Raise the Hammer

downtowninhamilton

Just by way of trying to respond to some of your concerns....

1. Two lanes both ways is the first of the suggestions in Adrian's piece. I can't see why that wouldn't work. I realize we have to consider curb side parking given that we want to promote healthy retail and that does present a design challenge, but not an insurmountable one as far as I'm concerned. Hours allowed for street parking on one side of the street only is one solution, just as it's done now on Cannon.

2. There are many main streets on the mountain that do not have left-hand turning lanes, especially in the "older" neighbourhoods. Some do, of course like main intersections of Upper James (but most side streets of which there are many do not), but some don't like Upper Gage, Upper Ottawa, most of Fennel. Advance green is always a possibility. In fact, I would say it would be a requirement.

3. I'm not a horticulturist, but I know that the Plane tree (aka Sycamore) is an ideal city tree. They are the trees that are on the west side of our City Hall plaza. They are also the favoured tree along streets in Paris. They can be trimmed high as they grow, so while initially, they may obscure a sign or two, as they grow they provide a shade canopy for the street. They can live for several hundred years. As is the case in the proposed rendering, the trees provide a wonderful visual addition and lushness to the street. Perhaps we'll need to think of a tall tree that has a smaller diameter trunk, just so long as we don't put up the small junk trees that City Hall seems to prefer. We end up compromising so much that we end up with crap instead of an urban forest. Just like we end up with fields that the City labels "parks" because they're easier to cut, and have effectively no other maintenance because there is literally nothing else in them. I don't want third rate. You plant great trees once, not every year. You trim them every few years. They last generations.

I don't pretend to have this thing all figured out, but I do have to say that I'm struck by the concerns about backups that would lead to people not venturing downtown. Really? How is it that people can handle all the backups on the mountain streets like Mohawk and Fennel and Upper James on their way to work and back? Somehow people cope. Even with these backups, they still go about their lives up there. Surely we should be permitted to do the same downtown.

As I've said before, Dennis Vranich has proven to us with the barriers in front of his abandoned building at King and Hess that we can do without an entire lane on King St. West for what has now been well over a year and with no end in site since there has been zero activity on the site. Somehow we're coping. Wonder what our traffic engineers have to say about that fact?