Transportation

Caroline Converted to Two-Way Between Main and King

By Ryan McGreal
Published June 29, 2012

As announced this week, Caroline Street has been converted to two-way traffic between Main and King Streets.

Two-way traffic on Caroline between Main and King

In a pattern common to recent two-way conversions in Hamilton, the street has a slight quality of TWINO about it: two lanes in the original southbound direction and one lane northbound.

Two-way in name only?
Two-way in name only?

Unlike the York Blvd conversion, however, it is at least feasible for a vehicle to get onto the northbound lane here, as Caroline is already two-way south of Main and it looks like left turns are allowed from Main onto Caroline.

If you are approaching King from the north on Caroline, you will notice the leftmost lane is blocked off. That's because it's southbound on the other side of King, and you can't turn left onto King because it's one-way westbound.

The Public Works Department says the Downtown Transportation Master Plan includes two-way conversion on Caroline as far north as York Blvd (the street is discontinuous across the yard of Sir John A MacDonald High School). However, the conversion of that section is not currently scheduled or budgeted as it would require some reconfiguration of the intersection at York.

Ryan McGreal, the editor of Raise the Hammer, lives in Hamilton with his family and works as a programmer, writer and consultant. Ryan volunteers with Hamilton Light Rail, a citizen group dedicated to bringing light rail transit to Hamilton. Ryan wrote a city affairs column in Hamilton Magazine, and several of his articles have been published in the Hamilton Spectator. His articles have also been published in The Walrus, HuffPost and Behind the Numbers. He maintains a personal website, has been known to share passing thoughts on Twitter and Facebook, and posts the occasional cat photo on Instagram.

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By -Hammer- (registered) | Posted June 30, 2012 at 10:19:10

Well, there isn't a lot of traffic coming from southbound along Caroline, but I will agree that not having the street be continuous is kinda silly. Although this could lead towards more two way conversion of York and Cannon (although baby steps). Hopefully the city follows through on this one.

Lets be honest though, we know the real reason they are making this conversion. It's so that the Staybridge Suites (and possibly the new Federal Building development) can have easier access to and from Main and King. It keeps drivers away from Hess St (which is a predominantly pedestrian area) and doesn't require them to go down Bay St and then connect back to King and then turn up Caroline. It also means people leaving can just turn north and onto King vs going down George, left onto Bay and then left onto King. I can't really say that's a bad thing so long as they leave the stretch between Hess and George alone.

Comment edited by -Hammer- on 2012-06-30 10:26:00

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By ScreamingViking (registered) | Posted June 30, 2012 at 14:49:03 in reply to Comment 79021

Perhaps a few more developments creating that kind of reason (or more likely, developers asking for it) will help the city realize it needs to think about adapting the master plan to implement 2-ways more quickly and more widely.

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By John Neary (registered) | Posted June 30, 2012 at 12:52:29 in reply to Comment 79021

Lets be honest though, we know the real reason they are making this conversion. It's so that the Staybridge Suites (and possibly the new Federal Building development) can have easier access to and from Main and King. It keeps drivers away from Hess St (which is a predominantly pedestrian area) and doesn't require them to go down Bay St and then connect back to King and then turn up Caroline. It also means people leaving can just turn north and onto King vs going down George, left onto Bay and then left onto King.

These are exactly the sort of micro-level reasons why all of our streets should be two-way except in very unusual circumstances.

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By JMorse (registered) | Posted June 30, 2012 at 19:42:40

I think a major reason for this right now is that the left most lane of Main St. is now blocked by the federal bldg hoarding. Either force traffic to merge right, or allow them to turn instead. Wish more lanes would close if this is the result.

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By jason (registered) | Posted June 30, 2012 at 22:33:01

with the weird left-only signs now on Main and the abrupt dead-ending of the left lane of Caroline at King this might be the worst 2-way conversion we've done to date...and that's saying something.

I didn't realize this was so difficult to figure out: http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/AssetFactory.as...

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