Quote:
Originally Posted by L'homard
Main Street is far from the only cross town route in the downtown area. Alternatives include St. George St, Queen St., Assomption Blvd and, if a 5 minute drive isn't too much, we can drive up Vaughn Harvey to Mountain Road. In the past when we closed Main Street for events, ie in Ian Fowler's day it was closed with great regularity, it took about two work days for the traffic to become accustomed to not using Main Street, and then everything went exceedingly smoothly. I know. I worked downtown in a 8:30-to-5 pm job when traffic was heaviest. (I live in the 'burbs so had to drive through this five days per week.) So let's not pretend Main Street East and Main Street West are landlocked when the street is closed.
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While the other routes you mentioned are indeed east-west crosstown routes, there is only
one street that extends the entire way across the entire city from Salisbury Road to Dieppe, and that is Main Street.
As far as I'm concerned, the ideal street to funnel bicycle traffic on to in the downtown area is Gordon/Queen Street. It is already the street that the Northwest Trail funnels on to, and there is a pedestrian activated crossing light at the western intersection of Gordon and Vaughan Harvey. Further east, bicycle traffic could be encouraged down Botsford and across Main to Downing Street and then the Riverfront Trail.
I have no objection to occasionally closing Main Street for special events, but I think the emphasis should be on keeping Main Street open as much as possible, and diverting street closures to side streets like Downing Street, especially when the next phase of the Downing Street reconstruction is completed.