Comment 26777

By highwater (registered) | Posted September 30, 2008 at 10:22:11

Hi Geoff,

I don't mean to be a bore, highwater, but in order for a street to be wide enough for LRT, would it need to have more than two lanes?

I'm not a traffic engineer, and I'm sure turning radii, etc. factor into these kinds of things, but it seems to me that removing a lane of traffic on a two lane, two-way street effectively turns it into a one-way street, so there's traffic flow to consider which would be that much more challenging in an older residential area. Bear in mind also that all the loading docks for the hospital are on Forsyth. Changing Forsyth to one-way would again bring tractor trailers onto narrow residential side streets, and past an elementary school. Been there.

It would be interesting to see what transpired if LRT actually lured a large amount of private investment to that corner of town. I was walking there myself earlier today - There's not a lot of undeveloped space, so I gather that a lot of very ugly buildings would be coming down. . .

I was not part of the Secondary Plan process, but I attended the public information meeting after the plan was complete. You're right. The hope is that the houses and single story commercial on Main will be torn down and replaced by taller buildings featuring street-level retail. The zoning is in place to make this happen, but the city representatives were under no illusions about the economic challenges at the time, but this was a couple of years ago before LRT was on the radar. LRT is exactly the sort of catalyst that could make this vision a reality, so I would be very disappointed to see it re-routed off Main even for a short distance.

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