Raise the Hammer

Correlation is not causation.

From the study "Children who spend time downtown therefore are exposed to more multi-laned one-way street thoroughfares. Also, poorer kids are more likely to walk to school and play on the streets and so they are exposed to more street crossings and vehicles. Finally there is higher volume of traffic on one-way streets in Hamilton (documented as a 10 to 50% increase after the change), a variable associated with up to a 13-fold increase in injury risk...Unfortunately, our inability to adjust for many of these variables limits our ability to isolate the responsible factor which increases the risk on Hamilton's one-way streets."

I have a theory. We have live lanes of traffic inches away from narrow sidewalks. If a child, senior or an inebriated person falls down or stumbles off the curb, they're in live traffic. I often see folks use the outside lanes as passing lanes, I expect because they're used to passing on the right. This is the issue with our streets, how close pedestrians are to live traffic. If council converts Main to two way, we're going to get something that looks like Guelph line, or Upper James with two lanes and a centre turning lane. We're going to be even worse off.

It's much cheaper, easier and faster to protect the sidewalk on our current one way streets with protected bike lanes and 24 hour street parking, and still have the flexibility for future growth. Hopefully, Cannon will be a model for future bike lanes. That being said, I'm not against two way conversions. I'm ok with all of the current planned conversions, and think Wentworth and North Wellington should be moved ahead. I'd also like to see my local streets converted to one way with bike lanes, trees and 24 hour parking, simply because they're two narrow to function as two way, but too wide for one way. For what ever reason, these conversations seem to always end up including every street and focusing on King and Main Downtown.