Hamilton is putting King and Main streets on a road diet. Where will all the cars go?
A radical road diet is coming for two of the city's busiest and widest streets that each shuttle tens of thousands of automobiles through the core every day.
By now, the reasons why are well-known: the city is preparing for a $3.4-billion light rail transit line that will run the length of King Street and for a two-way traffic conversion of infamously fast and crash-prone Main Street.
In the name of better transit and safety, the broad one-way corridors - both four lanes wide aside from a downtown squeeze on King - will be strategically narrowed and converted to bidirectional traffic.
But once that work is done - or even while construction is underway - where do all the cars go?
I understand the safety argument. But I still don't understand where (car traffic) all goes once you take away so many lanes," said resident Grant Darby, who attended a recent public meeting on the proposed overhaul of Main Street. I want to hear what the overall traffic solution is. From what I've seen so far, it's going to be a mess."
He isn't the only commuter with questions, acknowledged city transportation director Mike Field. People will understandably have concerns," he said after that recent meeting. But the days of using (Main and King) as a highway to get across the city quickly, that is not going to continue."
In a post-LRT construction world, he said drivers will be encouraged to use Hamilton's unofficial ring road - think the Linc, Red Hill and QEW - if they want to travel from one end of the city to the other in a hurry.
(There is also a study looking at widening those parkways, but don't hold your breath - the timing of that widening, if it happens, depends on Indigenous consultation as well as a provincial agreement to widen Highway 403.)
Otherwise, drivers will be expected to find other east-west routes through the lower city, like Burlington Street/Nikola Tesla Boulevard, York Boulevard, Cannon and Wilson streets.
But Hamilton's Vision Zero battle to prevent collision injuries and deaths - especially after a record year for pedestrian deaths - means you shouldn't expect a fast ride on any street where people live, walk to school or work. If you drive a car on those streets, you will be moving slower - and that is by design," Field said.
Just how slow is still up in the air since final designs for both two-way Main and LRT have yet to be finalized. In the past, traffic planners estimated peak rush-hour traffic could spike on streets like Cannon, York and Dundurn in the wake of LRT - but that was assuming Main Street remained one-way.
Expect more detailed number crunching around traffic as construction gets closer.
For now, high-level traffic modelling for Main Street done by Metrolinx suggests the changes will be manageable, said Field, who included an example map in the recent public meeting.
By 2041 - so after LRT trains are running on King and two-way traffic conversion is complete on Main - congestion is predicted to be worst coming off Highway 403 as well as in the downtown around Bay Street.
Most of the rest of the converted Main corridor is anticipated to have fair" or good" traffic movement, with the least congestion expected east toward the Delta. The Spectator is requesting the data behind that high-level map.
Here's what the car traffic situation looks like now:
- Last year, King and Main each shuttled 30,000+ daily vehicles along street sections closest to Highway 403;
- Daily counts fall further east, with sections nearest the Delta seeing between 13,000 and 17,000 vehicles;
- Volumes varied through different parts of the downtown, with peak afternoon rush-hour traffic topping 2,000 cars in both directions between Bay and Caroline streets.
Here's what the Main-King corridor could look like down the road:
- The addition of LRT tracks will turn King into a two-way street from Dundurn to the Delta - but end-to-end car travel will be impossible. Once trains start running, cars will be periodically forced off King at various pinch points or for safety reasons.
- That means for cars, King will turn into more of a local-access road for homes and businesses. (Train users, by contrast, get a quick, separated-from-traffic ride from Eastgate Square all the way to McMaster University.)
- On Main, the two-way design includes new bike lanes, strategic street parking and new pedestrian safety features.That means there is only room for one continuous westbound car lane and two eastbound lanes, although three are proposed on the west end to soak up traffic exiting the busy Highway 403 off-ramp.
The two-way conversion of Main should help ease LRT traffic planning, both during and after construction, said Field, because it will give cars and HSR buses more east-west travel options. (The city hopes to convert Main to two-way traffic before major LRT work begins.)
New rules banning large, highway-bound transport trucks from the downtown should also help ease congestion, while the city is also investigating new traffic signal technology to help emergency vehicles dodge jams.
Maybe most importantly - if LRT works as hoped - transit ridership should jump on the corridor and across the city over time, reducing car congestion.
It's hard to say how many drivers might be convinced to abandon their cars to travel by train. But the city's goal is to double transit mode share" - the percentage of travellers using transit rather than car - to 12 per cent by 2031.
Don't forget two-wheeled travellers, added John Davey, who attended the recent public meeting on two-way Main.
He was encouraged by the city's plan - which will likely wait until after LRT construction - to extend protected cycling lanes from Sherman Avenue all the way to Westdale on a street where car has been king since the 1950s.
If you want to see different modes of transportation being used, you have to make it safe for people to make that switch," he said. Until we do that, all we will see are people in cars."
Matthew Van Dongen is a transportation and environment reporter at The Spectator. mvandongen@thespec.com