Leadership needed to re-imagine city’s streets

Converting downtown Peterborough back to two-way streets was the low-hanging fruit in a crop of progressive ideas that came out of a two-day Safe Streets for Everyone symposium.

As we noted last week, reclaiming George and Water streets and adding more of the Complete Streets design elements that have worked in other communities across North America and Europe is a proven way to make downtown more vital, successful and people friendly.

And it should be a first step toward accelerating and improving on changes already underway in the city’s streets and roadways planning agenda.

It is no coincidence these ideas come out of an event organized by the Peterborough Bicycle Advisory Committee. PBAC was formed more than a decade ago by advocates who recognize that making the city safer and more accessible for cyclists won’t work as a standalone objective.

The Complete Streets approach builds space for cyclists and pedestrians into re-imagined street designs that, in the end, also work better for drivers. Better, in this case, being safer and more user-friendly.

What seems counterintuitive is that the design features slow traffic down. Lower speed limits, narrower lanes, and fewer of them.

However, traffic flow improves, in part because it is easier to get around by public transit, walking, cycling and other forms of active transportation. Fewer vehicles and better defined space for them to drive in reduces congestion.

Turning Peterborough into a Complete Streets-centric community would take decades, but the city has a head start over many U.S. communities where it has worked. The local trail network is already well developed. The recent remake of Bethune Street in the city core is an example people can see and will appreciate.

George and Water Streets would be job one. Next would be a similar conversion of the Reid and Rubidge streets one-way pair.

Stage 3 could be a new look at the planned makeover of the awkward triangle where Reid Street meets Chemong Road at Parkhill Road, and the Chemong Road commercial strip to the north.

One concern often raised over a Complete Streets design is cost: where will the money come from to for new features?

The city’s proposed redesign would expand the southern Chemong Road commercial strip to five lanes and rebuild the Parkhill Road triangle. In 2013 it was budgeted at $18 million, $23.4 million in today’s dollars.

A Complete Streets design would not add traffic lanes, the costliest part of any road project, and be less expensive.

Lansdowne Street East, from Park Street to Ashburnham Drive, is another candidate. Now the poor sister to the main Lansdowne Street commercial strip, it is scheduled for a makeover and is exactly the kind of down-at-the-heels streetscape that Complete Streets has transformed elsewhere.

Again, a project scheduled to cost tens of millions of dollars could be done better for less money.

The city’s current engineering leadership supports alternative transportation — what might be called Complete Streets Lite — but is still committed to wider, bigger streets with sidewalks and cycling lanes as add-ons.

The mayor and city councillors, who aren’t qualified to design streets but should shape policy direction, need to take a serious look at what is possible, get on board and help drive change.

In addition to the immediate projects we have outlined, that means slowing down.

Step back from plans on the books for five-lane widenings and focus on taking the city’s streets, sidewalks and cycling/pedestrian space in a new direction over the long term.

The money is available and will be spent, wisely or not. What is most needed now, and in the future, is committed leadership.