A civil engineer looks at LRT
With the proposed route, expect the law of unintended consequences to present itself
In any city, transportation is a complex interconnected system involving cars, delivery vehicles, public transport, ambulances, fire trucks and police vehicles as well as pedestrians. Politicians cannot expect to remove the major east-west route into and through a major city without precipitating many secondary effects. The law of unintended consequences will inevitably present itself.
Our downtown is a major destination for people from all parts of the city. People come to the downtown for jobs with the federal, provincial and municipal governments, the hospitals, the law courts, the insurance companies, the banks and the jail, for example. People also pass through the downtown to get to other places because of the city’s topography.
The best way to examine the effects of this plan is to use the old fashioned “Origin destination” method in which you consider where a person might start a trip and then consider where they want to go.
Consider a few special cases.
Downtown to Westdale, West Hamilton and Dundas
There are only two roads that cross the 403 to connect the downtown to populations in the west — King Street, which is now a multi-lane road that also connects the downtown to the 403 ramps to Ancaster and Burlington, and Longwood Road via Aberdeen Avenue.
In the LRT proposal, westbound traffic on King Street is reduced to a single lane instead of the current four lanes. Some of this traffic can move over to Cannon Street, but it will have to cut back via Queen or Dundurn streets to merge with the single lane on King Street before driving west to Westdale, West Hamilton and Dundas.
Since most of the eastbound traffic on Main Street can be expected to return west, we can reasonably expect major traffic jams from Queen to Dundurn on King Street.
Longwood Road is an alternative route to the west end, but this, too, will be encumbered. Every evening every train in the LRT will turn off the main tracks on to Longwood Road and then turn left at Frid street. Every morning the parade will be reversed. There will be six sets of tracks criss-crossing the intersection of Longwood and Main.
This means that twice a day, the eastbound lane on Main Street at Longwood Road will be blocked by turning trains.
Similarly, twice a day the north bound lane of Longwood Road will be blocked by trains.
The net effect will be that Westdale, West Hamilton and Dundas will be isolated from the downtown and the rest of the city.
The Main-King wall
Along the length of the LRT, traffic on the side streets will not be able to cross King Street but will have to merge with a single lane and turn east or west no matter where they really want to go.
Vehicles will only be allowed to cross the tracks at selected major streets such as John, James, Queen, Locke and Dundurn. At these intersections, vehicles will either have to go straight or squeeze into a single lane along the tracks.
All other side streets like Hess, Catherine, Caroline and Dalewood will be blocked throughout the city.
The net effect will be that the railroad will act as a wall running up the centre of King Street and Main Street splitting the lower city into northern and southern halves.
Convention Centre, AGH, Hamilton Place parking lot
The underground parking lot opposite City Hall serves the Convention Centre, the provincial government office building, the Art Gallery and the city’s main concert hall. It is a vital component of downtown life and commerce.
There is now one entrance on Main Street for eastbound traffic and one entrance on King Street for westbound traffic. With the LRT, westbound traffic will not be able to cross the tracks so the entrance on King from the east will be inaccessible.
The parking lot has one exit to Main Street going east and one exit to King Street now used by people heading west. With the LRT, people who want to go west will not be able to turn left on King Street or cross the tracks, but will have to merge with a single lane and go east.
Vehicles on Summers Lane will not be able to cross the tracks to turn west. They will have to squeeze into a single lane and go east.
How people will get turned around to go to Westdale, Dundas, Burlington or Toronto is an interesting question.
Once I watched a woman standing beside her car at Main and Catherine shouting at a pedestrian across the street asking how to get to McMaster. She shouted ”I hate this %ˆ $# city. Every time I come here I get lost.”
There is little doubt that visitors will be traumatized by the new system. This can only have serious negative effects on attendance at the Art Gallery, at the Convention Center and at shows at Hamilton Place.
They say “never look a gift horse in the teeth” but people might not act in the way planners assume they will, and the gift might well turn out to be a Trojan Horse.