Comment 121567

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted June 05, 2017 at 17:05:01 in reply to Comment 121565

This is an important point. There is a difference between a street being 'busy' and being unsafe for vulnerable street users (i.e. pedestrians and cyclists).

A quiet street that becomes busy can hurt the quality of life for residents (more noise, more pollution), but a more serious concern is when excessive speed or high traffic volumes make the street dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. For example, maybe there is insufficient lighting, no sidewalks or no safe crosswalks.

In this case the issue seems to have been cut through traffic (due to the congestion on the 403) combined with insufficient infrastructure for pedestrian safety (no crosswalks, no lighting) on a street that has both more residents and more traffic than it used to. Apparently, the City is trying to address some of these concerns.

There is demand for complete and safer streets in Waterdown, just like there is all over the City. The push for complete streets and traffic calming may have begun in wards1-3, but it is growing everywhere.

Everyone wants traffic to be calm and safe where they live, but they often still want to drive fast and easily through other people's neighbourhoods.

And arterial streets can be made complete streets as well: wider sidewalks with buffers, protected bike lanes, safe pedestrian crossings at each intersection. The problem is that Hamilton's arterial streets are too often designed like quiet side streets (but with four or five lanes of traffic): narrow sidewalks with no buffers and multiple blocks with no safe crosswalks.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2017-06-05 17:10:05

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