Portage and Main re-opening 2016

[Only The Lonely..]

As long as we're re-imagining Portage & Main..

Portage & Main as Roundabout:
https://aroundthistown.ca/2014/08/14...in-roundabout/

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Perfectly fine for the population of the time. Not suitable today, sorry. No amount of buzzwords will change the fact that the city's two main transportation corridors meet downtown and are are already at or near capacity. Poor city planning at its finest.

I doubt Portage and Main will really get all that clogged once it reopens to pedestrians, but hey... even if it did, that might not be the worst thing in the world either. It might encourage a few more people to live closer to where they work, including downtown.

Maybe Winnipeg has simply outgrown the phase where people could reasonably expect to use downtown streets as a cross town commuting route.

[windypeg]

Originally Posted by Riverman

A guy could fill an entire buzzword bingo card with this.

Even the first sentence is crap. Find new routes where? Are alternate expressways going to magically appear or are you talking about funneling traffic down streets like Waterfront and Tache?

You are dealing only with fantasy, not facts.

A direct quote from you, one page back:
"Hey, I don't really care. There is nothing for me downtown, I just pass through and I have ways around in any direction."

If you truly have other ways around, maybe closing a couple of turning lanes at P&M will encourage people like yourself to stay away from the area and actually reduce traffic flow. Downtown should cater to people who actually want to be there, not those just passing through.

[Urban recluse]

Originally Posted by esquire

I doubt Portage and Main will really get all that clogged once it reopens to pedestrians, but hey... even if it did, that might not be the worst thing in the world either. It might encourage a few more people to live closer to where they work, including downtown.

Maybe Winnipeg has simply outgrown the phase where people could reasonably expect to use downtown streets as a cross town commuting route.

That is exactly what needs to happen. The city and developers need to start redeveloping the many blighted areas surrounding the downtown, including Point Douglas. What should be prime real estate is anything but.

[rrskylar]

Originally Posted by Only The Lonely..

As long as we're re-imagining Portage & Main..

Portage & Main as Roundabout:
https://aroundthistown.ca/2014/08/14...in-roundabout/

Multiple lane roundabouts are a shit show in Europe, couldn't even imagine the chaos that would ensue here where drivers are barely smart enough for our single lane roundabouts!

[Wolf13]

I don't buy the concern that downtown Winnipeg has a traffic problem. I work downtown and cross Portage and Main several times a day and rarely get caught there for more than a minute if i actually manage to leave the office at a reasonable hour (rush hour).

Toronto has a downtown traffic problem. Boston has a downtown traffic problem. Vancouver occasionally has a downtown traffic problem.

Winnipeg has a route 90 problem and that's it.


But unfortunately that roundabout diagram above won't work at all. The pedestrian crossings will jam roundabout traffic flow making merging into the correct lane difficult. Also, nobody will us the central lane because they will need to exit, thereby not maximizing space usage of the intersection. This means all roadways approaching the roundabout will try to merge into their far right lanes WELL in advance, jamming traffic further back, aside from courageous motorists who will merge at the last second.

"it works in Europe" doesn't work here, because Europe has savvy and quick-witted drivers, whereas Winnipeg has useless, holier-than-thou slow drivers who don't know how to maneuver.

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by windypeg

A direct quote from you, one page back:
"Hey, I don't really care. There is nothing for me downtown, I just pass through and I have ways around in any direction."

If you truly have other ways around, maybe closing a couple of turning lanes at P&M will encourage people like yourself to stay away from the area and actually reduce traffic flow. Downtown should cater to people who actually want to be there, not those just passing through.

Yep, semis rumbling down Tache and Waterfront. Great idea!

[TimeFadesAway]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Yep, semis rumbling down Tache and Waterfront. Great idea!

Given that Tache is only a part time truck route and Waterfront isn't a truck route, this would be great for ticket revenue.

[Cyro]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Poor city planning at its finest.

True, the list is lengthy if we look at the city's record as a whole, imagine we can get it right this time..and undo 37 years of poor planning in this particular case..

[bsenka]

Originally Posted by plrh

I rarely speak up, but downtown is not for cars it's for people.

1) Those cars aren't autonomous, it's people that are driving them.

2) Who says what a downtown has to be for? If driving rather than walking in that area is what the people want, what is the advantage of forcing them to do something else? We already have pedestrian friendly areas on Corydon, Osborne, the Forks, etc. There no reason to artificially force it to be somewhere else just because it uses the word "downtown".

[Wolf13]

Originally Posted by bsenka

1) Those cars aren't autonomous, it's people that are driving them.

2) Who says what a downtown has to be for? If driving rather than walking in that area is what the people want, what is the advantage of forcing them to do something else? We already have pedestrian friendly areas on Corydon, Osborne, the Forks, etc. There no reason to artificially force it to be somewhere else just because it uses the word "downtown".

Winnipeg's thinking should change though. Our downtown has sucked and our city has suffered for decades because of this very thinking. Good cities have good downtowns.

The only harm would be how this affects the landlords and their underground retail networks, but I'm not sure any of us care that much about that.

The next step would be to move forward intelligently, not just to replicate dumb ideas we've seen in other places and pass that off as youthful creativity or vibrance. It still has to work.

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by Wolf13

The only harm would be how this affects the landlords and their underground retail networks, but I'm not sure any of us care that much about that.

And I'm not even sure if there would be much harm here. There's only a handful of shops in the actual Portage & Main underground -- a convenience store, a dollar store, a hair salon, and not much else (the jeweler and tailor have both recently closed). Most of the underground retail is in Winnipeg Square, which you don't even enter if you're just trying to cross Portage & Main.

In any case, the lifeblood of the underground retail is the office workers, and that's not going to change. These people still need to eat lunch and get coffee regardless of whether pedestrians are allowed to cross the street on the surface.

The fact that the underground retail is dead by 4:30pm is a clear sign that the customers are office workers, not pedestrians who happened to get shunted into Winnipeg Square while trying to cross the street.

[Ando]

All of this reminds me of several years ago when they started introducing the traffic calming circles throughout the city. The way people went on about it, you would think that it was going to lead to the end of civilization itself, death and destruction. Some people just don't like change.

[buzzg]

Originally Posted by bsenka

2) Who says what a downtown has to be for? If driving rather than walking in that area is what the people want, what is the advantage of forcing them to do something else? We already have pedestrian friendly areas on Corydon, Osborne, the Forks, etc. There no reason to artificially force it to be somewhere else just because it uses the word "downtown".

You could MAYBE make that argument if any three of the other areas were properly/fully developed.

Corydon is good in summer; dead in winter. The best stretch of Corydon pedestrian-wise is only good on one side and has a monstrosity of a blank wall (MTS) on the other. There's numerous street-fronting parking lots, a drive-thru, a gas station, several empty storefronts, and residents who fight any new development like its the apocalypse.

Osborne has so much potential but is nowhere near where it should be. Also has several parking lots at the sidewalk, it's windy and dusty as hell, vehicles blast though there at night, there's only people on the sidewalk at night waiting in line at a few bars, a gas station, trailer rental shop, a bunch of ugly one storey buildings.

The Forks is currently strictly a get in-get out destination mostly attended by vehicles. It'll be 10 years if not more before we see something resembling a neighbourhood there.

Winnipeg right now has no premiere destination that is the obvious place to go. The Exchange is probably winning right now but as we know is also severely underdeveloped. I talk to travellers all the time and they say "it's cool and nice but I don't understand where all the people are." Contrast that to other cities: when you want to go out to a few places in Minneapolis, you go to Uptown; Saskatoon, you go Downtown.

[jmt18325]

Originally Posted by Ando

All of this reminds me of several years ago when they started introducing the traffic calming circles throughout the city. The way people went on about it, you would think that it was going to lead to the end of civilization itself, death and destruction. Some people just don't like change.

They needed to cut the corners out. My truck can't make the turn.

[windypeg]

Originally Posted by Riverman

Yep, semis rumbling down Tache and Waterfront. Great idea!

Somebody said a little further back in the thread that you guys are acting like they're closing Portage & Main completely and this encapsulates that pretty perfectly. There will still be plenty of lanes open at P&M for the traffic that belongs there, such as semis.

People seem to hate change in this town and this is just a classic example - status quo for the sake of the status quo

[windypeg]

Even if the traffic in the area does jam up a bunch how much is it really gonna add to a 40-minute commute? It's the most iconic intersection in western Canada and we're just gonna sacrifice it to traffic because somebody in Fort Richmond needs to get back to the suburbs 10 mins faster?

[biguc]

Originally Posted by bsenka

1) Those cars aren't autonomous, it's people that are driving them.

2) Who says what a downtown has to be for? If driving rather than walking in that area is what the people want, what is the advantage of forcing them to do something else? We already have pedestrian friendly areas on Corydon, Osborne, the Forks, etc. There no reason to artificially force it to be somewhere else just because it uses the word "downtown".

Oh look! Another argument that depends on almost every other city on earth not existing to be true.

[bsenka]

Originally Posted by biguc

Oh look! Another argument that depends on almost every other city on earth not existing to be true.

What other cities do is irrelevant. Those places already exist if that's the kind of city people want to live in.

I still have not heard a single argument as to why downtown needs to be anything other than offices and through traffic. People think it's self-evident that those are bad things, but they provide no rationale as to why.

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by bsenka

I still have not heard a single argument as to why downtown needs to be anything other than offices and through traffic. People think it's self-evident that those are bad things, but they provide no rationale as to why.

You're just trolling, right?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=importance+of+a+strong+downtown