Answers to LRT questions long way off
Study into downtown traffic flow won't be finished until March 2011
January 21, 2010
Meredith Macleod
The Hamilton Spectator
http://www.thespec.com/News/Local/article/708940
While the city has set its sights on light rail running east and west on King Street, it will be more than a year before the traffic impacts are known.
A detailed study of everything from the impacts on property owners and the potential economic uplift to where stations should be located and what kind of technology should be used will not be complete until March 2011.
A big part of the planning, design and engineering study currently being tendered will be a "microsimulation" of traffic flow through dozens of intersections, with the big question being where will traffic go if light rail transit (LRT) cuts off King at Wellington.
The study will need to look at turning patterns, traffic queues at red lights, time to clear intersections once a light turns green and impacts on emergency response times.
The city has said a light-rail line running east and west on King Street from Eastgate Square to McMaster University is its top priority for funding from the province's transit authority Metrolinx.
A part of the city's proposal is the possibility of removing all street parking along the stretch, shutting down King between Wellington to west of Mary to cars, and restricting any left turns to intersections with traffic lights.
Those changes are opposed by the two business improvement areas in the downtown core, which advocate splitting the east and west lines along King and Main.
Not only does the city want to see detailed traffic data for every intersection along the 16 kilometres of King Street, they want the successful consultant to study the impacts along all the other major routes, too -- Main, Barton, Cannon and north-south routes such as Sherman and John -- to see if the capacity is there to take cars avoiding King.
"Basically, we told them to look at everything from the base of the escarpment to Barton," said Jill Stephen, the city's director of strategic and environmental planning, who is heading the transit project.
The tendering for the report will close Feb. 8.
It's expected the Metrolinx board will say yes or no to light rail for Hamilton at its Feb. 19 meeting.
Stephen says it's projected 30 to 40 per cent of vehicles would avoid the King Street corridor, at least in part, if trains were running along it.
Close to 9,000 cars on a typical day make the trek west on King at Wellington Street, for instance.
"Traffic is so vital to this," said Stephen. "We know not everyone will take the LRT or can walk or cycle to where they want to go. King and Main are the main arteries to get across the downtown."
According to preliminary projections, LRT on King and making Main Street two-way would increase traffic on York, Aberdeen, Main and Dundurn, but it's unknown by how much.
Transportation expert Richard Soberman says neighbourhoods often object to any reduction in lanes for cars, even though transit is generally agreed to be the best, most sustainable way to deal with congestion and pollution.
He points out that the conversion of a streetcar line along Toronto's St. Clair Avenue to light rail was held up for a year because of objections to losing car lanes and parking.
Provincial legislation, such as Places to Grow, and many municipal planning policies, including Hamilton's, call for intensification in urban development.
"Everyone agrees with it unless they're the ones being intensified," said Soberman, former chair of civil engineering at the University of Toronto.
According to an opinion survey released by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities yesterday, 30 per cent of Canadians cited improving local transit as a way to improve quality of life in their cities.
That came in third behind improving local infrastructure at 57 per cent and cutting taxes at 45 per cent.
One in 10 Canadians said inadequate local transit was the top risk to the nation's economy.
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