Comment 96756

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted January 13, 2014 at 11:14:02 in reply to Comment 96754

I agree that the term "residential street" is not very helpful, since almost all urban streets are residential. Even downtown, most streets have many residents and street level businesses, and the fact we are planning for higher densities and mixed use means that downtown will actually have by far the highest residential density in the city (Ward 2 already has by far the high residential density).

"Residential street" is also not a recognized road classification, which divides streets into expressway/freeway, arterial, collector (sometimes called minor-arterial), local.

Rather than arguing whether a street has enough residences to be considered "residential", we should be doing what many other cities (including Vancouver, Bristol, Paris, ...) have done: every urban street should be designed so that it is safe and convenient for all road users, including cyclists and pedestrians.

A generalized 30km/h speed limit on all local and collector streets is a good start, combined with engineering re-designs such as narrower lanes, two-way conversions, more crosswalks and wider sidewalks.

Eventually, the only streets that should be designed for high speed (greater than 50km/h) "free flowing" traffic should be limited access expressways/freeways and highways with speed limits of 80 km/h.

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