Raise the Hammer

I often have thought, this is the gateway to our city? What kind of a message does it send to people whose first impressions are traveling down this "road"? I also live on this section of the Main Street Super Highway. The pollution and noise are unbearable at times. FIVE lanes of one way traffic at rush hour passing in front of the house i own. The 403 between Hamilton and the Niagara cutoff only has 3 lanes! In November 2011 the city roads department saw-cut across the north three lanes just east of Locke to do sewer work and left a cold patch across those lanes, and were not planning to repave it until spring. Imagine, if you will, 140,000 lb. trucks driving down an empty Main St. W. catching a wave of green lights around 4:15 am. Dropping an inch and a half at 60 kph in front of your house! Shaking my home to its core, windows rattling and foundation shuddering. One morning the dishes in my kitchen sink fell over as a result of the shoddy road work.

Over the 10+ years i have lived here i have witnessed numerous high speed car accidents, cars flipped over, children on bicycles hit by speeding cars. The corner at Locke and Main is a DEATHTRAP with cars turning left off the super highway onto Locke heading north. The building on the corner has been hit countless times. If you are passing by don't linger there looking at the pock marks and replaced brickwork, you can be crushed by someone's car wanting to get across town really fast, who rear ends someone turning right onto Locke.

Outside of rush hour there are parking spaces on the north side of Main in this section, leaving four lanes of traffic traveling east. I cannot count how many times drivers have honked, slammed on their brakes, yelled at me for parking at a meter in front of my house to unload or load something into my car (not at rush hour--to do so would be suicide). Drivers are outraged that I would dare park at a parking meter, because they are under the impression that this is a highway.

The new vision for Main St W. is a welcome one here. I would love for something like this to happen. The highway system around the city supports this idea--so construction should start NOW! The bottom line is Main Street is not a highway. It's time we created it into a street that served not only impatient speeding drivers, but walkers, shoppers, cyclists, families, residents, the entire community.