Raise the Hammer

StreetMix concept.

circa 2041? Or sooner?

• ultrawide 3 meter sidewalks (up from 1.5 meter), in braille James St N style with large trees
• flat-brick street lane converted to protected cycle track (potentially similar brick to Toronto Union station plaza Front St -- brand new, nice, and easy to cycle on; not bumpy-cobblestone)
• median of trees; also doubles as space for extra-long LRT platforms for 2-LRV (10-segment) consists

The cycle track would initially be a road lane that is later transitioned to a cycle track in the future, once enough offloading occured (enough LRT growth, enough LRT extensions). The middle sidewalk could technically double as a boarding platform for the LRT too. Or as a 2nd-pass revitialization (e.g. after 20 years of wear and tear, sufficient revitalization, and enough wildly Supercrawl-style Trial Car-Free Days has passed).

Obviously, the north-south arteries will need to be tamed, and they will still cut through the intersections, and there will need to be many more signalled pedestrian-only intersections between the large distance between stoplights (e.g. between Sherman and Wentworth)

Initially we probably can't go cold-turkey ped-only at the offset, but we can design the LRT corridor to be closeable to traffic (Car-Free Days) in a #VisionZero movement towards a very safe pedestrian/bike crosstown corridor.

Heck... Gage Park (general area) and Downtown (general area) is only 30 minute walk apart. Yet few Hamilton residents bother walking that distance between these general areas because it's so notoriously unpleasant of a walk!

This car-free crosstown corridor (King Street) would fix it, and further increase LRT ridership, as well as hugely reduce car dependance in the eastern half of Lower City, in the all-day LRT / all-day GO era / massively expanded HSR bus transit / citywide SoBi / etc.

Driving crosstown would still be fairly fast (even if not as fast as synchronized 1-way green lights) on other crosstown streets like Burlington, Barton, Cannon, Wilson, Main; as enough ridership is gained by LRT (and its subsequent incremental extensions), businesses converted to transit-friendly businesses, carwash owners gradually retired and sold-off to transit-friendly developers, etc.

This may not happen on Day 1 -- we need to build towards this and move several tens of thousands of people by LRT daily (more people than today's King carries) -- but the corridor could be set up for this eventuality (25 year timescale), as a very safe crosstown corridor to travel in. But we can still design it as a "Car-Free Days" compatible corridor without disrupting Hamilton too much.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-12-07 22:58:06