Rakerman takes the picture that I have been unable to get over the past week:
Photo available under CC-BY-NC-SA .
Two curious things about the bank street closure:
1) It was really weird to see people stick to the sidewalks, even when it was perfectly safe to walk on the road. Habit, I suppose.
2) Traffic didn’t seem that much more congested than usual, though I imagine that residents of nearby side-streets were not too pleased with buses running down their usually-quiet streets. This, combined with things going more-or-less fine during the multiple closures of Bank St. north of Laurier over the past year, makes me really wonder when people preach stories of doom and gloom should we ever think of building an above ground light-rail line why such fears are given the credence that they are.
I don’t think above-ground light rail would mix well with cars. If they made Bank a dedicated tram and cycling street that would be cool, but mixing the trams with the cars would be a total mess.
I noticed too that people were walking on the sidewalks and crosswalks even though the street was closed.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the same thing about that spot–and I’ve taken the same photos! I’d like to have a mini-festival in that space to celebrate the liberation of the road from traffic!
As for surface LRT doom-and-gloom, it’s far more of a political issue than a logistical one. But it would have some bad implications for cyclists, namely closing off the Mackenzie-King Bridge to cyclists entirely, and the rails along Albert and Slater will be an obstacle that would keep cyclists out of downtown–I know many Toronto cyclists that stay out of downtown, or take other modes of transport, because of the streetcar rails.
The City either refused to look at or looked at but decided against options of putting rubber runners in the rails to minimize the impact on cyclists.
This is aside from the many non-cyclist advantages and disadvantages of surface LRT, which I certainly wouldn’t want to get into.
- Charles
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Things have been doing just fine? Your deluding yourself bro! That blockage is a major pain in the ass to say the least!