Comment 117317

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted March 28, 2016 at 15:59:04 in reply to Comment 117316

In Hamilton many long-time residents like the major one-way arterials and minor arterials and their timed lights because it allows them to quickly drive right through the entire city, almost like being on a freeway. Combined with over-built street infrastructure and low congestion this makes it easy to drive long distances at high speed through the city.

I remember a truck driver telling me that Hamilton is the only city where he drives through downtown as a shortcut instead of taking the freeway (e.g. instead of taking the QEW across the Bay, take Main St, or instead of 403/Linc/RHVP)!

The one-way network, however, makes it complicated for motorists to reach destinations downtown (requiring a lot of loop backs and non-intuitive turns). The resulting speeding and narrow sidewalks with few crossings make for a poor pedestrian experience and make it difficult for urban businesses to succeed.

So there has been a debate for at least the last 10-15 years about whether to convert some of these streets to two-way to improve economic vitality, navigability and the pedestrian experience (i.e. make the streets more complete). Council voted over a decade ago to convert many of the smaller streets, but never allocated funding.

So any suggestion to convert major arterial streets like King and Main to two-way could be seen in this context, rather than as a necessary part of improving traffic flow and economic vitality during and after LRT construction.

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