Raise the Hammer

Welcome to Hamilton.

"I think we should start with converting Main and King streets - from Dundurn all the way to Gage park - into two-way streets with parking and shared bike lanes."

As innocuous as that sounds (setting aside the planning department's regimens and protocols), history suggests that there is every possibility that City's implementation will choke the life out of the areas it treats and take decades to roll out.

It's true that the one-way programme was an overnight job, but it has also been hugely problematic, not to mention a subtractive event: Less signage, fewer stoplights, simpler traffic engineering. Puttting the toothpaste back in the tube is bound to be trickier, though well worth doing. The faster it happens, the more nuance will be lost. In other words, little street parking, slipshod bike lanes, no greenery or streetscaping. (See Main west of Longwood or east of Gage for a sense of the yardstick.)

I've been living in Hamilton for 20-some years, and things have been has been slowly changing for the better, but this city has always lived in the shadow of Toronto, and tended to define ourrselves as that-which-is-not-Toronto. If they've got stratospheric real estate prices, we've got budget-bin bargoons. If they've got globetrotting career tracks, we've got life-work balance and a fertile foothold for entrepreneurial ventures. And so forth.

I understand the frustration you feel just four months into your new life as a Hamiltonian. And I'm encouraged that you don't simply demand an immediate change, as is often called for. I've seen enough swift 'n' sloppy implementation originally intended as transitional that wound up institutional. Although it's before my time, I also appreciate that game-changing design shifts are uncommon here, and that best intentions often fall wide of the mark (eg. York Boulevard, Jackson Square). Considered (but not glacial) implementation is the best way to go, but something tells me that old habits will die hard, and that more care will ultimately be given to turning lanes than bike lanes.

As you point out, it has taken Toronto decades of pitched battles to make measured progress, and that has accelerated because of private development and market dynamics and consumer demographics.

Almost 30 years elapsed between the frontier days of The Last Pogo to the inspiration of the "Drake You Ho" graffito. There is plenty of history spooling out ahead of us here in Hamilton as well.

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