Raise the Hammer

Oh look, oil prices are falling. Good thing too, as I was just about to start conserving fuel again. How silly of me to think it'll ever be too expensive to drive.

There's no doubt that these stretches of highway running through the core are a major problem. But it's incredible how many people you'll find roaring down my little single lane one-way street, punching it to 60 between stop signs on a two block (small blocks!) stretch of road. I'm turning into that old dude that gesticulates wildly at speeders in the neighbourhood. It drives me nuts.

Oddly enough, it's kind of Main Street that is to blame once again. I live on Jackson, which is the first street south of Main. It runs the opposite way to Main, so I think that all the drivers who want to travel west but can't because Main is one-way, take roads like Jackson instead. Because they are trying to get someplace else - maybe someplace far away - they want to get through Jackson as fast as possible.

amazing..I just came to work (my office is directly in front of where the pedestrian was killed last night) and almost got hit walking on the sidewalk. A lady was pulling out of Hortons at Prospect and I was walking by...she inched right up to my kneecaps and stared at me as if to say "get out of the way roadkill". I stared back and almost went over to her window and said "you know someone was killed walking here last night right? I wonder why?" People just don't think. Nobody ever thinks they'll be the one to kill someone. Nor do they worry about it when most of the time the media blames the person for not using a crosswalk. While walking to my office I came across Main at Springer (look it up on google maps). I stood there and squinted my eyes trying to see the next light. It is at Main and Gage. From Springer you can barely see it. There were school kids walking everywhere, people coming and going from the Hortons. There needs to be a pedestrian light at Prospect.

Here is the second-to-worst part (the worst part of course being the loss of life)... Whenever this happens the coverage is something along the lines of this (quote from the spec): "The rise in fatalities has Hamilton police concerned pedestrians are not using controlled intersections to cross streets."

It is just me, or is it much more unreasonable to ask that pedestrians use their own muscles to go a block out of their way (and back) in order to cross at a light instead of asking motorists to yield to pedestrians? We have a serious problem of "motorist rule" in this hemisphere, and our city seems to be the poster child for it.

I also notice that even the smaller streets here become highways, because people are used to driving like maniacs everywhere in this city.

We need shared spaces downtown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_space) and calming measures EVERYWHERE (http://www.walkinginfo.org/de/curb1.cfm?codename=d&CM_maingroup=Traffic%20Calming)

There are some side streets where the city has slapped a bunch of stop signs down in order to "calm" the traffic, but this just creates a false sense of security -- security which gets breached with every rolling stop performed by a motorist. Not to mention the drag-race mentality between stop signs and the excruciating slowing-effect on cyclists (http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~fajans/pub/pdffiles/StopSignsAccess.pdf -- PDF link).

This morning I was driving behind a green minivan taking its sweet time. He stopped to wave three cars on Stanley to cross Locke Street. Fair enough you say, we need more considerate drivers like this.

Well, I was mortified, because unlike our minivan driver, I noticed some pedestrians about to cross Stanley on the west side of Locke. The cars he was about to let in front of him could not see these kids (his minivan blocked their view, a car wouldn’t have) or vice versa until the first car was halfway across Locke. Fortunately, it reacted quickly enough that nobody was hurt.

Moral: drivers notice cars but ignore pedestrians. You see this every day.

We are one death short of last year’s total and there are still 271 days left in the year. Not surprisingly, the Spectator and Hamilton Police just can’t help blaming the pedestrians. The carnage will continue.

Re. seancb's comment about drivers yielding to pedestrians - in Rome (and perhaps in other Italian cities as well) it is commonplace for pedestrians to cross wherever they like. Pedestrians simply step out into the road, and cars stop.

At crosswalks - which often have no lights - when a pedestrian steps onto the crosswalk, the entire street of cars halts. The presence of a person on foot is like a red light.

That spec quote ticked me off too. It implies that this latest victim was at fault even though they admit that they don't know where she was crossing and it's still under investigation. Pedestrians - guilty until proven innocent.

Ryan, two-way conversions, narrower lanes, etc. are all good and necessary, but you left out a quicker, cheaper fix that could be applied in the short term. I've been house hunting with my sister in my old neighbourhood in Toronto and I'm amazed at all the speed bumps that have gone up. Most residential streets in the Annex/Seaton Village neighbourhoods seem to have them, not to mention on-street parking on both sides. Slows traffic to a crawl. It would be the perfect solution for a street like Jackson, but can't you just hear the howling?

ha! Jackson? Let's get some speed bumps on Main. That would be quite a sight eh?

Does anyone know who in city hall would actually make a change? I sent an email to Mayor Fred only to get a reply that my email would be forwarded to the chief of police.

Well at least someone who's sift acting will receive it (as if!)

as far as I know, any councilor can bring forth a motion to recommend a change and develop a plan of action. None of them do, probably because they know it will get defeated. After all, outlying councilors don't want 4 minutes added to their trip to work.

CHML once again describes the latest killed pedestrian with the usual 'speed, alcohol, weather not a factor'. Then what was? The item goes on to describe the accident as occurring when the pedestrian crossed at an intersection without a traffic light and crosswalk. Why is the pedestrian always inferred as the cause of his/her own demise? This city is terribly lacking in pedestrian crosswalks, all in the name of fast-moving traffic. If anyone is at fault where 'speed, alcohol and weather' is not a factor, then the traffic planning department should be held accountable.

We need to become activist in a push to have more marked crossings for pedestrians. Furthermore, the whole synchronized traffic light system needs to be rethought as it lends to the perception that, once you get yourself timed right, Main, King, Cannon, Wilson and York are inner-city highways. The case for removing one-way roads, reducing speed limits, and eliminating traffic light synchronization have all been made here.

The idea of speed bumps on secondary streets is a good one, but is likely to meet resistence from the usual suspects. I was thinking of how these could be incorporated into our streets, and came up with what I think is a neat idea. How about planting a speed bump at every intersection with a stop sign? I'm tired of people ignoring stop signs, or others who think a simple slowdown to 20km/h is enough of a stop. They could be painted red with reflective white 'STOP' stencilled on them.

The problem is, any solution that requires concrete to be poured is astronomically more expensive than just plopping down a stop sign or a useless "watch for children" sign.

Perhaps we should band together and each buy our own concrete planters and plunk 'em down in our own streets. We can make our own chicanes!

I think you could sell speedbumps on residential streets that have a high proportion of families with young children. Parents are hyper about safety these days and might be galvanized if they saw it as a way to protect their children. I imagine that's how they've become so widespread in Toronto.

Hey Ryan,

I don't have any of that data but I can tell you that, despite the examples mentioned here, Toronto has a significant street speeding problem. Last year a mother was hit near me, at Jarvis and Esplanade, after just pushing her pushchair out of the way of a speeding motorist.

The junction nearest to me - Lower Sherbourne and Esplanade - is particularly scary. Every morning there are lines of school kids - mine included - standing by the road mere feet from the speeding tractor trailers that hurtle by.

I have had so many confrontations with drivers walking to work I wouldn't know where to begin. I've been driven at, side swiped, swore at - you name it. And every time while WALKING LEGALLY ACROSS A MARKED PEDESTRIAN CROSSING!

As to what to do I concur with your suggestions Ry - implement well-known traffic calming measures, but don't go too far. Allow a 'naked' street design to encourage the free flow of pedestrians and cars so that cars are more likely to voluntarily slow down.

As a previous post pointed out, in Europe you do indeed have jay walking chaos, but you also get a level of consideration not seen in N America. Here I find the streets are often over designed and with bylaws like Jaywalking you tend to get an attitude focused around rules and rights and not much in the way of common sense, and just generally being considerate .

I don't have any hard data, but I'll do a little searching and see what I can find.

Just to reiterate what people have said here, I think the best way to help peds is changing the roadways. I notice it everytime on the highway. Whenever there's a construction zone and the lane is blocked by jersey barriers, people ALWAYS slow down. I say lets make the lanewidths less. I'm not sure what they are but let's make them MINIMUM, not maximum. Take one of the gigantic lanes and the parking lane and make it into a diagonal parking lane with chicanes and a nice wide sidewalk with trees. Then on the other side put some nice bus bays and a wider sidewalk and we're set. Sometimes I think traffic engineers get to caught up in numbers rather than the spirit of the things they're designing. Some new, young blood in the traffic dept would definately help.... I volunteer! lol

The traffic signal timing may be a cause, but how many Hamilton, "bicycle cops" just hang around the core park all day and do nothing to control traffic speed. Want to see some spectacular driving, watch their special constables drive inmates down Hughson St. to the courthouse and see how bad they drive. I see it daily from my window, it's pathetic.

I don't know if crosswalks are safer. Drivers make U-turns at crosswalks while the pedestrian is crossing. (They don't wait for the pedestrian to finish crossing.)

Also, traffic lights aren't safe either. Drives make left turns while pedestrians are walking (the pedestrian is walking on the green light).


Sidewalks aren't safe either -- you have bicycles and sometimes cars will come up on the sidewalk (buses even more so).