Comment 48992

By John Neary (registered) | Posted October 07, 2010 at 15:18:32

Frank,

Thanks for sharing the plans. It's a shame they don't show what the arrangement of lanes will be. I will be very happy if the new sidewalks are better engineered than the old ones. Many of the curb cuts at intersections pointed diagonally into the middle of the crossing, and didn't continue around to the crosswalks. That wasn't fun for people with strollers or scooters. (Although it might have been a minor deterrent to cycling on the sidewalk, which is a big problem around here.)

I've also emailed Public Works re: the staging. No response yet.

In the grand scheme of things, the botched staging of sidewalk reconstruction on Wilson Street is not a very important problem. The reason I blogged on this subject is that I consider it to be emblematic of how the city (and/or its contractors) just doesn't get pedestrian issues. If they had dug up all the sidewalks on the same day -- expecting to have them replaced the next day -- and were delayed by weather (for example), I could accept that. But I suspect that in fact they dug them all up at once out of convenience without ever thinking about how it would impact pedestrians, and without any intention to replace them with any kind of haste.

On a related note: when streets are temporarily closed to automobile traffic (e.g. James North for Super Crawl and Open Streets), signs are posted weeks in advance notifying motorists of the inconvenience. Why are pedestrians not afforded the same courtesy?

John

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