Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking
I can't wait for it to open to prove to everyone that the world will not end. It will be sweet after so many years of doomsday predictions. We should have higher aspirations for downtown than a suburban car funnel. It will open. The city will go on. In ten years we will laugh at ourselves and tell stories to our disbelieving children.
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This "debate" is the height of Winnipeg parochialism. It's like there are no other cities in the world. I guess that's what happens when most peoples' models for what cities can be like are Albertsville and Scotsdale.
I say we go beyond opening Portage and Main to pedestrians, and completely rethink how those streets work. As far as broad avenues go, they're pretty inefficient and unpleasant compared to some of their peers internationally. In the Osborne Village thread we had a great conversation going about how we could make Confusion Corner better. We could approach Portage and Main the same way. I'd suggest eliminating the centre median of both streets and replacing it with two side medians, with 2 lanes of through traffic in each direction in the centre, and jughandle-esque left turns from the right in outer lanes.
An orientation like this answers the objections some people put forward to opening Portage and Main. The issue of left turns off Portage onto Main is moot because the current plan is to keep Main north of Portage closed, but this configuration would allow that to open. It would also make both streets easier to cross by breaking up their breadth.