Raise the Hammer

....still the best place to raise a child?

As long as you don't live in 'Code Red'. We're apparently willing to sacrifice our entire central city so folks whipping through town don't ever have to hit the brakes. 80 seconds of their time is clearly more valuable than the health and economic success of our oldest neighbourhoods.

Whoever is doing maintenance on that truck isn't very good at keeping the tires attached, but the alignment was perfect. It's 550 metres from Walnut to Victoria.

On a more serious note, last night at the Complete Streets meeting at FRWY, Steve Molloy spoke about the tension between the concepts of "truck traffic" and "goods movement", arguing that what local residents perceive as undesirable "truck traffic" is necessary to meet local needs for delivery of goods to homes and businesses.

It would be fascinating to know whether this "large tractor trailer" full of gravel was travelling to or from any destination near Main and Walnut. From personal observation I would say that it is overwhelmingly more likely that it had come from the 403 and was heading to a destination considerably further east.

A truck route plan that nudged trucks towards using controlled access highways for as much of their route as possible would reduce the risk of such pedestrian injuries.

these guys still don't get it. First of all, most of the transports downtown are just passing through. And the places they are coming to/from are along the 403 and QEW/Burlington St. In other words, right on our ring freeway.

Secondly, I personally don't have a problem with trucks anywhere. But we don't need 5-lane freeways allowing stuff like this to happen. We get 'goods movement'. But it doesn't need to move at 60km an hour, 3 feet from pedestrians.

Here is Roncesvalles Village in Toronto: http://goo.gl/maps/qoPYf

I guarantee you this transport never picks up enough speed to send tires flying 500+ meters. Our streets should be designed for the highest and best use - the use that will reap millions of dollars in investment, new taxes, new residents, vibrant neighbourhood etc..... If transports still want to use those streets as their shortcut, more power to them. I bet they won't. Once we turn Cannon, Main and King into normal downtown streets, the trucks will happily use our half-billion $ freeway network.

And even if they don't, we'll still have safe, vibrant streets like Roncey.

Comment edited by jason on 2013-06-27 21:24:42

The best place to raze a child.

Any idea where the truck was coming from or going to? Did the driver really avoid the use of highways to cut through the city?

Any idea how fast a truck has to be going for it's tires to break off and roll over half a kilometre?

the child that the tire hit in hes leg is a cancer survivor i know hwe mother and he stil having troble with the leg they need to band the trucks from dovwtown they should have a route for trucks ... hamilton is realy the best place to raise children ..

Most of the trucks you see on the roads are doing exactly that. The point isn't the destination of this particular truck, it's the fact that we tolerate an increase in proibability of truck related accidents by creating shortcuts through our neighbourhoods. Stop being obtuse.