Raise the Hammer

There's no reason we can't do this.

http://raisethehammer.org/article/1818/c...

Agreed, this one is a no brainer, even people with a "driver's mindset" have to see this as a pain in the butt. It makes no sense.

Exactly. Being able to drive North from the Beckett Drive mountain access is going to be fantastic for drivers, even if it slows down traffic a bit going the other way. It'll take so much traffic off of Aberdeen as drivers will be able to go all the way to King... and when the Frid extension is complete, it'll provide another Westbound route to take further pressure off Aberdeen. Seriously win/win for everybody, it's a wonder it wasn't done a long time ago.

Notice they say stop at Main. The truck routes are sacrosanct. Cannon -> Queen -> King westbound truck route isn't even up for discussion.

Queen from the escarpment to the West Harbour will become a simple, easy, convenient link for everyone headed to those areas, along with cyclists. No more long, circle shortcuts through Kirkendall, Durand and Strathcona by people trying to get where they are going against a one-way Queen St.

The 2-way conversion that's being planned will stop at Main. North of Main it's a truck route and takes westbound traffic from Cannon to King, as well as taking Eastbound traffic coming from the York Blvd bridge over to Main.

They won't touch that. They're probably grumpy that La Luna is so close so they can't widen it.

We in Strathcona are fighting this. Ottawa St is a truck-route. Seems the truck tires still turn fine on a two-way street. Dundurn South is a truck route. I've never seen trucks gobbled up by the two-way monsters under the road. A street can easily be a truck route AND two-way.

The designs I shared above in my blog entry about Toronto conversions are perfect for Queen. Roncesvalles in Toronto is a truck route. Saw a couple huge trucks there tonight when I was visiting. Us in Strathcona are tired of all the shortcutters speeding down our streets because Queen is one-way, just like folks in Durand and Kirkendall are tired of the shortcutting.

Keep the faith....and pressure throughout this process.

Agreed. Rather than obliging northbound drivers to take circuitous routes through lower-city neighbourhoods, a two-way Queen Street would offer a shortcut through the middle of Kirkendall, Durand, Strathcona and Central.

Bonus feature? A quarter of Queen is already two-way.

By gaining an extra 3-4 feet of new sidewalk width on the west side of Queen (I'm assuming that parking would be on the east side), we have room for a new row of extra trees, helping to create a 3-4 foot buffer between pedestrians and live traffic on the non-parking side of the street.

As an example, here are the new trees on Lansdowne in Toronto (I'm not sure why they put them on the opposite side of the sidewalk, instead of the street side)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21510434@N0...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/21510434@N0...

And the same treatment was given to Roncesvalles: http://www.roncesvallesvillage.ca/wp-con...

http://breakingprojects.com/junctioneer/...

Here is what Roncesvalles looked like before construction. Very Hamilton-esque: http://neighbourhoodwalks.files.wordpres...

Post-construction: http://neighbourhoodwalks.files.wordpres...

And just as a teaser for what could be, think Barton, Cannon, Wilson, Bay or King. Perhaps the perfect complete street:

http://www.railwaypreservation.com/vinta...

Comment edited by jason on 2013-04-06 14:37:18

I would not call this a "perfect" complete street. It has three major problems:

1) The transit stop is on the wrong side of the cycle lane, creating a conflict with transit users. Here is a video showing how to locate transit stops properly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h96Y--QzjzI

2) The cycle lane is not protected, preventing most people from using it.

Here is a video of a roadway of about the same width, but with protected cycle lanes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAL4yr927e4&feature=player_embedded

3) Although not shown in this photo, this street does not have protected intersections. The MTO reports that in Ontario 63% of motor vehicle collision injuries occur at intersections. Here is a video of how to properly handle intersections:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA


This video shows several examples of streets with lots of people showing how this works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_865351&feature=iv&src_vid=FlApbxLz6pA&v=5HDN9fUlqU8

Intersections are of such vital importance for pedestrian and cyclist safety that without protected intersections it is really impossible to call a street a complete street.

Awesome stuff. Personally I don't mind the location of the transit stops considering the narrow width of the roadway, and desire to widen the sidewalks and add trees - which Roncy (and most Hamilton streets) desperately needed.

The final 2 videos you posted though are brilliant. So simple, yet safe, effective transportation design. And it can be done anywhere. I love that the final video shows many busy, car-heavy streets as opposed to inner city Dutch streets with lighter car traffic and mostly bike traffic. These suburban style, wide, fast roads are more typical of North America and yet this design seems to work wonderfully there.
Thx for sharing.

Anyone have anything to report from this meeting yesterday? I was unable to attend.

Not too much to report from the meeting. First hour was spent chatting at the church (everyone who spoke was in favour of conversion with the underlying sentiment that this is a no-brainer...let's just get on with it).

Councilor Farr did mention that he is trying to add Bay Street conversion to the conversation as it is the northbound sister street of Queen, so it makes sense to tackle both at the same time.

The second half of the meeting involved participants breaking off into groups to walk Queen and assess what physical changes would be required for two-way conversion through a Citizen Audit Survey.

An online version of the Audit is available at http://fluidsurveys.com/s/queenaudit/

Yes, I heard about the Bay St discussion. That makes it even easier. Both streets can have 1-lane each way, parking on one side and the end result is 2 lanes northbound and 2 lanes southbound, with no need for circular routes all through the neighbourhoods.