Raise the Hammer
The results from participants at the most recent Transportation Master Plan review public meeting.
By Bob Berberick
Published December 06, 2015
The City is currently reviewing its City-Wide Transportation Master Plan and held a public meeting last week. It was extremely interesting and interactive.
Everyone was given a remote then shown a question. You selected the answer that best reflected your view. Once everyone had made their selection, the results were displayed.
There were a lot of very good questions, and I took pictures of the results.
The first result was that 72 percent of attendees picked "segregated bike lanes on arterial roads" as the best opportunity to allow more cycling for trips between 2 and 5 km.
Cycling opportunities
Next, 62 percent picked "integration of health and transportation planning to promote active transportation" as the most beneficial to one's travel within the city.
Benefit travel within City
44 percent picked "coordinated travel apps" as the emerging technology that will have the greatest impact on one's travel within Hamilton.
Emerging technologies
71 percent picked "Downtown corridors" as the existing area experiencing congestion that most impacts morning and afternoon peak travel.
Congested corridors
50 percent picked "Increased transit service frequency between Upper and Lower Hamilton" as the corridor improvement that will best address one's long-term travel requirements.
Long-term travel requirements
68 percent picked "Implementing BLAST network" - the City's planned network of rapid transit routes - as the improvement area that best addresses one's transit requirements.
Transit requirements
41 percent picked "Provision of gondolas to address the Escarpment" as the most beneficial bicycle/pedestrian network improvement to benefit the overall system. (35 percent picked "Other").
Overal bycle/pedestrian improvements
46 percent picked "Off-peak delivery" as the best opportunity to mitigate goods movement within Hamilton. (31 percent picked "Other".)
Goods movement
85 percent answered "Yes" when asked if the proposed "Complete Livable Better Streets" concept and policy is moving the right direction.
Complete Livable Better Streets
42 percent picked "Improved bicycling/pedestrain experience" as the most important consideration during evaluation of one-way streets to two-ways.
One-way to two-way street conversion
The City has two more upcoming public meetings on the Transportation Master Plan review:
And:
By JasonL (registered) | Posted December 06, 2015 at 14:43:47
No surprise at all by those results. Also no surprise when the final TMP update is done and we continue to spend 99.9% of our budget on new suburban roads and highways.
Does anyone know how many public sessions have taken place in total, and where each of them are taking place?
Comment edited by JasonL on 2015-12-06 14:47:15
By KevinLove (registered) | Posted December 06, 2015 at 16:24:50
Many of the questions do not provide as options a lot of common-sense alternatives. Which, I presume, leads to the high percentages of "Other" for those questions.
The top two for "Other" were tied at 35% each.
The first one was "Which of the following major transportation corridor improvements best address your future long-term travel requirements?" Not one single one of the alternatives presented was about cycling infrastructure. Three of the four were about improvements for car drivers only and the fourth was improved transit. I also would have picked "Other."
The second question at 35% "Other" was, "Which of the following bicycle network and pedestrian network improvements would you consider the best benefit to the overall system?" The four alternatives presented were all fairly lame and would have provided only incremental benefits.
For this question, there are a whole lot of much better improvements, ranging from eliminating "cut-through" rat-running motor vehicle traffic from every residential neighbourhood to a permanently car-free downtown like virtually every Dutch city has.
The second highest "Other," at 31%, was "Which of following (sic) opportunities mitigate the impacts of goods movement on travel within Hamilton?" Again, three lame alternatives, one half-way sensible one (which was picked the most) and totally ignoring what is probably the best alternative, moving goods by rail.
In short, I am not impressed by the quality of the consultation.
Comment edited by KevinLove on 2015-12-06 16:40:33
By Core/Urban/Suburban/Rural (anonymous) | Posted December 06, 2015 at 17:13:02
Agree totally!
We've seemed to miss the fact that Hamilton is now amalgamated. Why indicate widening of just a few highways, but leave out Highway 5 (Flamborough), Highway 6 (Mount Hope and Waterdown), QEW Niagara - all routes that are taken to our employment areas. Highway widening should have simply been one choice, cycling routes another, public transit another, etc.
Isn't the intent of the Transportation Master Plan to be inclusive of ALL modes of transportation?
There's a few other slides that also appear to lead the surveyor to a pre-determined outcome.
Somehow dropped the ball, or was this by design?
By JasonL (registered) | Posted December 06, 2015 at 22:07:44 in reply to Comment 115442
I don't know for sure, but I'll guess that they didn't include provincial highways since this is being done by city hall to help set our local planning going forward. Provincial roads are a totally different budget.
By The w's (anonymous) | Posted December 06, 2015 at 23:47:54
Where did this session take place and how many participated? Demographics, randomness and sample size are important when analyzing surveys. Thanks for posting this. It's interesting to see the what was done and said.
By abdullah (anonymous) | Posted December 07, 2015 at 08:19:28
Also, slightly off topic but the city has a survey concerning the centennial neighborhoods (i.e. neighborhoods close to the upcoming GO station in Stoney Creek). Please fill it out, as there is potential to make these neighborhoods much more pedestrian friendly.
By KevinLove (registered) | Posted December 07, 2015 at 14:19:12 in reply to Comment 115446
Except they did include provincial highways. See the slide captioned "goods movement."
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