Raise the Hammer

My main worry is the western end of King.... it sounds like nobody is interested in reworking the 403 bridges. Even if Main gets converted to 2-way, they may preserve a 1-way gap for the bridges. With the 403 bridges remaining 1-way, then the Westbound traffic is going to have to get to an extremely difficult bottleneck of King/Dundurn. The most obvious solution is a pretty bad one: take the bike lanes off Dundurn North and provide two Southbound driving lanes to take Westbound drivers from York to King... but those bike lanes are an essential connection, at the absolute very least for the half-block from Head to Hunt.

Reading the report: those "Far-side" stops sound extremely space-intensive. Think about it, for an LRT to have a "far-side" stop on a two-way street, that means that every intersection that includes an LRT platform must actually have two LRT platforms, one on each side of the intersection.

I'm also surprised they listed King at Dundurn as a spot where they expect improvement with LRT, because it's such a bottleneck in the system. I guess the assumption is that much of the traffic in and out of the West End will be taken over by LRT passengers.

The capacity along the route of QueenStreet(southbound)/KingStreet(westbound)isr educed because of the LRT alignment. Vehicles choose the alternative route of York/Dundurn/King. The model shows a congestion issue at the intersection York/Dundurn for the westbound left turning lane which slightly reduces the capacity on York Street.T he mitigation priority in the next iteration of the model is to address this congestion issue.(Note: The previous TPAP model also identified a concern with this intersection.)

edit: aside, the city's PDFs are horribly formed, as you can see by the copy-paste - and that's after I regex'd out all the linebreaks. I wonder how well they play with JAWS or other screen-readers?

Yep. Mark my words, they're going to make Dundurn sport two Southbound lanes (incl. two Southwards turning lanes on York) instead of bike lanes, and possibly remove the Westbound bike lane on York Boulevard. Basically reproducing Queen's turning experience at Dundurn. Hopefully somehow we can get a bi-directional bike-lane still on York's Eastbound side (centre-aligned?) if they remove the Westbound one... but either way, the Dundurn bike lanes are an essential connection. Even if we get the Bay bike lanes, we'll still need Dundurn to get from Head to Hunt and vice versa for the Hunt->Dundurn->Head->VictoriaPark->Napier corridor.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2016-08-24 12:31:24

On york cycle lanes:

I think York's bike lanes need to be turned into a Cannon-style cycle track to feel really useful / safe.

You could actually do quite a hefty amount of space optimization on York with that, given how the existing York bike lanes are hackily shoe-horned into a 6-lane road. Over the longer term, there's plenty of room for a multi-use trail on the side of York Blvd when beyond Dundurn. This would connect very well with an on-street Cannon-style York Blvd cycle track aligned on the same side.

I'm not sure how this will affect traffic planning in the LRT days, but this possibility could/should be accounted for:

A protected/barriered cycle track (Cannon style or better) on the northern edge of York (eastbound lanes) from roughly near Cannon through Dundurn -- then connects to a multi-use trail on the same side of road -- when beyond Dundurn Castle's parking lot. That little narrow asphalt sidewalk in the middle of the grassy areas can easily be widened to become a multi-use trail.

It makes a lot of sense, I think... (have to think this through...and the planners will have to as well). Overall (with other optimizations along with these) you might even be able to make York consistently 4-lanes all the way from Burlington to Hamilton, with a bit of fiddling of the allocation... rather than the current narrowed 2-lane sections from hacked-on bike lanes. That would provide some traffic diversion capacity (detour flow) during LRT construction near the 403 interchange -- this is one area where you can make both bikes AND cars happier -- methinks.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2016-08-24 13:54:56

Actually, one bizarre option I'd thought of would be to do a centre-aligned physically-protected bike lane on the Southmost eastbound lane. The massive, well-treed median would provide some refuge for what's normally a harrowing idea - a bike-track in the middle of the road. The problem is that the bike track would have to veer into the cut-off area that's currently a turning lane, so it would be ugly and wobbly at intersections, but either way: left-turn actions on York are could be separately signalled and rare up to Dundurn, protecting the central bike track from any turning movements.

... this probably requires drawings. But basically, you continue the Cannon track in the middle of York Boulevard. You'd never even need to cross York to go from Cannon track to the York track.

I've wondered about that design as well. It could be continued all the way to Plains Road, avoiding the conflict where the ramps to/from the 403 pass right over bike lanes.

neighbourhoods along York fought long and hard to have those bike lanes installed. They've done wonders for making it easier to walk along the sidewalk and to cross the street. The point of changing our transportation habits going forward is to prioritize non-car options. To take away bike lanes so cars never see a red light 24-7 is about as bad as city planning can get. I don't imagine that idea will have any traction (other than the usual suspects in Ward 8 etc...)

Here are two great reads on how we should be designing Hamilton for the next 25 years....we can change the quality of life and transportation habits of our city with some proper planning:

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/08/w...

http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/200...

You get the city you plan for...always

Comment edited by JasonL on 2016-08-24 21:25:22

I know, the bike lanes are an important buffer between pedestrians and traffic - even if replaced with a single bi-directional lane, at least one sidewalk would be right next to a live lane of functionally-highway-traffic.

Unfortunately, it's hard to read this statement as anything but a plan to take away the Westbound lane:

Vehicles choose the alternative route of York/Dundurn/King. The model shows a congestion issue at the intersection York/Dundurn for the westbound left turning lane which slightly reduces the capacity on York Street.T he mitigation priority in the next iteration of the model is to address this congestion issue.(Note: The previous TPAP model also identified a concern with this intersection.)

I hear you. I'm simply saying that we've spent the last 50 years doing everything possible to alleviate anything that "slightly reduces the capacity on York Street". We need 50 years of prioritizing all other modes of transport if we really hope to see a balanced system develop.

Seeing the number of intersections proposed to have an F level of service even without LRT is telling considering how small our city is, and how overbuilt our roads are. We drastically need to see the number of cars per person drop significantly over the next few decades. Making every left turn a high speed breeze through rush hour isn't the way to incentivize other transportation modes.