Comment 105043

By Pxtl (registered) - website | Posted September 30, 2014 at 23:52:02 in reply to Comment 105041

I keep noticing that too. Anything connecting City hall to another neighborhood is inviolate. I've been told that traffic engineers actually reside in a completely different campus, but I can't shake the feeling that City Hall is taking care of its commuters with these decisions.

I mean, look at the Bus Lane. All the businesses between Queen and Bay with their "no bus lanes" signs are feeling the pain because of the loss of street-side parking on the north side of the street. Before you get to Bay, the Bus lane has a second lane - a parking lane for normal traffic. It would have cost city hall less to just continue that pattern to Queen - they could keep the north-side meters instead of installing those parking boxes on the south side. And it would have been a better simulation of traffic, since the LRT tracks are two lanes and not one.

But then they couldn't do no-rush-hour parking and keep the left lane free at rush hour. Most other commuters wouldn't have noticed. Half the traffic is coming off Queen from Cannon. Another big chunk of traffic is coming from the East, where 2 lanes of traffic and a little congestion is normal. The only people who are served by streamlining this little snippet of King Street? People coming from Bay and heading West.

The whole of Durand seems to be designed to expedite folks getting to and from City Hall (and St. Joes, the only other large building in the are). Who the heck needs Herkimer to be 1-way? Caroline? And yet any traffic calming east of Queen has been pulling teeth. West of queen they seem somehow more receptive.

And Bay Street itself is easily the most frustrating 1-way in the city, being one of the only routes that connects all the way from Barton into Durand - nobody can figure out how to get South from the North End without going all the freaking way to Queen. Not to mention the frustrating 1-way Queen North that seems to accomplish nothing but force all the westbound traffic coming off the escarpment access to cram onto poor little Aberdeen. But of course, if you're going a little bit Northeast of Queen/Aberdeen, you get the 1-way path up Bay.

The entire design of Durand makes zero sense until you consider how efficient and effective it is for shunting traffic to/from city hall from the West Mountain, the West End, and Burlington.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2014-09-30 23:54:51

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