Raise the Hammer

I personally think the plan is great, and a major improvement over what is there now! While the 5-lane section isn't great, the reality is that a lot of people will access the Innovation Park via cars and this is necessary. Not to mention that a HUGE number of vehicles use Longwood as access from the mountain to westdale/dundas/Mac. Unless the MTO builds (i.e. with City funding) a new connection from Highway 403 EB to Main West, that volume is never going to go down.
I actually have the opposite opinion about the roundabout...much safer for all road users, including pedestrians. With the roundabout, everyone will have to slow down to get through it, as opposed to drivers "gunning it" to get through the green phase of the signal. Also, with respect to "the large numbers of students coming to Westdale High School from the Aberdeen area, the roundabout will be a significant deterrent to walking"...I completely disagreee. The pedestrian/multi-use path eliminates that concern. To my knowledge, no one lives in the SE quadrant of the intersection so there's no need to actually go through the roundabout...just around it...on the provided path.

I don't imagine you've walked across a roundabout? It's horrible. Especially one like this connecting a 400-series highway to another one of Hamilton's inner city highways.
Local residents should fight this plan tooth and nail until the city backs down.

Hey Hamilton, the 1950's called. They're laughing at us for still using their planning logic, proven all over the world to be a failure.

Where on earth are you walking to/from to cross that roundabout? Hitch hiking on the 403? A leisurely stroll through the train yard? At least the roundabout slows traffic down heading on to Aberdeen. The food truck guys are kinda screwed though.

Westdale and back, Innovation Park to Food Truck Alley, Westdale to Chedoke Golf Course. Or perhaps just out for an evening stroll in the neighbourhood, which should be a safe right for anyone. Roundabouts don't belong downtown on main roads. A full stop light is necessary there to prevent Aberdeen from being a freeway extension like Main, King, York etc.....

You don't need to cross that roundabout to walk to any of those places. Stoplights only slow traffic when they're red, and there's already a problem with cars speeding onto Aberdeen. Wasn't there a pedestrian fatality on that stretch last year? Instead of fighting about the roundabout, how about we fight for making that stretch of Aberdeen better for pedestrians. It's pretty terrible walking under that bridge now.

this issue with pedestrians is that traffic doesn't stop - creating limited opportunities to cross the street safely, which by the way has to be done in stages since the roundabout provides multiple crossing points as opposed to a single crosswalk in a traditional intersection....

pursuant to my comment below, the additional dedicated right turn lane adds an additional crossing for the pedestrian!

That and Hamilton has a culture of Yield signs that really mean "yield to cars alone". We've seen how miserable it is to cross a slip road protected with a yield sign - the lousy ones at Paradise and Main, at Main and the 403, etc. Drivers don't stop for pedestrians on them, and the traffic never stops. Look at the recent pedestrian accident at Main and Frid.

A roundabout is functionally an intersection constructed entirely out of those little yield slip road crossing things.

i still don't understand the purpose of the additional dedicated right turn lanes!

Where's the Chamber on this?

No surprises at all. City Hall has been consistent for decades that high speed traffic trumps everything - including economic growth or success. This design is horrible on so many levels. I'm glad you've pointed out all of the fine details. Longwood is already a freeway without the extra lane. And we should be trying to stop vehicles at ALL highway exit ramps, not encouraging them to fly into Kirkendall dangerously.

The day of mass retirements at city hall can't come soon enough. Hopefully they don't completely destroy the city in the meantime.

Comment edited by jason on 2013-07-05 13:06:10

Brooklyn is looking to move forward with an Innovation district:

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/201...

It's a city of millions with legendary traffic of course in the NYC area. Here is their proposed street design: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcsi....

Narrow lanes, protected bike lanes and 1 LESS lane than we are proposing for our park of 4-storey buildings. They have mega towers coming to theirs. Let's at least do the green boulevard down the middle instead of a stupid turning lane.

Holy crap, they're really doing it that way. They're sistering the bridge... when I suggested that in a previous thread, I was joking. They're really adding a second bridge next to the existing Longwood bridge for pedestrians and cyclists. On the one hand, I'm happy to see that cycle track and wide sidewalk, but on the other hand OMGWTFBBQ... this is an enormous construction project just to keep Longwood humming along at highway speeds.

So Longwood is a highway. I'm pretty sure this isn't what MIP had in mind. I'm sure Hamilton Police Services will be happy to be keeping their highway-with-city-speed limits speed trap.

I notice there's a small gap between the sidewalk and the roadway... not wide enough for a grassy boulevard, probably just the usual two-foot strip of bare asphalt separating the Longwood highway from pedestrians. Lovely. If they're going to make this, then they should accept it for what it is - a highway. Put up those eyesore Jersey barriers like they have over on the 403/King Street bridge and let the speed limit hit 70kph. Stop pretending it's anything but a highway. I wonder how McMaster would like that?

This looks less and less like an "innovation park" then it looks like those little one-story office-parks along North Service Road.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2013-07-05 13:35:22

^I agree that this road is a highway on ramp. Whether it is the high speed traffic or the stupid intersection at Main and Longwood that forbids ped crossing. If you want to cross longwood from the car dealership to the radio station, you have to physically stop the right turning traffic by stepping in front of moving cars. Having a walk signal and the car having a red light doesn't seem to matter when speed is prioritized. This road is a cruel joke.

On the bright side, there are plenty to choose from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_parks

I've seen the word "campus" associated with the Innovation Park. It's even on their website. To me, that connotes a cluster of buildings in a quieter pedestrian setting - exactly what McMaster University is, and what I hoped the IP would emulate.

Should a 5-lane arterial roadway bi-sect a campus environment?

Why not at least have parking on both sides, to facilitate the kind of business interactions that will happen, particularly once the "campus" is built out as shown in the conceptual drawing above?

This is crazy.

A suburban office park next to a highway deserves a solution that respects the environmental context. Mac is developing a row of buildings which look pretty, but don't address the street, are pretty to drive by, and don't bring any sense of activity besides people walking by. Longwood is a suburban office park and really this solution goes above and beyond addressing the majority of needs of the area.

I walk to my job, which is on the MIP campus, from Kirkendall, across Aberdeen and then up Longwood. There are a handful, but a relatively small number of other MIP employees who walk a similar route, either every day or from time to time, for their commute. Most of the folks walking on Longwood on a regular basis are Westdale students, and some Columbia students and a handful of employees of businesses near Main and Longwood. This is my experience based on walking it every day and seeing some of the same faces every day.

It is hard to imagine this part of my commute getting any worse. The sidewalks are narrow and uneven and pool with water after a rain or snow. They are usually uncleared in the winter time. The traffic moves far too fast right, and drivers who turn on to Frid usually do not yield to people on foot. Many of the cyclists, because of the fast traffic, choose to use the sidewalks, and do not alert people on foot verbally or with a bell, so I routinely experience or witness near-misses between people on bike and people on foot. Because the cyclists who take this route are accustomed to using the sidewalks, they often do so on Aberdeen as well, even on the stretch with a bike lane- they often lose a few meters of bike lane anyway when motorists turning right from Aberdeen to Longwood encorach on it, since there is no actual divider.

To be short, any changes would be welcome to me and would have a positive impact on my commute. I'm not so concerned with the roundabout, especially as I rarely see people on foot crossing Aberdeen at Longwood in almost any direction. There is no need for a centre turning lane since there are two lanes in both directions- the way I see it, the fact that there will be one will only mean that motorists will need never prepare themselves to slow down, since no other car will possibly be slowing in front of them to make a turn.

It would be nice to have any kind of a boulevard- psychologically, the worst part of the experience really is the fact that cars are less than a meter from you, usually still in highway mode. A wide boulevard would help, but even better- since there are four lanes now and possibly five in the future- would be on-street parking. Perhaps there could be time restrictions for it if it was really felt that a loss of a lane would impede rush hour traffic so much (it wouldn't), but some kind of on-street parking at least at times of the day would do a lot to make the walk on this stretch seem safer.

any changes would be welcome to me and would have a positive impact on my commute

Even when those changes involve making the traffic move even faster than it is today??

You probably missed the parts of my post where I clarified the least-desireable elements of my commute, and explained what of this proposal bothers me, and might in my opinion might be improved.

To answer your question: yes, practically any change would be an improvement for me. Traffic on this particular stretch of Longwood already generally far exceeds the speed limit, the sidewalks are in places impassable after rains or snowfalls, and the sidewalk is immediately adjacent to the roadway.

Short of a change that would actually eliminate the sidewalk such as it is, any change would be positive. I would prefer certain changes over others, of course. You can read the sentence of mine that I quoted to mean "I am highly displeased with the situation as it is now, and see few ways in which it could be worse."

If it ever comes, the LRT should run through Innovation Park. Coming from the east, it should run south on Dundurn St, west onto Aberdeen Ave and then north onto Longwood Rd. At that point it can rejoin Main St W.

Maybe CP will sell the marshalling yard to the city so it can be used as the LRT storage and maintenance facility.

How about a "philosophers walk" incorporated into the MIP planing so we could avoid the streets altogether?