Hume: Planning gifts that beg to be returned

[allabootmatt]

If I'm not mistaken: the initial plan was to retain the sidewalks as they were, but to eliminate on-street parking in most places. Getting rid of the parking was strongly opposed by locals (especially merchants), through SOS, forcing the TTC and Transportation Dept. to narrow sidewalks instead so as to have two traffic lanes AND parking, instead of the preferred option of wider sidewalks and just the traffic lanes. The SOS crowd, after insisting on the retention of parking, then turned around and began to hammer away at the plan because it required narrowing sidewalks--a change that their own opposition had necessitated.

 

[cdl42]

To clairify:

The sidewalk cuts are happening not along the entire lengths of sidewalks, but just (mostly?) at the intersections. The initial and current plans both called for two car lanes in each direction with the curb lane used for parking in off-peak periods and on the off-peak side of the road. SOS declared that the street was already congested and any reduction in road space would cause gridlock and force cars into side streets killing small children yadda yadda yadda. The City responded with a plan that had no decrease in road capacity; accomplished through widening the street at intersections to allow for left turn, right turn, and through lanes. Hence the sidewalk cuts to allow for this extra road space.

That said, there is agreement that things have been taken too far causing the sidewalk cuts to be more than neccessary. Apparently the car lanes are being built pretty wide. Plus, since they decided on centre poles for the trolley wire this has added an extra foot or two to the width of the ROW and will limit the usefullness of the line to emergency vehicles.

Here's a good Steve Munro post on the subject