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By mdrejhon (registered) - website | Posted November 02, 2015 at 10:16:44
I truly have mixed feelings as I agree freeways invites more use; more congestion. It's just loosening the belt. Might as well put this out, a modified version of my earlier post.
A Proposal for a City-Wide Fair Safety Trade
Here's a bargaining idea to save many, many lives in Hamilton.
This will save many lives over years and decades.
I'm appealing to the whole spectrum here. Classic car owners, People Streets people, conservatives, hipsters, car-lovers, students, families. We may sometimes hate each other, but we must to work together to save lives.
October 19 may provide infrastructure improvements necessary to increase safety on LINC. From a practical perspective, virtually nobody here wants people dying on the streets in any form.
I'm aware that people are dying too often on the LINC due to the narrow median, cars crossing the median. The safety improvements to reduce deaths may involve expanding inwards to install a median barrier. That adds 2 extra lanes of traffic by expanding inwards (no outwards nature-destroying widening needed!). Viola. 6 lane LINC that's no wider than the original.
Yes, not all of us were for the freeway, but it's there now, it's useful, it provides a StoneyCreek-Dundas bypass nowadays (reducing crosstown traffic on Main-King, as traffic fell when LINC+RHVP finally got connected). Yes, not all of us is for loosening our belts, but not all of us are for 2-way streets either. However, we can be persuaded by major initiatives that is bundled with safety.
It could be a good bargaining chip to get more councillors working together.
In exchange for converting almost 100% of the Lower City 1-way streets to pedestrianized 2-way streets, we gain a 6-lane ring road around Hamilton. Everybody in affected wards gets something that benefits their ward. Work and run with that.
Safety improvements on LINC = 6 lane LINC (because of needing to add asphalt inwards to a median barrier). Less car drivers dying in Mountain, less pedestrians dying in Lower City.
A Fair Safety Trade
Mountain gets 6-lane LINC with good median safety barrier. Lower City gets Main/King/Queen/etc 2-way with upgraded brick sidewalks/bumpouts/ped features etc.
I'm not sure I 100% like my own idea. But it saves so many lives everywhere! Less people dying. That is not a "deal with the devil". Better vitality and businesses downtown, too. (See what James St N became after it became 2-way). It is a special situation where both cases literally provides sufficient taxpayer return just merely by all the lives saved, the business and commerce improvements, etc. Lower City should be a destination, not a crosstown route.
Funding may be available by Federal too for this infrastructure bargaining clip. If the money's there, let's do it. Let's also market it as a big bundled safety package, in addition to the usual benefits, to make the package more appealing to the whole city on average, so we don't all have to block each other. We're less likely to oppose another ward's changes if there are changes that we want in our own individual wards. Many could be happy with this safety perspective, on top of all the other benefits.
But I would only support it -- if the outer wards agree to let us Complete Streets the Lower City & build (not block) the LRT. Work together to extend it to Mountain (e.g. St. Joseph Hospital, Mohawk, Limeridge, wherever we agree it goes, etc). AND that major safety upgrades are done to RHVP/LINC to make accidents less fatal (median barrier) and maybe also make accidents a few percent less likely to happen (e.g. minor corrections to freeway specifications, water drainage, etc ... and if Federal forces money upon us specifically for freeways, then maybe fix defects such as poor camber/bank angles on critical curves -- as we anecdotally somehow seem to have more accidents than similar freeways even for similar speeds on similar curve radii).
Realistically, it is also a "market-it-to-the-residents" as well as a "market-it-to-the-council" issue; as everybody disagrees. Do whatever needs to be done. Space pops up when we install barriers which must be used up since median width on the straightaways is self-boobytrapped to add lanes when adding a barrier. Perhaps Carpool/Transit lanes. Safety upgrades. Whatever. Just make it a Fair Trade, please.
Again... I agree to the 6-lane widening (with safety upgrades) only if outer wards allows Lower City to become Complete Streets, and let Hamilton install the LRT. ;-)
Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-11-02 11:45:17
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