Raise the Hammer

Here's a similar street in Toronto with bus routes and in a similar type of family-oriented neighbourhood. It carries much more traffic than our Queen St of course. It used to be 4 lanes. The city narrowed it to 1 lane each way with parking on one side. Exactly what Queen should look like. Toronto took the extra space and added it to the sidewalks and front yards and planted new street trees in each yard right next to the sidewalk. Queen St should have one southbound lane from Stuart to Aberdeen, one northbound lane and 24-hour street parking facing northbound. Get rid of the highway ramp at Aberdeen and create a normal intersection with a typical right turn. All the space in that triange can become a new small parkette with trees, benches and fencing to create a new greenspace.

South of Herkimer where Queen is 4-lanes we can either widen the sidewalks and front lawns and plant trees, or have street parking on both sides with 1-lane each way.

From York to King the city should proceed with their plan to shave back a bit of property from the properties on the west side of Queen in order to create a green buffer with a row of street trees between the street and new sidewalk on the other side of the green buffer.

Just like that, Queen becomes a safe walking, cycling and living street while still maintaining adequate traffic flow for it's light volumes, as well as new convenience for folks heading north and south on Queen from the Mountain to the harbour .

Pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikingtoron...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikingtoron...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikingtoron...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bikingtoron...

Another nice touch in Toronto is the concrete bumpouts at bus stops. This creates a shorter walking distance for pedestrians crossing the street, and also allows buses to load/unload without having to pull off the road and then merge back into traffic.

It should be noted that residents in this hood hated the idea and predicted gridlock and doom and gloom by losing 1-lane each way. As you can see from the pics, the doom and gloom never materialized....in the same way it will never materialize here if we start taming streets that are designed to carry 30,000 cars by only carrying 11,000.