Quote:
Originally Posted by adamuptownsj
Apples and oranges. University Ave is a busy connector road lined with apartments that connects the North End to the hospital. Manawagonish is single family homes, schools, and small businesses. The road is already BUILT to be four lanes, in the fastest-growing part of town. There's no bikes on it, ever. This is not 'let's narrow Main to 4 lanes from 6' which at least has an end goal of improving density and non-car connectivity between the Old North End and the peninsula. It's an inconvenience and a waste of existing infrastructure.
|
In a rare case of agreement, I think the best idea is to focus on bike paths outside of Saint John’s narrow, ancient road network. Manawagonish road is one of the finest roads in the Saint John region…separated bike lanes on Manawagonish would be quite amazing, especially if hooked up with the Harbour Passage system, + an overpass over the throughway to connect Manawagonish Road/Greendale with the Carleton Peninsula and the Ocean.
Uptown doesn’t need many more bike paths, it needs a bike storage company where people feel safe to store their bikes from petty theft. More than anything… Saint John needs rental bikes along the Harbour Passage… aim for 20 stations and fill them in with the typical 10 bikes per station as we go. It’s better to have half empty stations where people never have to worry about encountering a full station where they can’t drop off their bikes. Toronto and Montreal require city staff with a bike F-350 and trailer to load up bikes and clear spots from full stations and fill in empty stations with bikes.
Saint John doesn’t need that type of service… if we start with 20 bike rental stations like they have in Toronto and Montreal, but half full, we might just have the perfect amount of bikes and stations for a city our size. The problem with Montreal and Toronto’s system is they have so many more stations, some incredible popular, some barely used at all. Saint John won’t have a need to pay workers to distribute the bikes from busy to to infrequently used stations.
A pedestrian bridge between Navy Island and Long Wharf, or a tunnel between St. John street and Lower Cover Loop/Three Sister’s would be a giant leap for bicycle pedestrian infrastructure between The Uptown/Central Peninsula and the West Side Peninsula (Carelton). Something which used to be quite strong, in the days of the Harbour Ferry. The West Side's strip of the Harbour Passage @ Marketplace is an abomination of Urban Planning, it's a bike path to and between nowhere!
Almost no one rides their bike here, and calling it part of the Harbour Passage is just a total misnomer. It's located beside the Harbour... you can see Uptown from this bike trail, but you can't actually get to Uptown without making a huge loop away from Uptown, down, around, and over the reversing falls bridge and back towards Uptown. A Tunnel would get you from Marketplace West's portion of the Harbour Passage, to the newly opened Lower Cove Loop extension of the Harbour Passage, in a matter of minutes!
Also, the Port could probably benefit with a tunnel or their own between Lower Cove Terminal and The West Side Docks. If a ferry isn’t the long term answer, due to continuous operation costs, I think a tunnel is the best option. A Navy Island Pedestrian bridge tall enough to not impede navigation would likely cost more and have higher long term maintenance costs than a simple pedestrian/ bicycle tunnel between St. John Street West and Water Street/Harbour Passage.
People on the cruise ships could walk to Martello Tower is less than half the time it current takes from the cruise terminals. Saint John’s Uptown is the densest urban area in the province, but used to be two or three times as dense. The West Side is right there beside it, but it’s incredibly disconnected from the main part of the city. A tunnel is the cheapest and easiest way to promote people walking and cycling between the two main historical peninsulas of our lovely seaside city. The city’s 3 million dollar plan to paint some bike lanes on a road Uptown is emblematic of how out of touch council is with what people in Saint John want them in terms of bicycle infrastructure.
People don’t want to ride their bike around Uptown, they want to ride their bikes
to Uptown, park them, and pray they don’t get stolen. If there was safe places to store you bike, or just rental bikes like in bigger cities, a lot more people would use the Harbour Passage to get Uptown.
If the NB government can justify millions to operate car ferries to places like Long Reach for car commuters shopping and working and Saint John, they can also justify a tunnel for pedestrians and bicyclists between the two historical peninsulas of Canada’s original city and second largest sea port.
Prev
Linear Mode
