Raise the Hammer

Dear Thomas,

Thank you once again for your proposed York design. I have already published an article commending the Eglinton Crosstown LRT in Toronto as a good example of how to integrate LRT and protected cycling infrastructure.

A key issue is intersections, but fortunately all the work has already been done for us. Intersection design is Chapter 6 in the CROW manual, from pages 183 to 290. All that it is necessary to do is pick the appropriate intersection design and apply it. And do not, do not, do not ever attempt to re-invent the wheel by deviating from the authorized designs. This is the difference between amateur and professional engineers: Professionals are unlikely to "just wing it" because they realize that the design standards have been put together by the top experts in this area.

As to Cannon Street, yes, this is certainly better than nothing. But that is not how safety works. The Ministry of Labour disapproves of attempts to run a factory in Hamilton with workers separated from dangerous moving machinery by nothing more than a line of paint. And if I attempt to tell the Ministry inspectors, "but that is better than nothing," then I can expect to see my factory immediately shut down.

Among other things, Cannon Street is a residential street, with many children living on this street. It is completely inappropriate and unsafe to have rat-running "cut-through" motor vehicle traffic on a residential street. This inappropriate and unsafe practice has been virtually eliminated in The Netherlands. For details, please see this text and video.

Key quotation from the linked website: "Residential streets in the Netherlands rarely work as through roads for cars, even if they were originally designed to do so."

Unfortunately, we are still dealing with that "originally designed" situation here in Hamilton. This was fixed in virtually every residential street in The Netherlands. An entire country fixed this problem. We can too!