Comment 103300

By Pxtl (registered) - website | Posted July 19, 2014 at 22:17:47

I've been riding to work through the summer from Westdale to my job at Hamilton General Hospital, and it shocks me how little it would take to make my route pleasant once the Cannon lanes are in.

King has bike lanes to Dundurn, so I take those and then go Head->Napier - there are a few rough crossings like the 403 ramp and Dundurn, but it's not bad. Napier is a bit of a slog though because of all the stop-signs, plus it's pretty steep but I don't expect the city to fix that. An Idaho-stop policy, even a localized "ward 1 only pilot program" thing would make this kind of route much faster. Then I get to the end of Napier and it's a matter of not whether I will break the law so much as which laws. Or I can take my life into my own hands and pull onto York before Bay (and this doesn't work on the return trip anyways). Instead I cut through the walkway next to the federal building and ride in the sidewalk/crosswalk until I get to the far corner of York/Bay at which point I can take the bike-lane. Then it's York until the bike lane ends at John (or was it James) and I take Wilson all the way to Ferguson. I look forward to the Cannon bi-directional lane fixing this leg of the trip, because it's a little dicey.

Then it's a nice relaxing break as I take Ferguson's bone-shaking brick road up to Barton. I've been debating whether the parking lot or Barton traffic is better once I get there... the parking lot is increasingly inviting.

Once Cannon is ready, extend the double-wide-bike-lane on way-north-end Victoria down to Cannon and put a similar one on Wellington and I'll be golden. Then figure out something at Bay or Caroline or Hess (I won't bike on Queen or Bay as-is because I don't want to die). Convert any of those to two-way or give me a bi-directional bike-lane on any of them and I'm good. Caroline already is two-way for a bit thanks to Vrancor(?), just continue that (and put a bike-path through Sir John A's grounds - heck, the students would probably use it). Find me a connection from Cannon to Napier and I'll do this year-round. Heck, throw a couple of ramps up to the Jackson Square rooftop thing. I don't care, just do something to make this work.

So yeah, the Cannon lanes will make the North half of the lower city almost manageable. The problem is the stupid tangled mess when I get to Bay Street.

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