Transportation

Overbuilt Car Infrastructure

By Jason Leach
Published July 13, 2006

I was on Upper Wellington today and they've got half the street ripped up. It's one lane each way for a while, and guess what: No traffic problems.

Hamilton has overbuilt most major streets. We don't need two lanes each way up there, we don't need four or five lanes on Main, King, Cannon or Wilson St. More streets like Locke, Barton, Ottawa and James North are what we need.

Jason Leach was born and raised in the Hammer and currently lives downtown with his wife and children. You can follow him on twitter.

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By Frank (registered) | Posted July 24, 2006 at 12:20:40

Check out those streets during rush hour. Sit on the corners of any of the streets you've mentioned and do traffic counts of north/south/east/westbound traffic as well as turning movements and you'll see why all the streets have been designed and built the way they are. Traffic engineering is a very complex form of engineering where future development, current development, projected population growth, pedestrian traffic etc are all taken into account. If you want, i'll show you why those streets are 2 lanes each way with centre turn lanes. I'd say keep the streets the way they are but make the ROW bigger. That would allow the city to change the cross section of the streets which would permit wider boulevards and sidewalks. No matter how you cut it, there will always be cars here at least in the forseeable future and they have to be facilitated. The most efficient way to do this and cause as little pollution as possible is to design roads and intersections with at least a B level of service. Something you might want to take into account. I love the work that the city is doing on Upper Wellington and Mohawk etc. They've lowered the road as well which means less problems for the people who live there. I bet if you take a quick traffic survey of the amount of traffic snaking through the residential neighbourhoods in that area or the increase in traffic flows on the other routes around that area you'll find where all the traffic has TEMPORARILY detoured to.

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