Comment 52790

By -Hammer- (registered) | Posted December 07, 2010 at 20:29:27

Little known fact, Main and King St. respectively used to be, and in a certain sense an extension of Highway 8. However since the QEW came along, Highway 8 has fallen into quite a lot of disuse. Before Highway 8 used to be the major artery through Hamilton way back when. I think part of that concept, and the fact Highway 8 is becoming a more tourist scenic route through the Niagara region is part of the reason they are resistant to the idea of two way traffic.

Now as far as should it be two way, that's a bit sticker. Urban intensification in the core, and throughout the Main/King/Cannon/Barton corridor is needed. Will two way access aid this? My answer is hesitantly no. At this point, there simply isn't enough pedestrian traffic/urban living in the corridor to warrant the conversion, especially given both Main and King are still suffering from gridlock during rush hour, which means conversion is likely to dissuade development. Now in the future, absolutely. When that future comes, I have no idea.

For now, I'd like to see them test out the two way streets on Cannon and York/Wilson, from there we can tinker with Main and King. I'm pretty sure many are going to disagree with me on this one, but I'm still of the opinion that we don't have the Urban intensification needed for LRT quite yet, and two way streets should be humored once we hit that level of intensification.

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