Comment 117301

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted March 28, 2016 at 08:52:34 in reply to Comment 117296

As a member of the old Rapid Transit Citizen's Advisory Committee, I would like to remind everyone that two-way conversion of Main and King was always seen by by both Metrolinx and the City as the most efficient way to combine the LRT with efficient movement of motor vehicles, and also to make lower city destinations easier to reach by car.

The 2010 Metrolinx Benefits Case Study and the initial design discussions all recommended two-way Main and King. Clearly, if you take one or two westbound lanes out on King it makes sense to add westbound lanes on Main to keep things balanced and make navigation easier for motorists.

So why was two-way conversion taken off the table when staff and the consultants released their final design?

As Jill Stephens point out in the meeting, it was a purely political judgement. Her feeling was that LRT was controversial enough and that adding two-way conversion into the mix would just make it even more difficult to get Council to accept LRT (despite the fact two-way is actually better for motor vehicle flow when combined with LRT).

So rather than have Council get distracted by the highly emotionally and symbolic one-way/two-way debate the compromise decision was made to take it off the table pre-emptively.

Things are different now: the decision has already been made by Council and the Province to build LRT (and the Province is paying the entire cost) so the focus now is getting the absolute best LRT design possible and still get good traffic flow.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2016-03-28 08:53:25

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds