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Hamilton - Main St. E. redesign

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Haven’t seen a thread for this so I decided to start one.

Main Street in Hamilton is likely getting converted to two-way traffic from Dundurn to Delta. This is a pretty problematic street for pedestrian accidents, and the redesign has sparked a lot of debate within Hamilton on its effect to residents.

036D7E8F-13F0-48D1-B5E3-F37DDB606AE8.png


Pulled from Hamilton website:

On May 11, 2022, Council approved a motion focused on the development of further safety enhancements on major arterial roads, including the conversion of Main Street from a one-way to a two-way road.

Following this approval, staff have moved forward in developing an implementation plan for the two-way conversion of Main Street between King Street E (the “Delta” intersection) and Longwood Road S. The implementation plan will integrate a Complete Streets redesign that will enable safe use for all road users including public transit passengers, pedestrians, motorists and cyclists and will also incorporate a climate change lens by considering additions such as urban trees and permeable surfaces in the planning process.

Improvements include:

  • Expanded and enhanced pedestrian space
  • Temporary lane reductions
  • Adjustments to permitted parking locations
  • Reduced speed limits
  • Traffic signal timing alterations
  • No right turn on red restrictions at intersections
  • Enhancements to pedestrian crossings
  • Leading pedestrian intervals

On mobile so I’m having issues pulling the PDFs, but design plans are here:

engage.hamilton.ca

Main Street Conversion Study

On May 11, 2022, Hamilton City Council approved a motion focused on the development of safety enhancements on downtown major arterial roads, including the conversion of Main Street from a one-way to a two-way road. Following this approval, City staff have moved forward
engage.hamilton.ca engage.hamilton.ca
 
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Very odd looking design drawings:

1684434407300.png


Travel Lane/Green Space? Which is it?

I can't make any sense of that as a road configuration.

You're creating a zipper effect (forced merge) for no obvious reason, to me.

I can understand wanting a right-turn queue lane, but pull the boulevard treatment back to Bay at least.

There's lots of whacky ideas here.

1684434647036.png


A median? You want to buffer the WB traffic from the EB traffic? Uh, no. You want to buffer cycle tracks or sidewalks from the cars.

Really bad design choices.

Bike lanes, yay! Oh...wait:


1684434774823.png


I read this as a painted buffer, instead of a curb or mini-jersey barrier............1.8M is adequate, barely. I would rather remove the 3rd vehicle lane entirely; but at the very least, slash the width of the non-curb lane to 3.0 from 3.3 and re-allocate that space for physical separation of the bike lanes.
 
Barriers on the bike lanes will likely look more like this, which is closer to the standard Hamilton uses for new cycling installations right now:

1684435279523.png


The median location is fine as it's only a small section with "excess" road space, not enough to really add bike lanes to the stretch.

My issues are with the off-peak parking in the much-reduced travel lanes, especially west of Downtown.. that's going to be a huge traffic causer for no real benefit.

Also, these pointless curb barriers - widen the sidewalk here damnit! Adding curb radiuses westbound to allow for right turns is also going to be problematic at a lot of the tighter intersections which already have very small sidewalks.. I'd be tempted to ban right turns at some intersections to improve this , or at least widen the sidewalk into those curbside buffers to give a bit more pedestrian space:

1684435489589.png
 
As someone who has lived in Hamilton, let me assure you that suburbanites are going to kick up a massive fight over the two-way conversion. They don't view Main Street as a street, they view it as a highway. There's still a sensibility of a lot of suburbanites, as well as those in the more remote communities of Flamborough, that Downtown Hamilton is only a place to drive through, apart from the odd concert at Copps/FirstOntario Centre.

Meanwhile crossing most of Main Street as a pedestrian, or heaven forbid cycling along it, makes for a terribly unpleasant experience. I'm so happy to see Hamilton finally moving forward on this, but it won't be easy.
 
mjl08 said:
As someone who has lived in Hamilton, let me assure you that suburbanites are going to kick up a massive fight over the two-way conversion. They don't view Main Street as a street, they view it as a highway. There's still a sensibility of a lot of suburbanites, as well as those in the more remote communities of Flamborough, that Downtown Hamilton is only a place to drive through, apart from the odd concert at Copps/FirstOntario Centre.

Meanwhile crossing most of Main Street as a pedestrian, or heaven forbid cycling along it, makes for a terribly unpleasant experience. I'm so happy to see Hamilton finally moving forward on this, but it won't be easy.
Click to expand...
There is actually pretty wide council support for it and Hamilton already made some small changes to Main St last fall, cutting it to 4 lanes from 5 and introducing some pedestrian priority measures like no right on reds and advanced pedestrian signals. Hamilton even has something like $10 million in the municipal budget to resurface and make changes to Main St as this is implemented over the next 2 years.

Right now the schedule is to have east of Wentworth St done next year, then west of it to the 403 in 2025.

Between this conversion, the LRT, the truck ban in Downtown Hamilton, and all the new development happening, the city will feel like a completely different place in 6-7 years.
 
mjl08 said:
As someone who has lived in Hamilton, let me assure you that suburbanites are going to kick up a massive fight over the two-way conversion. They don't view Main Street as a street, they view it as a highway. There's still a sensibility of a lot of suburbanites, as well as those in the more remote communities of Flamborough, that Downtown Hamilton is only a place to drive through, apart from the odd concert at Copps/FirstOntario Centre.

Meanwhile crossing most of Main Street as a pedestrian, or heaven forbid cycling along it, makes for a terribly unpleasant experience. I'm so happy to see Hamilton finally moving forward on this, but it won't be easy.
Click to expand...
I have to jump on this to agree 100%. Right now the heaviest traffic on Main St. Comes from mountain commuters getting off the 403 trying to use downtown as a shortcut up to their homes via the Sherman and Claremont accesses. It sure is an optimal route, but too many people live on this route, and those people are just as much if not more important to consider when designing the street that runs through their own neighborhood. This will suck for commuters but we shouldn’t have so many car commuters to begin with
 
Any updates on Main Street’s conversion?
Don’t let Council drag it’s feet on this file. The short term safety ‘improvements’ they made earlier in the year really did nothing.

The City’s ‘engage’ website says:

Preparation of Final Report​

this is an upcoming stage for Main Street Conversion Study

Final report will be prepared to summarize findings and recommendations to Hamilton City Council, (May - August 2023)


Or was the whole media circus around Main Street’s dangers meant to give Andrea Horwath a platform to campaign on?
 
It’s now mid-October, and as the bus zone paint continues to fade away, we still haven’t gotten the updates promised by the end of August.

The City hasn’t updated the Design Review Panel in almost two months!

What’s going on?
 
DC83 said:
It’s now mid-October, and as the bus zone paint continues to fade away, we still haven’t gotten the updates promised by the end of August.

The City hasn’t updated the Design Review Panel in almost two months!

What’s going on?
Click to expand...
The Main St Conversion Item has been punted to a November 13 Public Works Committee meeting as per the latest meeting agenda:

Implementation plan for the two-way conversion of Main Street - Public Works Committee - October 16, 2023

pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com
 
innsertnamehere said:
The Main St Conversion Item has been punted to a November 13 Public Works Committee meeting as per the latest meeting agenda:

Implementation plan for the two-way conversion of Main Street - Public Works Committee - October 16, 2023

pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com
Click to expand...

Unacceptable. The City of Hamilton is seriously unserious.

Clearly all the hype surrounding the dangers of Main Street was exaggerated to give a particular mayoral candidate a single-issue platform to run on. Now that the election is over, what?
 
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Any updates on Main Street? The meeting was apparently 3 weeks ago…

Also, the City’s DRP Website again hasn’t been updated in almost two months (last update Oct 11), despite a meeting on Nov 9th?
 
So many negative nancies in this forum with nothing to add but complaints. Time to test out this ignore function.
 
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