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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

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7 comments

  1. I was at that meeting last night. I wholeheartedly support the King St. ROW. This NatPost article is full of shit. The business owners from that stretch were dominating the floor time, but there were a lot of residents there to support the idea as well.

  2. I suspect that many of these business owners who are so passionately opposed to the ROW don’t live downtown or even in the old city of Toronto. So of course, these car-dependant people will oppose the King St ROW. We should focus on the residents who live in the area, and the people who go down to the restaurants, bars and theatres. Do they all drive? Not likely. For those who do drive, must they use King St to access their destination? Not really, and many probably park a few blocks away anyway. Plus, the area offers up two excellent alternatives for car drivers with Richmond and Adelaide streets (both are very car-oriented streets), so offering up King to transit, pedestrians and delivery vehicles makes a lot of sense.

    The TTC is just asking for a trial period here. If it doesn’t work, fine. However, I suspect it would be a smashing success, and I really hope this goes through.

  3. I now the King and Peter area really welll and have watched it change over the last 25 years. I know have many friends who live in the area.

    I love the ROW concept BUT I think its going to be a nightmare because its not just people commuting there, its lot and lots of people living there too. Knowing the area and seeing the plans, I think its going to make it more congested.

  4. scott: I haven’t seen the plans, and I am not familiar with the area, so I’m curious: how would the planned ROW, in your opinion, affect the locals’ use of the street?

  5. Well its design from what I saw on spacing seems to be to discourage through traffic which is great. But for locals heading the opposite direction, or those that are making deliveries to the many many businesses in the area will be forced to go in endless circles to go a few blocks.

    Has anybody ever heard of a system where say only commercial vehicles are allowed into an area ?

  6. I was at the meeting too last night, but haven’t had time to write anything about it.

    I’ll just add for now, that the existing plans (that are publicly available) are from the 2001 proposal. there are no *new* plans as of yet… an urban design team will likely do them after more community consults.

    I support all ROWs in principle and was really excited about the prospect of this one… however, considering everything last night AND the lack of $$ (Giambrone said the trial would cost 2-300K which seems WAY too low but I wonder still where that will come from AND the current escalating cost of St Clair.. well…)