Hamilton 213 King Street West | 94.3m | 30s | Vrancor Development | ZO1

Yep, it's bizarre. I'll hold my final judgement until the sidewalk is poured. But ya, it feels very claustrophobic right now. Might feel slightly better once the LRT goes in. But this is not great.
 
I know that the LRT has a basically completely new design than it did before, but basically only a small section of sidewalk here stays where it is and wasn't planned to get narrower. Though again this might change with the new plans which are more focused on the pedestrian experience.

It's my opinion that if Hamilton is going to build an LRT and make King St essentially useless to drive on, it might as well rip the band-aid off and go all the way making it a priority transit and pedestrian street and disallowing vehicles instead of narrowing the sidewalk over much of the route so that a few idiots driving it can have a right turn lane. You can kind of see the outline of the current sidewalk faintly under the planned new sidewalk alignment:
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It gets even narrower over by McMaster (I've crappily outlined the current sidewalk in red):
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Chris R. said:
I know that the LRT has a basically completely new design than it did before, but basically only a small section of sidewalk here stays where it is and wasn't planned to get narrower. Though again this might change with the new plans which are more focused on the pedestrian experience.

It's my opinion that if Hamilton is going to build an LRT and make King St essentially useless to drive on, it might as well rip the band-aid off and go all the way making it a priority transit and pedestrian street and disallowing vehicles instead of narrowing the sidewalk over much of the route so that a few idiots driving it can have a right turn lane. You can kind of see the outline of the current sidewalk faintly under the planned new sidewalk alignment:View attachment 580447

It gets even narrower over by McMaster (I've crappily outlined the current sidewalk in red):
View attachment 580448
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Idiots?
 
BCTed said:
Idiots?
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The only people that will drive on King St after LRT is installed in it's currently public design will be idiots and those making deliveries. The design essentially doesn't let you drive more than 1-3 blocks at most between Wellington and Dundurn. It would be far better served to have a single lane open to deliveries and local access only and remove the additional quite useless automobile lanes reducing the pedestrian realm for no discernable reason.

There's one spot for example where you can drive east from New St to Queen St in a single where you have to turn off King St right bound only. In what world is that a useful piece of road worth narrowing the sidewalk for? This lane is likely to have under 3000-4000 vehicles per day. I drive, and I can tell you I'm avoiding King at all costs unless I'm taking the LRT which I plan to regularly.
 
Chris R. said:
The only people that will drive on King St after LRT is installed in it's currently public design will be idiots and those making deliveries. The design essentially doesn't let you drive more than 1-3 blocks at most between Wellington and Dundurn. It would be far better served to have a single lane open to deliveries and local access only and remove the additional quite useless automobile lanes reducing the pedestrian realm for no discernable reason.

There's one spot for example where you can drive east from New St to Queen St in a single where you have to turn off King St right bound only. In what world is that a useful piece of road worth narrowing the sidewalk for? This lane is likely to have under 3000-4000 vehicles per day. I drive, and I can tell you I'm avoiding King at all costs unless I'm taking the LRT which I plan to regularly.
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do you think youll still be living in Hamilton when the LRT ever gets built lol? Like 10-12 years from now.
 
TheHonestMaple said:
do you think youll still be living in Hamilton when the LRT ever gets built lol? Like 10-12 years from now.
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I can almost guarantee we'll still be living in Hamilton. Both my partner and I have good paying union jobs with pensions that we can both cycle to and work hybrid. No point in changing it up for no reason.
 
View from southwest corner of King/Caroline to show the sidewalk overhang. It's not the worst. Like the sidewalk is wider than it was previously, but it's still very weird that the city let the building overhang the sidewalk in such a way, and not match the frontage of the building beside it:
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Chris R. said:
View from southwest corner of King/Caroline to show the sidewalk overhang. It's not the worst. Like the sidewalk is wider than it was previously, but it's still very weird that the city let the building overhang the sidewalk in such a way, and not match the frontage of the building beside it:
View attachment 580683View attachment 580684
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Maybe the infamous envelope of money played a part in the City's decision.
 
Taken July 27th. This was my first look at just how close this building will be to the sidewalk, it's definitely pretty jarring compared to Mac's 10 Bay building being so set back but the sidewalk itself should be the same width it looks like it will just transition to being next to the road without the planter boxes separating you from the traffic. The overhang I can see coming in handy during some rain.
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