Comment 2416

By Georges (anonymous) | Posted November 29, 2006 at 19:44:06

In response to Mixed Media:

I think we're stuck in a bit of a chicken-and-egg argument. Like I wrote in my letter, 2-waying Main and King is not asilver-bullet solution. But 2-waying is quite conducive to business and pedestrian traffic. Of all the places I've lived (Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and... North Bay, and now Hamilton), I can't think of a single, good hang-out street with cafés, clothes stores, art galleries, magazine stores, etc. etc. that was one way. It's an empirical fact. Now this might all be coincidence... But pair this mighty big coincidence with how you feel, as a pedestrian, when you walk along a one way street as compared to how you feel when you walk down a two way street.
In short, I would say that the psychological impact of slowed traffic partly accounts for the greater success of businesses on two-way streets as compared with one way. And this causal relation grows stronger the more dependent a business is on walk-in and casual customers.
Just ask yourself this: would businesses on Locke street, for example, profit or not if that street were converted from two way to one way? I'd wager business would go down 20-30%.

To Martin Z:
The streets are to a city as the lungs are to a body. The body definitely needs the lungs--I totally agree. The problem is, in Hamilton the lungs are so powerful and capacious that they're crushing the other organs and killing the body...

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