announced this week, Caroline Street has been converted to two-way traffic between Main and King Streets.
In a pattern common to recent two-way conversions in Hamilton, the street has a slight quality of TWINO about it: two lanes in the original southbound direction and one lane northbound.
Two-way in name only?
Unlike the York Blvd conversion, however, it is at least feasible for a vehicle to get onto the northbound lane here, as Caroline is already two-way south of Main and it looks like left turns are allowed from Main onto Caroline.
If you are approaching King from the north on Caroline, you will notice the leftmost lane is blocked off. That's because it's southbound on the other side of King, and you can't turn left onto King because it's one-way westbound.
The Public Works Department says the Downtown Transportation Master Plan includes two-way conversion on Caroline as far north as York Blvd (the street is discontinuous across the yard of Sir John A MacDonald High School). However, the conversion of that section is not currently scheduled or budgeted as it would require some reconfiguration of the intersection at York.
By -Hammer- (registered)
Posted June 30, 2012 at 10:19:10
Well, there isn't a lot of traffic coming from southbound along Caroline, but I will agree that not having the street be continuous is kinda silly. Although this could lead towards more two way conversion of York and Cannon (although baby steps). Hopefully the city follows through on this one.
Lets be honest though, we know the real reason they are making this conversion. It's so that the Staybridge Suites (and possibly the new Federal Building development) can have easier access to and from Main and King. It keeps drivers away from Hess St (which is a predominantly pedestrian area) and doesn't require them to go down Bay St and then connect back to King and then turn up Caroline. It also means people leaving can just turn north and onto King vs going down George, left onto Bay and then left onto King. I can't really say that's a bad thing so long as they leave the stretch between Hess and George alone.
Comment edited by -Hammer- on 2012-06-30 10:26:00
By ScreamingViking (registered)
Posted June 30, 2012 at 14:49:03
in reply to Comment 79021
By John Neary (registered)
Posted June 30, 2012 at 12:52:29
in reply to Comment 79021
Lets be honest though, we know the real reason they are making this conversion. It's so that the Staybridge Suites (and possibly the new Federal Building development) can have easier access to and from Main and King. It keeps drivers away from Hess St (which is a predominantly pedestrian area) and doesn't require them to go down Bay St and then connect back to King and then turn up Caroline. It also means people leaving can just turn north and onto King vs going down George, left onto Bay and then left onto King.
These are exactly the sort of micro-level reasons why all of our streets should be two-way except in very unusual circumstances.
By JMorse (registered) - website
Posted June 30, 2012 at 19:42:40
By jason (registered)
Posted June 30, 2012 at 22:33:01
with the weird left-only signs now on Main and the abrupt dead-ending of the left lane of Caroline at King this might be the worst 2-way conversion we've done to date...and that's saying something.
I didn't realize this was so difficult to figure out: http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/AssetFactory.as...