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12 comments

  1. Lots (lots!) more traffic passes along the Goodman trail than the driveway to the Boulevard Club sees. Looks like the logical thing to do is remove the bollards and make the driveway a two way stop.

  2. I read that Star article about recycling on Saturday and when I saw “hair and dust” and thought “that looks wrong” especially as my wife and I had only recently gone through the new calendar to verify what was still allowed. Pity rather than issuing a correction they didn’t reprint the chart properly.

  3. Peter Leiss is a sockpuppet in this. Meri Newton (mnewton@toronto.ca), member of councillor Gord Perks staff (?!) appears rather intimately involved with goings on.

    Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:46:35 -0400
    From: Meri Newton
    To: Geoffrey
    Subject: Re: Yield sign tampering on Martin Goodman Trail at Boulevard Club
    driveway?
    Parts/Attachments:
    1 OK 112 lines Text
    2 Shown ~97 lines Text (charset: ISO-8859-1), “HTML”
    —————————————-

    Hello Geoffrey,

    Thank you for writing.

    As you are aware, the Martin Goodman Trail is a multi use trail
    (pedestrian, cyclists, rollerblades, scooters, etc) as well as
    vehicular traffic (patrons for the Boulevard Club, Palais royale,
    deliveries, etc), that runs along the waterfront, fronting the Palais
    Royale and the Boulevard Club.

    An on site visit was conducted at the Boulevard Club to discuss the
    on going issue of the cross over of this multi used trail and the
    Boulevard Club. On this site visit, many things were noted. Vehicular
    traffic accessing the Boulevard Club from the east bound Lakeshore
    Blvd, would “gun” it when a opening appeared in the westbound lanes
    of the Lakeshore Blvd to make the crossing safely. Often, the
    drivers would not pay attention to the users of the trail and this
    has caused some very near misses. The cyclists traveling westbound on
    the MGT, on a downhill riding at a high rate of speed would not pay
    attention to the fact that a driveway was present and again, near
    misses would transpire.

    Councillor Perks invited Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure as
    well as Parks, Forestry and Recreation as well as the Manager of the
    Boulevard Club to the meeting. It was decided that the current
    markings for both the users of the trail and vehicular traffic were
    very confusing. The pavement markings are one step in the process. A
    stop sign has been adjusted at the Boulevard Club, as well as new
    traffic signs will be installed on the Lakeshore alerting vehicular
    traffic to the users along the Martin Goodman Trail. Cross hatching,
    like what is painted in the intersection of Bay and King, will also
    be painted in the cross over of the Boulevard Club entrance and the
    Martin Goodman Trail in an effort to alert vehicular traffic not to
    block this section. Also, bollards are being replaced to the east and
    west of the Boulevard Club entrance, and additional bollards are
    going to be off set for added safety. Again the focus of present
    and future measures will be safety.

    This situation will be monitored and any future improvements will
    take into consideration all users of the trail. The most important
    factor to keep in mind when looking at possible solutions is safety.

    Pavement markings will also be painted on the MGT in front of the
    Palais Royale to alert the users of the trail of potential multi-use
    traffic. The Palais Royale currently uses temporary stanchions when
    they hold events to have their patrons exit the facility in a safe
    manor without impeding on the users of the trail.

    I apologize for the lengthy response but feel that the more
    information the better. If you have any further questions, please do
    not hesitate to contact me.

    Thanks again for writing.

    Meri

    Meri Newton
    _____________________
    Constituency Assistant to Gord Perks
    Councillor, Ward 14

    416.338.5178 (phone)
    416.392.0398 (fax)

    City Hall, 2nd Floor, A-14
    100 Queen Street West
    Toronto, ON M5H 2N2
    Canada

    http://www.gordperks.wordpress.com

    We must change how we live or the climate will change it for us.

  4. The driveway can’t be a “two way stop”, as cars enter the driveway directly from the Lakeshore (there is no room to have traffic “stop” whereby they would not be partly blocking the rightmost lane of the eastbound Lakeshore). I find people leaving the club generally to be respectful (or afraid) of traffic on the trail (I’m a trail user, not a club user).

    I see several problems with this intersection:

    1) Cars entering the facility, (coming from the east) often have infrequent, short breaks in traffic coming from the west, and are forced to make the turn and enter the “intersection” quickly. Same problem happens when cars exit, and want to go westbound.

    2) Regardless of how much respect cars give trail users I expect there is poor visibility (I believe more so for cars leaving, and especially of trail traffic moving westbound)

    3) Cyclists (myself included) coming from the east frequently come down the hill at fast speeds, and don’t like to lose momentum. I presume the intent of the bollards are to slow trail traffic down to the “posted” speed limit of 20kph.

    4) The bollards have the tendancy to “spread” out trail traffic (that would otherwise be moving in one lane per direction) across the entire width of the area, including the trail, sidewalk, and into portions of the driveway.

    I don’t know what a good solution to these problems are, but I can tell you the new bollards are way too close together to be safe, even for cyclists moving along at 20kph. I believe they make it MORE difficult for cyclists to avoid cars that may be stuck in the intersection, attempting to enter the Lakeshore, because they remove the ability of cyclists to manouver, and “pick a line” behind a car which may be present.

  6. Wasn’t the Sylvia Watson parking lot in the middle of Lake Shore supposed to deal with the parking lot at Palais Royale? Or was that only for additional parking for that venue?

  7. There is no “public” parking on the south Palais Royale side, but there is an area for deliveries and problably a few employee cars on the east side of the building — so traffic crossing the trail there is negligible (and as you say, the Sylvia Watson memorial parking lot, on the north side in the middle, takes care of most of the regular cars).

  8. Regarding the Palais Royale, I also believe that the venue’s valet parking uses a turnaround just east of the building.

    The “temporary stanchions” seemingly are invisible to anybody dressed as part of a bridal party.

    I also thought the parking lot was offically called the “Sylvia Watson Parking Lot”, not the “Sylvia Watson Memorial Parking Lot”. Did she recently pass away?

    While thinking about the trail, what’s up with the location of the “Juice Van”?

  9. Ah yes, valet, forgot about that.

    I thought we were kidding about both the SWP Lot and the SW Memorial PLot.

  10. Look at it this way, Matt: it’s a good thing that Heaps turned down the offer of an executive position, if he’s going to advocate dunderheaded schemes like this. You’d think he would have learnt from the folly of Holyday, who suggested the same thing about NP Square. Heaps is more nuanced about it, of course, but that just makes it tactful foolishness.

  11. I’m actually interested to hear which buildings Heaps has in mind, since he’s only talked about which ones he wouldn’t do.

    Should we name TTC HQ Bombardier House? 🙂

  12. Great string of comments – and how about we name a road or too – with payments from the car companies of course, even mandatory ones. Change the Gardiner to the what? Fordiner? (yes, it’s a st retch) but if we can’t charge the cars, then why not the car companies for the limited access routes that peds and cyclists can’t go on though their taxes make them smooth. We must change the freeways to feeways somehow…
    Oh, nice to see a swipe at my favourite road project in the current NOW, but if we did convert this road to a transit project, we have three governments together contributing to its funding, setting a nice example for a transit project in a densely travelled corridor.