Comment 51870

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted November 18, 2010 at 15:29:06

As someone who's son lives blocks from Bridgeport in Waterloo, I can say that I certainly wouldn't want it or Urb held up as examples of "successful streets". King St is literally lined with booming Businesses, as well as quieter side-streets like Peppler, but huge stretches of Bridgeport and Urb are entirely unappealing to pedestrians (especially those of us with small kids). They represent entirely the same kind of awful urban-freeway design as Main or Cannon here. And for the record, I've never had a problem speeding there.

Tiny sections of Waterloo are very appealing, but on a broader scale traffic in K-W is a mess. You could never cut from Cambridge to Bridgeport the way you can through downtown Hamilton. Believe me, I've spent a lot of gas and time trying.

Hamilton has twice the provincial average of expressways and arterial roads. The immediate physical imposition this places on pedestrian life (businesses, families etc) along Main, Cannon and York/Wilson is apparent every moment of every day there. Of the four main lower-city 'highways', only King has the kind of "success" we're looking for in the core, and there, largely, around those areas where it's narrowest, or which surround narrow pedestrian-friendly streets like Hess or James.

www.science.mcmaster.ca/cspa/papers/CSpA%20WP%20017.pdf

This is not a new topic on RTH, or in urban geography literature in general, and if you take the time to look back, you'll get a much better idea of what we're calling for.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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