Raise the Hammer

I think that Mac already has bike lockers installed.

forget the 60s and 70s, we behave as though it were the 1950s. new expressways...hooray!!!! anyway, good article. we need to keep hammering away on this until they get the message at city hall. i'm holding my breath that they'll go ahead with streetcars in this city again.

doing research it becomes quite clear that streetcars or LRT is a much smarter move than BRT. not just in terms of operating costs, passenger loads and lifespan, but also in terms of economic development (which we are always told is top of the list at city hall). It should then come as no surprise that rumours out of the HSR are that they prefer BRT and may explore LRT at a later date. Only in Hamilton would we even think of going down that road with the province offering to pay a huge hunk of the capital costs to establish light rail in the city. Keep pushing your councillors and mayor. Some of them are keen on LRT instead of BRT, but if history is any lesson (and it always is) the HSR does what they want, how they want for whatever reasons they want.

We need to move the buses off gore and into the GO station (and pedestrianize gore). We need LRT on Main with a covered (possibly moving) walkway from the GO to the LRT line. We need a via station on the north line which can accommodate additional rush hour go trains and a dedicated shuttle linking the hunter GO station with the VIA station, making one stop on the way at the LRT.

i believe there's a long history of transit companies undermining the very thing they're supposed to provide. with streetcars/lrt, there would be less reliance on oil and all its byproducts. that's bad for our auto-based economy i guess. anyway, judging by the hsr's decisions over the decades they're complete morons, so i have little faith that they'll do the right thing.

Blah bike lockers suck. Only in north america can you take something as simple as cycling and have it take up 10x the space, resources, and money than anywhere else. Would bike lockers be practical in any of the serious cycling cities? Copenhagen, Amsterdam? I don't think so.

Yes but they have huge dedicated, secured and protected bike parking. One step at a time here. It's too early for entire bike parking garages, so let's start with something manageable and change as we grow out of it.

Check out the bottom picture here... great idea! http://www.bikestation.org/Euro_Trip.asp

Re the downtown Hub concept...not sure. George Monbiot in 'Heat' says that it would be more efficient to have these on the outer edges of a town near to a highway so as to not bring those inner city buses into town.... (the challenge would be to NOT develop around these outer hubs...)Interesting concept.
AND he swims against the rail rapid transit concept that currently is so in vogue and suggests that buses give both the efficiency and convenience needed to rapidly get folks out of their cars.
Also, it strikes me as crazy to bring every single route downtown. We really don't need to do this...and if we didn't we wouldn't have the (numbers) problem of where to put this new depot that the city seems to think we need - and we definitely could immmediately get those buses off the south leg of King and out of the Gore!
So, I buy that we need some sort of 'hub' - or transfer point - but only for a few of the routes that need to come downtown.

To be honest guys, I don't know if moving the buses out of Gore Park is a good idea.

Look at downtown Hamilton and think of what is the busiest area? It is Gore Park and King Street. That is because people are there catching buses, transfering buses, etc.

Transit really makes an area hop. Walk downtown Hamilton at 10PM like I was doing one night, and while all the other streets were almost deserted or very very quiet, Gore Park was just jam packed with people and buses. Best area in my opinion.
Don't kill that life by moving the buses.

The HSR by the way is already downtown centric. Almost all routes except a couple go direct to downtown Hamilton.