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Originally Posted by NetMapel
Let me just start off by saying that I very much appreciate you bringing good insights which are excellent for discussions!
I can’t really speak for the development or underdevelopment of Edmond relative to some other Burnaby town centres. I lack the historical context for it so I can only speak about my present day observations. I am also certainly not advocating for those roads I mentioned earlier to be changed immediately. I understand that unless proper alternatives are provided, it is not an ideal position. So I am only speaking about a trend and pattern that I have observed, aka an area is getting built up and fast cars on wide roads don’t tend to fix well with that. As ecbin said earlier, arterial roads are necessary evils. My argument is more or less that these roads passing through a town centre basically lost their meaning of being an arterial road that can move a lot of cars fast. In the examples I’ve mentioned before, that is because strangely enough, we keep building parking lots and drive way that open directly onto those roads. I absolutely blame city planners and developers for allowing that if they actually want a particular road to be high-capacity and function as it’s originally intended. That is the definition of a stroad and stroads end up being crap for both drivers and people outside. So traffic calming around the town centres seems to be the next logical step like what many other cities are doing it. I don’t think it is unreasonable that an urban centre like to be somebody’s destination and not a pass-through, right? I am just thinking out loud here and looking at other cities as examples to follow.
An interesting observation I have made that I also would like to share with both you and Migrant_Coconut Is that Lougheed Hwy already has two or more lanes (one on each side) blocked off currently due to SkyTrain’s constructions. I drive as well yet I have not found that to be burdensome. I have also yet to hear traffic apocalypse due to that even during rush hours. So I guess it isn’t too crazy to suggest that a scenario which we take away a single lane would cause undo burden? OEB breakfast has a patio that faces Lougheed Hwy directly and it is always full despite the car traffic noise right by it.
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Thanks.
It would be easier to block off lanes if you had a large number of parallel roads- however, only Vancouver and New Westminster really have functional 'grids' outside the arterials.
This doesn't mean you couldn't try creating alternate routes, (like Still Creek Dr. or Broadway for Lougheed and Wayburn for Metrotown), but they usually require controversial things like building through parks or destroying some homes to be possible.
Surrey's learning this the hard way, and the North Shore will too.
There's also the problem of actually trying to get people to use the alternate routes- Surrey put up signs showing how long different routes take to go down to Surrey Central for this reason.
That still should probably be done (on the short run, it allows for better traffic flow and access, and on the long run, would allow enough excess capacity to narrow the arterial streets and have the cars passing through bypass the town centers instead (see: Lougheed Hwy/Haney Bypass through Maple Ridge, Langley Bypass, 12th Ave, etc.).
Eg. for a Broadway Extension to 1st Ave:
Bypassing Amazing Brentwood (this would destroy the Willingdon Heights Dog Park and single-family homes):
Quote:
Originally Posted by ecbin
We have VERY different definitions of "Great Street". With a few exceptions (Paris with the Champ Elysee blvd) Great Streets do not consist of 7 lanes of smoothy flowing traffic. Prioritising cars far above pedestrians (and cyclists) does not make for a great street and Kingsway does exactly that - Kingsway is about moving cars from point A to B and those cars don't stop along the way so they add nothing but noise to the neighbourhood.
I'm not against arterials - they're a necessary "evil" in city building but let's not pretend that arterials can also serve as the core of a great street if the car is the priority.
If we can traffic clam an arterial like Broadway (and make cars less of a priority) then we can traffic calm Kingsway and make it so that pedestrians can comfortably cross the street and we have MORE pedestrians. We can do the same for Lougheed around Brentwood - it won't kill anyone to add a min or two to their commute.
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I think the traffic calming of Broadway was only politically viable due to the pandemic. Otherwise, the traffic load would be too great to consider the option seriously.
However, Broadway does have 1 other advantage that Lougheed and Willingdon do not have- which is that 12th Ave is the primary pathway for cars passing through the area, rather than Broadway itself.
Without that, even the unique circumstances that allowed Broadway to be narrowed wouldn't exist.