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By Beasley (anonymous) | Posted November 26, 2009 at 21:56:04
kdslote >> "FYI - A huge swath of land at the corner of Ferguson and Barton is about to be paved over to create yet another massive surface parking lot. Take a look at an aerial of this area, the amount of surface parking is already horrendous!! This must be stopped!!!"
Yes, a parking lot for Hamilton General Hospital is planned for that site.
Perhaps if the city tried harder to provide good public transit and walkable, friendly streets rather than five-lane one-lane highways, hospital workers might actually decide to live near the hospital and pay taxes in Hamilton rather than in Burlington. In that case, the hospital might become a nucleus for revitalization of that neighbourhood rather than a reason for spreading asphalt on it.
I write this as a health care professional who lives near and sometimes works at HGH. But I'm not surprised that I'm a small minority. Most women (and many men) didn't particularly like walking outside the hospital late at night even before this happened.
The underlying problem is Wilson, Cannon, Wellington, and Victoria streets, which both scare away pedestrian and bicycle traffic and make it way too easy to drive to the hospital.
One-way conversion, a light rail stop near HGH, and a GO station on the CN line in the north end would all help to decrease the demand for parking in this area. (Imagine people commuting _to_ Hamilton by train rather than the other way around!)
I agree that a parking lot on that land is a terrible idea. As Kyle suggested in the Beasley neighbourhood meeting last night, the city should take this opportunity to connect Robert St. to Ferguson and Cathcart to Barton. Robert and Cathcart right now form a crescent that runs from Wellington to Cannon without hooking up with any other streets. "The best place to raise a child", indeed.
If Robert could somehow be extended through Ferguson to Elgin (maybe across the back of the Beer Store parking lot), it would create a nice pedestrian/bicycle route across Beasley, which currently has none. (King William and Rebecca sort of count, but when you reach James St. they both end abruptly at Jackson Square.) Robert/Mulberry/Central Park would form a continuous bike route from Emerald to Hess -- which apparently is planned to become a two-way street sometime this century.
The irony that our regional cardiac/stroke hospital is driving (pardon the pun) this sort of car-centric development needs hardly be mentioned. Again, although I'm somewhat biased, I don't see this as primarily the hospital's fault. The planning decisions that are creating the demand for parking were made by the city.
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