Hamilton street conversations - changing directions

NRU
Aug. 2, 2017
By Dominik Matusik

Hamilton has been converting most of its downtown streets from one-way to two-way corridors since 2001; however, progress has been slow due to opposition from suburban residents.

Nearly all of downtown Hamilton's streets were converted to one-way streets in the 1950s to benefit traffic flow. However, by the late 1990s the city had decided to revert some streets back to two-way arterials to increase the downtown's liveability and to support local businesses.

Getting rid Hamilton's oneway streets will improve the pedestrian experience, help local retail, and relieve traffic pressure on residential streets, Ward 3 councillor Matthew Green told NRU.

"I have a community that has two major arterials going through, in one way, east and west. And the amount of pressure that it causes on north south residential roads has resulted in this phenomenon where [residents on] every single street in my ward want to have speed bumps because of the drive-through traffic.

There are so many unintended consequences that we have for grid systems that are driven by vehicular traffic and not communities," he says.

Green says that the original justification for oneway streets-to move heavy vehicular traffic between the city's industrial north and its residential neighbourhoods-is no longer relevant.

Hamilton/Burlington Society of Architects chair and Toms + McNally Design principal Graham McNally told NRU that the society has been promoting the idea of two-way streets for Hamilton since 1996.

"Society recognizes that, by having two-way traffic, you're basically doubling the number of people looking at the street," he says. "And you're turning a street, instead of just a thoroughfare for cars, it turns into a way to actually move through the city for more than just cars. It's a very unpleasant experience to walk on a one-way street."

According to McNally, there is already evidence of the success of two-way streets in Hamilton. He points to James Street, which has been converted into a two-way street, and King Street, which is oneway for most of its downtown portion, but becomes two-way east of downtown.

"We have a bunch of really successful examples [of twoway streets] in Hamilton. James Street North was once one-way, now it's two-way and way more successful as a street... [When] you're heading west on King Street [where it becomes oneway] the fabric of the city just disintegrates. There's more used car places, there's boarded-up buildings, vacant storefronts. Within 200m you go from an area that looks like it could have life and successful shops to basically a highway for the next four or five kilometres."

Green says that the lack of progress on the conversion can be attributed to opposition from suburban residents. "Change is a difficult thing for people," he says. "And people have this paradox in our city where they expect everybody to drive safely and slowly through their street and yet they want the convenience to drive as fast and as recklessly through other peoples' streets and neighbourhoods... People refuse to understand and acknowledge that they are the traffic."

He adds that the planning work being done for the King Street LRT has been used as a justification for being slow to convert, but Green believes that, if anything, this makes the case for two-way streets even more compelling.

McNally says that the city's progress on the conversions has been "painfully slow."

"There's a lot of pushback from people that are used to getting places quickly in the city and there's a fear that any changes to one-way streets are going to make it slower ... There's an ingrained car culture in our slightly suburban city. People are used to their cars and they like their cars. The city needs bold leadership, and [to] make the changes, and explain why it's a good thing to those people that aren't on board."

Hamilton traffic operations and engineering manager Martin White told NRU that despite certain street conversions being approved through the city's 2007 transportation master plan, and reiterated in a 2013 five-year plan, staff still has to approach each street on a case-by-case basis due to the political contentious nature of the issue.

The city is currently undertaking a review of its transportation master plan which, according to White, will specify criteria for when a street should be converted, rather than simply identifying a list of streets. Staff anticipates finalizing the new transportation master plan for council to consider in the fall.