A rant on the St. Clair West project in Toronto:
http://www.trashtalkthettc.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=33&start=0
TTC Insanity on St. Clair West
Postby Fed Up » Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:10 am
I live on St. Clair Avenue West. When I moved into the neighborhood 5 years ago it was a lovely, peaceful place to live ... and then the TTC decided to destroy the street.
The dedicated streetcar project has changed the complexion of the area completely. Traffic has been snarled. Noise has skyrocketed. Bicycles have been pushed off the road and onto the sidewalk. Drivers have become confused as to what to do on the roads. Accidents have increased. Businesses have been shuttered. All in all, the dedicated streetcar project, which virtually brought the street to a standstill for nearly 4 years and ran astronomically over budget, is an absolute disaster.
St. Clair streetcars shared the road with cars and bicycles for years. The street is wide and, between Yonge and Bathurst, predominantly residential. Before the TTC destroyed the neighborhood traffic was able to flow through 3 lanes in each direction. St. Clair is a wide street. There was enough room for cars to park along St. Clair. Cars of all sizes were able to move briskly along the 4 middle lanes (2 in each direction) without coming anywhere near the parked cars by the curb lanes. When streetcars traveled along they would move through traffic with ease. The world is different now.
The dedicated streetcar tracks were forced onto the public despite countless attempts by the citizens of the area to resist. The TTC was going to do what it wanted to do and no taxpayer was going to get in the way!
Now, with the dedicated streetcar near completion (only the western most portion of the project remains unfinished), the street is a mess. The dedicated tracks have taken over half the street. They have squeezed car traffic into 2 ultra thin lanes that, during summer months, can barely accommodate 2 cars driving side by side. In winter, with snow gathering along the edge of the lanes, there is no way for two large vehicles to pass each other. Trucks? No chance. What about bicycles? St. Clair is a cyclists worst nightmare. It's a death trap. Not only are the auto lanes undersized, they also swerve endlessly. The white lines separating the lanes look like they were painted by someone way over the legal limit. The reason for their constant swerving is the need for a 3rd lane to be created at every stop light along St. Clair. The dedicated streetcar has eliminated the possibility of left turns at dozens of streets along the route. In order for drivers to turn left, they actually have to make a U turn at a designated U turn point. Once at these U turn points, cars are squeezed into undersized U turn lanes alongside the dedicated streetcar tracks. What about the standard traffic lanes? The TTC decided that it would simply narrow the lane markings to accommodate the turn lane. Result: Three lanes that are too narrow for cars, too narrow for buses, too narrow for trucks, and too narrow to allow bicycles through.
I have much more to write about the following:
1. Over a dozen lights for drivers to sort out when stopped at a St. Clair intersection (pedestrian lights, traffic lights, u turn lights, ttc lights ...)
2. Near empty dedicated lanes that can't serve any purpose for the 98% of the time that a streetcar is not rolling along their tracks
3. The 120 businesses that were shut during the construction
4. The budget and the out of control cost over runs
5. The constant honking from fed up drivers which continues from morning 'til night
6. The bicycles that are now forced onto the sidewalks because there is no room for them on the roads anymore
7. Much, much more ...
...
With a website called "TrashTalkTheTTC" you'd expect some rants, but I hope that the businesses along Broadway are aware of the downside to the St. Clair West project, and use it as a cautionary tale for their Broadway tram/streetcar/lrt desires.
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