Raise the Hammer

On Monday morning, I ran into (almost literally) a man from Toronto who was travelling the wrong way on Duke Street, between Queen and Hess. Actually, he almost ran into me as I was attempting to turn left from Hess onto Duke. As we chatted after the near miss, I noticed that he seemed near frantic in his desire to leave this mess of one-way streets and get on the highway. I mentioned the one-way streets, and he said that with one-way streets and insufficient signage it was "hellatious" and that he would not be coming into Hamilton again in the near future. I missed an opportunity to plug G0 Transit, but I don't think he was in a very receptive mood.

We've lived in this neighbourhood for almost 30 years and weekly see cars sailing down the street going in the wrong direction. This can be very time saving for the wrong-way traveller as there are no stop signs if you are going the wrong way. The only problem, of course, is if you run into someone driving the right way or a pedestrian who believes they only have to look one way when crossing a one way street.

My weekly travels take me by St. Joseph's Hospital, where I regularly encounter numerous vehicles being driven by people who have never been in our one-way neighbourhood before. Talk about slowing down traffic. There is nothing which slows down traffic more than people who don't know where they are going, unless it is people who don't know where they are going and can't get there because every street they want to turn into is going the way they don't want to go. Or something, anyway I think you get the drift.

But on the other hand, if the rest of the city thinks that one-way streets are such a good thing, let's expand one way streets to every neighbourhood in the city. Let's see how they like making at least two, and as many as four left hand turns to go the direction they want to travel every time they leave their home. And if you think that traffic moves too fast on Fennell, Mohawk, Upper Wellington or Sherman,wait till you see four lanes of traffic lined up at the light waiting for the flag, I mean, green light. Then stand back (way back) and watch the fun. Actually if we went to all one-way streets, there wouldn't be any need of roads like the Linc and the Redhill Creek Expressway. All of our street would be expressways (witness Main Street, if it only wasn't for those darn stop lights).