Quote:
Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere
indeed - but Burlington Bay limits access to half of the loop. So if you are someone going from the Bayfront Industrial area to Brantford, it takes little time through downtown but a lot of time through the ring road. If it was better to go the long way round trucks would already be doing it.
Right now in rush hour for example, going from Stelco to the first exit in Brantford takes 32 minutes via cutting through downtown. If you instead avoid local roads and take Nicola Tesla, the RHVP, and the Linc? 52 minutes. That's substantial. Normally ring roads work as any periphery industrial areas can drive straight out to part of the ring road closest to the area, but Burlington Bay prevents that, making the fastest access right through downtown, instead of away from it. The Perimeter road fixes that. It doesn't need to be a freeway and doesn't really even need to permit private vehicles, though that gets a bit silly in terms of enforcement and other issues, but it's the real long-term solution to getting trucks out of downtown while still ensuring the waterfront industrial area is an attractive place to operate a business. It just needs to be a *road* designed to funnel traffic past downtown, not to it, or not right through it.
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Yes it takes longer during rush hour, but that's normal. Even in the best ring road cities, ring roads clog during rush hour. All the more reason to move trucks to the periphery and invest in transit and cycling so people aren't driving during rush hour as much. That's how places like Netherlands reduced their soul crushing traffic to a reasonable amount.
The point is what do we care more about as a city? A livable city that is safe and comfortable for families, seniors, adults and children, or a place that caters to truck traffic because it might cost them a bit more, and oh well, you'll have to be fearful Everytime you walk your neighbourhood.
I rode my bike down James St N tonight and saw the streets packed with people for Grey Cup and was so, so embarrassed to see a double articulated truck barrel down Cannon through a red at 60km/h. It makes our city look like trash. It's no wonder our downtown has been an empty she'll nobody wanted to live in. We made our main downtown streets into wide freeways for massive grain and steel trucks. Then wonder why even after the steel industry shrunk by like 90% Hamilton struggles to attract other business.