CATCH Articles:
Plan promoting transit emphasizes road building
Feb 27, 2007
According to city staff, the focus of the new transportation master plan is on aggressive transit expansion, but most of the dollars appear headed to road expansion. The 25-year plan, which also promotes more cycling and walking, is going to council tomorrow evening, after which the public will have 30 days to make comments.
The plan calls for doubling spending on bus purchases from the current $10 million a year to an average of $20 million a year, while road spending is projected to climb from $40 million to up to $70 million a year.
“Planned population and employment growth over the next 25 years can be accommodated without the need for major new escarpment crossings,” says the report, “provided that viable alternatives to single occupant vehicles are fostered and developed.”
Staff also contend that the Linc and Red Hill expressways, and many city streets “would operate at a poor level of service” by 2031 if the city fails to effectively encourage alternative transportation modes.
The staff report on the plan identifies $291 million in road expansions or modifications, plus an unspecified amount to provide an “access facility” between the Red Hill Creek Expressway and the airport. It calls on the city to “protect the route” for this new roadway, as well as “future connections” to the provincial mid-peninsula corridor that are also not included in the spending estimates.
Proposed HSR improvements include a bus rapid transit system operating along three major corridors – Main/King/Queenston in the lower city, east-west across the mountain “on the Linc or a parallel facility”, and a north-south connection up and down the mountain using James and Upper James.
The resolution going to city council includes immediate authorization “to establish a Bus Rapid Transit project team to oversee the detailed planning and design of Bus Rapid Transit and to develop required funding applications for provincial and federal funding”.
Other transit plans call for extending bus service to Waterdown, setting up park and ride facilities at Meadowlands and other locations on the edge of the urban area, and pushing for more GO service and a VIA rail station. The official objective is “increasing the share of trips made by transit from the current level of 5% to 12% by 2030”.
This is intended to result in 80 to 100 annual transit trips per resident by 2030. In contrast the official plan adopted in 1994 continues to promise 100 rides per capita by 2020, ten years earlier. The level was 75 as recently as 1985, but is currently listed as 47 – and would be much lower if the calculation included the entire Hamilton population instead of only the people living within half a kilometre of an HSR stop.
The plan calls for jumping the cycling budget from $500,000 to $3 million a year and anticipates that 15 percent or more of trips in 2031 will be made by bicycle or walking. Efforts to reach this target include an extra 66 kilometres of on-street bike lanes, and an expansion of the city’s multi-use trail system.
The report also says the city will “explore the potential for an incline railway, possibly near Wentworth Street”, and construct new escarpment stairs, while “promoting pedestrian safety and awareness” and ensuring existing sidewalks are maintained.
The projected road spending includes $40 million to widen Rymal Road and $28 million for Garner Road as well as nearly $31 million on development-related roads in Waterdown. Other projects over $10 million each will see both Barton Street and Highway 8 expanded in Stoney Creek, and Wilson Street widened in Ancaster.