Quote:
Originally Posted by acottawa
Mass transit requires density or lots of bus feeders. Bank Street has neither. “We want mass transit but we want to keep our two story (streetcar) suburban neighborhoods” is not a viable approach to urban planning. European cities often don’t have skyscrapers, but buildings in the city centre are typically 4-6+ throughout. There are few 2 story detached houses with backyards, whereas that is pretty much the entire bank corridor south of Laurier.
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This is not true. For an urban part of the city, Bank Street has the most feeder buses of anywhere in the city with the possible exception of the Confederation Line itself. Whether you include downtown, Billings Bridge or all the crossing routes, there are already a lot of feeder service. If Bank Street offered more than unreliable, painfully slow bus routes, it could be the main route downtown from the south end instead of the current indirect routing via Hurdman or Bayview. People's behaviour could quickly change based on the quality of service offered. Right now, Bank Street service is terrible.
We also seem to forget that Billings Bridge already has a cluster of towers with plans for much more, yet we would rather spend billions in bringing transit to Stittsville and Cumberland over arguably our most successful urban strip. We have an obsession with commuter transit supported by park n ride lots and little hope of decent urbanity at those distant locations. Even with Carling, a 1950s and 1960s car blighted street, it will take a hundred years to remake and make it a walkable strip (and still with single family homes a block away).
My original point on how successful we are designing Bank Street could be further enhanced with better transit. It could be an even better destination if we supported it with efficient transit.
I look at Claridge Icon at Carling and Preston, the entrance of Little Italy and frankly it doesn't add anything to that urban corridor. It would have been better located a couple of blocks over, so it was in the background instead of at the entrance of a prominent walkable street.