Raise the Hammer

But Terry Whitehead said it all on CH last night. Hamilton's unique geography makes us different from everywhere else. What works everywhere else would never work here.

Oh, and facts schmacts. His mind is made is made up. Regardless of what the data the says; kill the bus lane.

With this kind of evidence based decision making leading the charge we are doomed for another generation.

This argument makes too much sense.

A cheap and effective way to improve this lane - one I've been harping on since the first week the lane was installed (and I'm not the only one): Add transit priority signals for buses turning left out of the transit lane.

(And the next step should be to do the same for buses turning left from john to king)

The "Brooklyn" photo is *exactly* what should be done between Queen and Bay.

Except that the Bus Lane should be a Bus/HOV lane.

That picture has one lane of vehicle traffic.

One.

People aren't going to magically stop driving cars to work overnight because we reduce the lanes available to them by a significant percentage.

That picture depicts a much wider street as well - do you realize how long a change of that magnitude would take to implement?

Main problem I see is the bottleneck between Wellington and Mary. When the buses (especially B-Line) don't move faster --or at all-- it negates the purpose of the lane.
Get rid of that downtown sign, add one more lane of vehicular traffic to make it two Traffic Lanes, one Parking Lane, and one Transit/ HOV lane.
Start the Transit/ HOV lane at Victoria.

These simple steps will help ease that bottle neck.
Oh and remove that ridiculous border on downtown.

how do those cherries taste, coward?

I guess NYC just doesn't have the traffic volumes and businesses that Hamilton has.

With half of trips in Hamilton under 5km, many drivers could very easily switch to walking, biking or transit. Right now, with parking at $4 all day (much cheaper than two bus tickets) at $60 per month (just $2.73 per day) in municipal lots, and a transportation system that drastically favours driving it is no wonder that most people choose to drive. But don't forget that even now the city claims that during rush hour the transit lane carries as many people as the other lanes!

The first picture shows three lanes of non-transit motor vehicle lanes (plus a transit and bike lane and ample parking). That's more than sufficient for Main and King given the current traffic levels. It's not clear that this street is much wider than Main or King St at their widest points (the lanes are quite narrow in the NYC picture).

How long would a change of this magnitude take? Well, NYC has made this sort of change in just a very few years, in a much more challenging context. Presumably, Hamilton, with much less traffic could as well. Similarly, Paris (with a much higher level of traffic) has implemented a network of largely combined bus and cycle lanes on their arteries in just a few years. It is possible.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2014-12-09 12:20:06

OMG. Those are one way streets!!!

They are indeed one-way streets, but not as we know them in Hamilton.

why is it that trolls never read the articles before offering their 'opinions'? Is that a hard and fast rule of online trolling??

a change of this magnitude will take as a long as it takes paint to dry. Still leaving us with curb parking, a bus lane and 2 car lanes.

http://www.raisethehammer.org/article/18...

I don't think Wellington-Mary is the problem personally. It's always been a freeway until the bus lane arrived. Traffic volumes on King are simply not high enough to cause congestion with 2 lanes available. The problem is the horrid timing of the traffic lights from Mary-James. You'll notice that west of James the roadway is identical as east of James - 2 car lanes, a bus lane and parking lane. Yet traffic magically starts flying again at James all the way to Dundurn.

The city should have adjusted the traffic lights on King back when it was first suggested.

I wish RTH had a block featue. This individual is truly "special".

"I don't think Wellington-Mary is the problem personally."

Seriously? Have you spent time there? Beyond choosing the time of day to take a photo of how 'it's not a problem'?

(And FYI: at the worst times of the day, it's 'east of Wellington to John'.)

I don't think Wellington-Mary is the problem personally. It's always been a freeway until the bus lane arrived. Traffic volumes on King are simply not high enough to cause congestion with 2 lanes available. The problem is the horrid timing of the traffic lights from Mary-James. You'll notice that west of James the roadway is identical as east of James - 2 car lanes, a bus lane and parking lane. Yet traffic magically starts flying again at James all the way to Dundurn.

The city should have adjusted the traffic lights on King back when it was first suggested.

A huge part of this is that they have all these buses turning from john onto king and then turning left to james or macnab, so they have to cross all the king car lanes twice with no dedicated signal allowing them to do it quickly.

if the john buses had a dedicated turn signal into the bus lane, and all of the king buses had a dedicated turn out of the bus lane into macnab and james south, the "problem" would go away.

in fact, keeping the bus lane and putting these 3 transit signals in would probably result in better driver experience than if the bus lane was completely removed - because even if removed, the buses still would have to merge across all of those lanes to get to the terminal.

His point is not that there's no problem with traffic-flow from Wellington through to Mary, but that the problem is caused by the screw-up of lights through downtown. The lights need to be fixed, not the width or lane-profile of the roadway itself.

I mean, the bus lane doesn't even *exist* from Wellington to Mary. Obviously the road worked just fine before the bus lane, why is it congested now? The traffic from Mary through to Bay is the obvious source of the back-up. That area is now 2-lanes, just like Wellingotn->Mary. But Wellington->Mary worked fine as 2 lanes.

Basically, Wellington->Mary proved, *before the bus-lane* that King Street can run just fine with two lanes of live traffic, provided the lights stay synced and nothing else snarls the traffic.

So theoretically, Mary->Bay should be able to do the same isntead of backing up traffic right through to Wellington. But it doesn't. Why?

Well, the obvious culprits are twofold: the Mountain buses (John->King turns across all the traffic, and then King->Macnab turns across all the traffic) and the bad light timing.

Otherwise, the buses are out of traffic, so they're not a source of the snarl. That is, after all, *the whole point*.

Now, since we've already considered how King runs fine with 2 lanes, we can also continue this logic further to Queen (we'll ignore West of Queen since that's where the truck route begins and traffic from Cannon is shunted onto King). If we had 2 lanes there too instead 2.5 (right now it's 3 rush-hour, 2 otherwise) then we could give the North side businesses back their North-side parking meters (the South side businesses all have parking lots anyways). Bye bye "NO MORE BUS LANES" signs, everybody's happy!

Finally, let carpoolers use the bus lane, making the whole area into 2.5 lanes instead of 2 (I dissent on letting cyclists in there - the whole point is that packed vehicles should be able to go fast, which bikes aren't. And I'm a cyclist).

All these quick wins were obvious within a *week* of the launch of the bus lane. Why did the City sit on their hands.

yes it's an entirely fixable problem

Perhaps the bus lane isn't the best place for bikes, but the city needs to make space SOMEWHERE because the current choices are: 1. ride right on the line between cars to the left and buses to the right and probably die or 2. block an entire vehicle lane and surely get physically harrassed or 3. don't go anywhere on king street on a bike anymore and hopefully the destination you were hoping to reach happens to be on some rinky dink side street instead because that's the only place the city wants you to be

well stated on all points. Amazing to me how people forget all the way back one whole year how fast flowing Wellington-Mary was prior to the bus lane.

I'm unsure of the exact width of King from Bay to Locke. It appears to be around 42-44 feet. IF it is, we could do the following:

north curb parking: 8 feet bus lane: 10 feet 2 car lanes: 20 feet bike lane on the south curb: 4-6 feet.

Once west of Locke the street widens to 50 feet. Everything can remain the same but we can add parking onto the south curb in roughly a 6-7 foot wide parking lane.

Make the rinky-dink side-streets palatable with local or city-wide Idaho Stop legislation (put up "Yield to Cyclist" signs on all-way-stops on Napier, Market, and King William if city-wide Idaho-stop isn't palatable) streets and contra-flow bike-lane on the 1-way portion of King William. Put a bike lane on King in the wider segments (places where it's greater than 3 (2+HOV) live traffic lanes wide and *especially* Locke->Dundurn).

Not ideal, but more could be done to accomodate cyclists who are going to destinations on or near King.

Send council an email.

So what do we do? Should we write council an email pointing out the flaws made it a non-starter? Get a petition going for the changes to be made?

Yeah. That oughta stop all the ward heeling dead in its tracks.

Of course! I forgot that permanent parking lanes are permitted to be narrow. By converting the North lanes into permanent parking width, you could probably squeeze a bike lane just South of the bus-lane in many places.

I live in ward 8 and have been confused as to why Clr. Whitehead is so vocal on this. Our ward on the Mountain has far more pressing issues than bus lanes in the downtown core. Focus on those, Terry, please!

any chance he gets to stick it to the 22 million folks who use transit each year, he takes gladly.

true. I hadn't thought of putting it there. I'm thinking the south curb would be a little safer instead of being in the middle of all the traffic lanes. But yes, parking lanes are usually in the 7-8 foot range such as was recently done on Cannon east of Victoria.

please email all of council, yes.

Oh ok, so you're blind? Ignorant?
Listen, I have been a huge proponent of the King St Bus Lane, and have championed it to many Merchants, Citizens, and City Reps alike, and even I can admit that Wellington to Mary is a HUGE issue.

Why?
Because it impedes on the rapidness that is the B-Line Rapid Transit Bus!
B-Line flies from Eastgate to Wellington (which is exactly what it's supposed to do), but once it gets to Wellington, it can take upwards of 5 (!!!) minutes to get past Mary St.

Why would people choose Public Transit if it's not rapid? I always just want to get off at Wellington, but ALAS, it's not a B-Line Stop!

Amen! Here Here!
Jason is being ignorant, or he hasn't actually been in this area (?).
It's not so bad mid-day, but come 4pm it's stupid!

Buses can't even get through, which negates the whole purpose of the bus lane!

If you really live in this area you know King has been 2 lanes from Wellington to Mary for years and traffic flowed just fine. Now it's also 2 lanes west of Mary but traffic is slow because of the badly timed lights and lack of advanced left turn for buses just like Jason has been saying. So who is being ignorant?

i think jason's talking about the cause of the problem (light timings and buses going from John to MacNab) not the location of the problem (international village, duh)

1. not 'overnight', but definately in future generations. 2.there are more drivers on the road than bicyclists and bus patrons, yet municipal and federal and municipal governments choose 'the blind eye' to the fact drivers are in the 'majority' and it's the drivers that pay for road maintenance by way of their sticker 3.if the federal government continues to frustrate drivers onto public transit starting on the municipal level, then in effect the federal government is trying to 'monopolize'the transport of human beings in Canada which clearly removes the money that the insurance and oil industries used to enjoy and deposits that money firmly into the pockets of the government transit system. 4. if the municipal and federal governments are 'allowed' to do this- slowly omit automobiles in favor of public transit, this then gives them 'carte blanche' to charge whatever they want for fare due to the monopolization, and you'll pay it...or lose you job. Considering this, and the fact that food banks and 'flop houses' are struggling to survive as it is now due to regulation and legislation, not only will you lose your job if you don't pay their 'ransom' but you will starve and be homeless as well. It's all part and parcel of their plan...this is NOT a mistake or 'error'. Control how people go to work, and you control people. This is the beginning of the deployment of a totalitarian dictatorship cleverly disguised as 'going green'which on initial inspection, seems like an excellent way to 'clean up' the environment, but the only 'green' thats 'going' is the green from the insurance and oil industries pockets into the government pockets leaving the environment issue nothing more than a 'side effect' of this policy. 'No cars' means no more corporate bail outs for the auto industry, the huge drop in fossil fuel sales puts the government 'in the drivers seat' considering that they will be the only ones consuming fossil fuel and the oil companies will 'comply' with government agenda or go bankrupt. This also solves the problem of the 'religous lunatic fringe' by putting rich religous oil barons out of business virtually overnight, therefore completely dis arming them by way of bankruptcy as far as 'terrorist attacks' goes. Your 'flash pass' for public transit will immediately inform police of your whereabouts at all times and will give access to your T-4 so the transit and government can see exactly how much you make and adjust your 'fare' according to what you make monthly, and you ll pay whatever they want or so much for your job and good luck with eating and finding a place to sleep after you've lost your job. Bicycle lanes and the political rise of 'concern for pedestrian safety' are just a lame way to show that this is 'still' a democracy because you still have a 'choice'as far as 'alternate' transportation goes. Good luck walking or riding your bike to work in Toronto if you live in Hamilton however. John Torys policy of further intentional frustration to drivers is clear in his policy of 'narrowing' lanes and 'halfing' the speed limits for 'safety reasons' which clearly underlines the governments agenda of railroading people onto public transit systems. We must also consider that it is TORONTO that is responsible for the bus and bike lanes, and the city of Hamilton has no say or authority to the contrary in the matter which proves the political dictatorship on a federal, provincial, and municipal level has already begun and is slowly 'trickeling down' to citizens in general, and drivers in particular. This is an excellent plan when viewed from a corporate standpoint, and considering that your 'say' is less important than the political agenda, and that driving is a 'privilege' and not a 'right' that can be taken from you at any time, the government is clearly 'well within their rights' to implement this plan which is just the tip of the iceberg as far as losing your voice in a democracy thats been re worked into a totalitarian dictatorship.