Comment 40932

By Pxtl (registered) - website | Posted May 20, 2010 at 10:42:19

The problem is that Hamilton has very peculiar geography. It's a dense city with an escarpment cutting it in half located on a hairpin turn. Dundurn is the worst bottleneck for this, because Dundurn _is_ the hairpin turn, as well as being connected to the expressway.

And it's a pretty damned small road. And they can't widen it.

So it's no wonder they're terrified of putting reasonable traffic measures on Dundurn. A scramble-corner on Dundurn is never going to happen. Anything that slows traffic on that street is going to snarl the city up something fierce.

That said, the Fortinos plaza is a catastrophic failure of planning. If there had been a way to go eastbound on Main pulling out of the plaza, then you would have a way to pull Northbound onto Dundurn... but that would have taken parking space away from that ludicrously oversized double-decker McDonalds! Seriously, _that_ was worth making it impossible to head North? The perpetually empty McDonalds that put in office space on the second floor because it was never, ever properly utilizing their space?

Also, they could put a push-button pedestrian crossing traffic light on the bridge - put it at Breadalbane, which puts it a safe distance from the King and Dundurn intersection and lets the traffic mingle before they hit the light. Or, alternately, at one of the 403/QEW turnoffs, which would provide a natural island instead of needing the long light to cross 5 lanes of traffic... but that wouldn't serve people coming from Breadalbane. This would have the added benefit of providing convenient access to the cricket field (and sewage overflow tank) whose name escapes me.

Here's food for thought: there's a similar push-button pedestrian crossing traffic light at Longwood between Aberdeen and King. It connects a parking lot to the Mcmaster Innovation centre. Apparently, the city does _not_ want the motorists who are driving to the McMaster Innovation Centre to backtrack up to King to cross the street after they get out of their cars. But three crossings and a lengthy overshoot for pedestrians and cyclists heading to fortinos plaza? Totally cool.

So in other words, the city prioritizes pedestrian crossings for motorists over pedestrian crossings for pedestrians.

Crazy.

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