Comment 37369

By John Neary (registered) | Posted January 25, 2010 at 10:34:16

Anyone looking to just bomb through town in their car will NOT be doing it on King St anymore. The majority of traffic in the IV will be local traffic that actually wants to be there. Car addicted Hamiltonians will always find the quickest, shortest way to their destination and with the two-way conversion, those routes will included Cannon, Wilson and Main. Not King.

I really, really don't want to come across as another guy griping about some petty inconvenience related to LRT and ignoring the promised benefits. I strongly support the project on a number of grounds: environmental, economic, quality of life ...

But I have seen a number of comments from time to time putting forward the idea that converting Main and King to two-way won't really affect car travel times because all of the traffic will switch to Wilson and Cannon.

Well, that's just great for the tens of thousands of people who live near those streets, which are presently even more of an urban blight than Main and King. At least the latter streets already have decent bus service, not to mention the lingering benefits of having been thriving commercial corridors before the Kool-Aid-drinking 1950s council decided to turn them into urban racetracks.

The city's consultants have already recommended that the proposed two-way conversion of Wilson should be put on hold if Main and King are converted to two-way as part of the LRT project. Meanwhile, the probability of Cannon becoming a human-friendly street anytime in the near future is somewhere between zero and nothing.

Barring gross incompetence or corruption in its design and implementation, I will support LRT. It is good for the city as a whole. But it would be a great shame if LRT is implemented in such a way as to encourage people to "bomb through" our most injured neighbourhoods even more than they already do.

(By the way, Jason, I feel like I have been picking on you in recent threads. I don't know why. I agree with about 95% of your posts. I think you just used a phrase that touched a nerve, and I don't intend this riposte to be personal.)

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