Corktownie said:
I don't think we actually disagree on this. I agree that the City of Hamilton has done good work on road design standards in recent years. It seems to me that the issue is what happens when these standards get interpreted and implemented by the folks at Metrolinx, who are also trying to balance a bunch of other conflicting priorities with no clear prioritization. Too many cooks, no leadership, resulting in a dog's breakfast that will manage to annoy drivers and transit riders and cyclists! I think a lot of the design problems are fixable in the development phase. But will they actually get fixed?
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My reply dissapeared… I’ll just make it a separate post for now.

Yeah completely agree, I think I was taking your first post as suggesting the city was the one who should step out of the kitchen, when really it’s the consultants. Imo Metrolinx can just watch and ask questions (if anyone’s left after the consultants step out!).

There is absolutely no cohesive leadership on this project, and it probably indicates what’s going on with Metrolinx at large. The city has its team(s), Mx does too, and probably also whoever they’ve been hiring. I hear repeatedly they have been competing with one another to do *literally* the same things, sometimes even with contradictory objectives.
 
To clarify some things about the design process here, as I have worked on other Mx projects:

Metrolinx's Technical Advisor on the project (Aecom in the case of Ham LRT) completes the conceptual design (30% design) using the relevant municipal design standards. This package gets handed to the winning bidder to complete. The designs go through a design review process at the standard points (30, 60, 90, 100) where all stakeholders get to provide comments. I don't think the City has had much input in the design directly yet; they may have already provided comments but its not likely they are reflected in what we are looking at.

So there is definitely time to revise things and I urge anyone in Hamilton to provide feedback through your councillor or even at council meetings directly if you can.


I'm not too worried about pedestrian crossings, the ones on finch are not particularly responsive so I imagine they are or can be tuned to give LRT priority, and as this line runs through a busy downtown it is better to provide more official crossings than to encourage people to cross the tracks between crossings.
 
Sunnyside said:
Yep, though it’s bigger than the A-Line. Any infrastructure improvement for Hamilton will require new or modified escarpment crossings, which is a major cost which further scars the escarpment. Now you can do larger, simpler projects elsewhere- But we’ll still need crossings, so let’s face it head-on.

The A-Line/James should be BRT/bus lanes/your idea in the near term, and heavier-rail in the long term. LRT is the most work for least reward; it’s is a tight yet major street for all users, so space should serve existing needs (bus lanes) and later be bypassed.

You can do whatever you want on Upper James, incl. elevated rail, so it shouldn’t be dictating modes for the key section (James). Ridership can come with time, but you can only (practically) touch the escarpment once.

Now, if we can somehow get the Concession St routes to a mountain A-Line RT station (TTC style), then we’re especially golden.
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Time to bore a tunnel up the Escarpment to West 5t campus of Mohawk College , then wind over to Upper James !
 
KingJames said:
Time to bore a tunnel up the Escarpment to West 5t campus of Mohawk College , then wind over to Upper James !
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Well… not now, obviously. But that is exactly what we are going to have to do someday.

I’d suspect it necessary even for an LRT. Hence why it’d be a waste.

Tunnels through the escarpment aren’t a new idea, though. Some say there are some…
 
The plan was always to turn James Mt Road over to the A line so they could regrade it and then trench the final leg along side West 5 to a surface level stop at West 5th and Fennel.
 
Corktownie said:
They absolutely have to figure out some way to close the two-block gap in the bike lane between Longwood and Macklin. There must be some way around the space constraints. Expropriate a strip of land? Go with a multi-use path instead of separate bike lanes and sidewalks? I dunno. But the existing arrangement is useless and dangerous.

On a more positive note, I think the way they've handled Dundurn is smart, with the LRT and bike lanes to the west of the roadway. Having the Dundurn stop in that location will be especially handy if the Fortinos plaza ever gets redeveloped into something higher-density and mixed-use.
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Seems like kind of a nothingburger to me that doesn't match movement patterns in the city. There is already well-established cycling infrastructure on King, which is the major tie-in linking the the Cannon/York corridors to the core. I think the vast majority of people that would ever want to take the bridge over the 403 would divert North into Westdale and on to the bulk of Mac's campus, not continue along Main. For the fraction of people that want to go from the South end of the lower city to the South end of the west end, there's the well established rail trail that the city has spent a ton of money on adding pedestrian safety infrastructure throughout Ainslie Wood. The new Main St bike infrastructure in the West end looks to be serving local bike traffic to and from Mac and Ainslie Wood, not to tie the West end to the downtown.
 
ownthesky said:
Seems like kind of a nothingburger to me that doesn't match movement patterns in the city. There is already well-established cycling infrastructure on King, which is the major tie-in linking the the Cannon/York corridors to the core. I think the vast majority of people that would ever want to take the bridge over the 403 would divert North into Westdale and on to the bulk of Mac's campus, not continue along Main. For the fraction of people that want to go from the South end of the lower city to the South end of the west end, there's the well established rail trail that the city has spent a ton of money on adding pedestrian safety infrastructure throughout Ainslie Wood. The new Main St bike infrastructure in the West end looks to be serving local bike traffic to and from Mac and Ainslie Wood, not to tie the West end to the downtown.
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Sure, but then why bother building a bike lane all the way from McMaster to Longwood? An almost-continuous bike lane with a two-block gap is just really dumb, wasteful, and potentially dangerous. Also, keep in mind that movement patterns are going to change with the introduction of the LRT and the developments that will follow it.
 
Corktownie said:
Sure, but then why bother building a bike lane all the way from McMaster to Longwood? An almost-continuous bike lane with a two-block gap is just really dumb, wasteful, and potentially dangerous. Also, keep in mind that movement patterns are going to change with the introduction of the LRT and the developments that will follow it.
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My assumption is that the city is making an active transport corridor for the McMaster area with Emerson as the N/S spine and Main as the Eastern feeder. The Metrolinx maps don’t show the new cycle track on Emerson. There’s already quite a bit of high rise development on the south side of Main and there’s a ton of potential for infill along that strip, as there’s quite a few single detached homes directly abutting main. Which hey, is half the purpose of this tram.
 
ownthesky said:
My assumption is that the city is making an active transport corridor for the McMaster area with Emerson as the N/S spine and Main as the Eastern feeder. The Metrolinx maps don’t show the new cycle track on Emerson. There’s already quite a bit of high rise development on the south side of Main and there’s a ton of potential for infill along that strip, as there’s quite a few single detached homes directly abutting main. Which hey, is half the purpose of this tram.
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Yes…which seems like all the more reason to build a continuous bike lane! It's silly to put so much money into building high-quality cycling infrastructure, but then leave an irritating and dangerous two-block gap. Anyway, it's not the biggest deal in the world. It's just dumb, and it wouldn't be too difficult to fix. So I hope they fix it.
 
It would actually be a very welcome connection. The main street bike lanes are very handy to access the south end without diverting all the way to the rail trail.

Macklin also has a very steep hill that isn't particularly fun, so being able to go westbound to Longwood would be much easier.
 
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