Would be nice if the city would opt for granite or pavers for the sidewalk (not to mention the street itself) on KW, the concrete treatment has a very suburban look to it. I work right around here so I look forward to some more lunch options coming.
 
Trees installed on the amenity area roof. Today:
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TheHonestMaple said:
Look at the state of our roads LMAO. It's straight up embarrassing.
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the good news is that that Hamilton's long range financial plan has it improving the state of its roads.. don't get me wrong, they won't be gleaming sheets of smooth asphalt any time soon, but the average condition should start to tick upwards.

Toronto's comparatively are projected to get orders of magnitudes worse of the coming years.
 
TheHonestMaple said:
Look at the state of our roads LMAO. It's straight up embarrassing.
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Yea, caused me to get another pinch flat on my bike the other day, so now I'm stuck walking because I'm too cheap to get my bike fixed.

My partner did suggest I could try making a claim for a repair as a result of a pothole, but I'm not sure they'd pay the cost, nor do I know which pothole it was.
 
It's really shocking honestly. Go to any other municipality in Southern Ontario. London, KW, Guelph, Toronto, etc etc. Nothing as bad as ours. What I find more interesting, go to Ancaster. The roads are amazing, but downtown they are literally falling apart. How could that be?
 
TheHonestMaple said:
It's really shocking honestly. Go to any other municipality in Southern Ontario. London, KW, Guelph, Toronto, etc etc. Nothing as bad as ours. What I find more interesting, go to Ancaster. The roads are amazing, but downtown they are literally falling apart. How could that be?
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Part of it is historical lack of investment, which is thankfully improving. But I think there are three major factors at play:

1) Low quality road asphalt. There was a report that came out a few years back showing the city paid for new asphalt but contractors installed recycled lower quality asphalt.

2) Lack of maintenance, unlike nearby municipalities, Hamilton doesn't fill cracked in asphalt allowing water to penetrate and destroy the roads.

3) Another report showed that the city is really bad at auditing and prioritizing road reconstruction. Basically doing it where citizens complained the most, which means Ancaster and Waterdown and Stoney Creek get fixed the most because people living downtown have historically been disadvantaged and are not always capable of being in constant contact with the city.

My road was repaved in 2012, and is a disaster. Compare that to Upper Middle in Burlington which was repaved earlier that 2007 and looks in better shape and is in better shape despite more traffic and more truck traffic.

I had heard the city was to start maintaining roads by filling in cracks, I'm curious what happened to that.
 
Chris R. said:
Part of it is historical lack of investment, which is thankfully improving. But I think there are three major factors at play:

1) Low quality road asphalt. There was a report that came out a few years back showing the city paid for new asphalt but contractors installed recycled lower quality asphalt.

2) Lack of maintenance, unlike nearby municipalities, Hamilton doesn't fill cracked in asphalt allowing water to penetrate and destroy the roads.

3) Another report showed that the city is really bad at auditing and prioritizing road reconstruction. Basically doing it where citizens complained the most, which means Ancaster and Waterdown and Stoney Creek get fixed the most because people living downtown have historically been disadvantaged and are not always capable of being in constant contact with the city.

My road was repaved in 2012, and is a disaster. Compare that to Upper Middle in Burlington which was repaved earlier that 2007 and looks in better shape and is in better shape despite more traffic and more truck traffic.

I had heard the city was to start maintaining roads by filling in cracks, I'm curious what happened to that.
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it's also about how a road is repaved - a lot of Hamilton streets are paved with only a single layer of low-grade asphalt placed atop a narrow band of gravel above bare ground. So that means it falls apart quickly as wear and tear rips it up quickly.

Roads in other regions (i.e. Burlington) not only repave more often, but build roads to higher standards. Thicker, higher quality asphalt, better subgrading, etc.

Hamilton has finally adopted higher road construction standards more recently - but it took them a while, and they still rely on cheap shave and paves too often. Dewitt Road in Stoney Creek was redone this summer and they put a concrete sub-layer underneath the asphalt for example - the standard in most areas for arterial roads. This makes the roads last far longer.

Crack sealing is also a method of preventative maintenance that the City doesn't really do as it prevents water from getting into the asphalt, which then shrinks and expands through freeze-thaw cycles to further damage the road. My understanding is that the City does now do some crack sealing, but doesn't have decades of sealing on existing roads. They can only seal so many roads a year.

over the next decade annual spending on roads in the city is supposed to go from $75 million this year to $195 million in the early 2030's... so expect a massive shift in how roads are maintained in the city. And to think that 2024 is already nearly double the amount the city has historically spent on roads (~$40 million).
 
As much as I love Hamilton I now work from home and my partner works in Oakville so we're seriously thinking of moving to Oakville and we were driving around both the older and newer parts of Oakville and their roads are like a dream there like I was in complete shock how good they are. Makes our roads and sidewalks even look like a 3rd world country in comparison.
 
I'll chime in on roads because its something I know a bit about. Hamilton basically has 2 grades of road repair.
1) Shave and pave - the top layer is milled off, and a new suface layer put down, maybe small areas of full depth repair depending on condition - no change to road geometry
2) Full reconstruction - all asphalt and granular is removed, usually utilities are redone at this time - potential to redesign the road geometry

In my opionion hamilton does too many of number 1 in an effort to get more streets done. Ideally I think now that the complete streets guide exists and 99% of our streets would fail its criteria we should be looking at stopping basically all shave and paves and putting that cash into fewer full rebuilds. This would probably result in average condition lowering but it would also mean more streets getting modern redesigns that hopefully would align with the complete streets guide.
 
you can't co
Stec said:
As much as I love Hamilton I now work from home and my partner works in Oakville so we're seriously thinking of moving to Oakville and we were driving around both the older and newer parts of Oakville and their roads are like a dream there like I was in complete shock how good they are. Makes our roads and sidewalks even look like a 3rd world country in comparison.
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You can't compare Oakville to Hamilton - Oakville is major money and they can afford to be pretty and have giant elven trees lol

Oakville is also younger - Hamilton is over 2 centuries old and a factory city with lots of traffic and heavy trucks - Oakville.. is not.

All the rich well to do people live in Oakville so I am sure their taxes pay for a lot - it's also smaller than Hamilton.

Also in reference to trees - the permitting in Oakville is insane - any change to your property has to have a tree permit PER TREE. Have fun with that lol.

Also I was just gonna mention the concrete substrate under roads - this def makes them last longer as there is less room to buckle - not that this prevents cracks in the concrete of course.

We need rubber added to our asphalt - high quality rubbers - or maybe not the cold would destroy the rubbers abilities - or some better binding agent that can expand and contract and prevent cracking. All our innovations and we're still using pebbles in almost everything we do - cement and asphalt lol..

Trivia: Did you know Canada was the first to put down stripes onto roads? We also had the first telephone and the first stop light - at the corner of king and main by gage park no less :)

"The first road lines in the world were painted on a stretch of highway between Ontario and Quebec in 1930, having been invented by Ontario department of transport engineer John D. Millar."

You can read more about asphalt here: http://www.onasphalt.org/asphalt101/the-story-of-asphalt.html#:~:text=1915,, Jasper and Camrose, Alberta.

we laid our first asphalt in 1915.

Also whatever happened to our promise of flying cars - that would solve the road problem forever :p
 
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Chronamut said:
We need rubber added to our asphalt - high quality rubbers - or maybe not the cold would destroy the rubbers abilities - or some better binding agent that can expand and contract and prevent cracking. All our innovations and we're still using pebbles in almost everything we do - cement and asphalt lol..
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Our asphalt specs are fine, there was a few years after the City spec transitioned to a different mix spec that contractors seriously did not adapt well (I think main west by Mac is evidence of this). The primary issue in my mind is usually under designed pavement specs on bus stops, utility cuts, and the eventual cracking around manholes and CBs. The city prefers when MHs and CBs have concrete collars to the surface layer now (and this is fibre reinforced concrete), but another issue is making sure proper subgrade compaction around them happens so there is less sinking. Reducing heavy vehicle use and vehicle use in general would also go a long way.
 
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