Raise the Hammer

As a Westdale cyclist, it's frustrating that the simple, obvious solution of losing parking on one side of King would be so hard. There's already no street-side parking between Paisley and Marion, and on the East side there's parking lots all along the South for Shoppers, Library, and Tim's, leaving only a tiny handful of gaps for street-side parking... And the West side of Westdale has their street-side parking heavily used.

In the end, it's about 10 parking spots. Which is a really small number to me, but at the same time to a business that depends on that spot like Pita Pit or Burrito Banditos, it's a lifeline. And all of Westdale's lots are very often filled to capacity.

That being said, the city already seems to have some "unnoficial" greenways figured out with this stuff, like the contra-flow bike-lane at Cline and King in front of Cootes' school. Somebody realized that cyclists needed to be able to go the wrong way up cline and made that little lane long before contra-flow lanes were a thing anywhere else in Hamilton. This actually creates a little conflict because Cline is ambiguous about its 1-way/2-way nature as it passes Cootes' school. It's only 1-way at the tight neck where it meets King, but drivers treat it as 1-way right back to Paisley, which creates conflict as left-hand parkers are surprised by unexpected oncoming cyclists.

At any rate, as a lifelong Westdale cyclist: The biggest problems with cycling in Westdale are the King street gap, the lack of any path across Churchill Park to connect the North and West parts of Westdale, and the proliferation of stop signs. I'd love to see local "yield for cyclists" signs added to some of the all-way-stops on these greenways.

On Haddon, IIRC the LRT plan will be blocking Haddon at Main and so Cline would be the only street in the area with direct north/south connectivity.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2017-01-30 15:20:58