BobBob
Senior Member
Increasing options can only improve traffic overall, giving people more options to choose from when planning an optimal route. This may increase local congestion in places, but should be an improvement overall.
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cassius
Active Member
Sweet. I'm looking forward to seeing this open. I think it's (argueably) the most important connection from downtown to the waterfront. I'd still like to see a streetcar go along Queen's Quay, up Simcoe, west on Queen and north on McCaul to College though. It'll be neat to see pedestrian and vehicle traffic with train traffic above that and then more pedestrian traffic yet above that.
caltrane74
Senior Member
Can you imagine when towers start going up at "Bremmer & Simcoe"....
Throw in the trains, cars, bikes and pedestrians and a place that was wasteland up until yesterday becomes urban hustle and bustle.
Throw in the trains, cars, bikes and pedestrians and a place that was wasteland up until yesterday becomes urban hustle and bustle.
marcus_a_j
Senior Member
That will be awesome once they tear down Infinity (at least just the low-rise). I doubt anything will be built on the west side of Simcoe, unless a redevelopment of MTCC South. NE corner has huge potential, completing the 18 York-151 Front triangle.
Andrew3D
Active Member
That last image shows a nice hierarchy of how we should look at transportation in the city. Pedestrian friendly first, mass transit next, and finally motor vehicle at the bottom of the totem pole. I'm not sure if they plan to but hopefully in the spring that section of the Skywalk gets a good scrub down and maybe some underlighting.
caltrane74
Senior Member
wow! That is a cool way of looking at a construction photo.
3Dementia
Senior Member
Never understood why Simcoe is one way (low volumes)... are there plans to change this to 2 way up to Queen?
CDL.TO
Moderator
Making it 2-way even as far as Adelaide would be handy.
Chuck
Senior Member
This is the exact type of road improvement that I am in favour of, as it makes better use of the existing road network by adding short little links.
Since I started heading down to this part of the city on a regular basis, there has been one traffic experiment that I would be interested to try. A significant component to congestion is caused by merging traffic at onramps, and weaving cars. Why not see what would happen if the westbound Gardiner was reduced to one lane wide west of Jarvis, two lanes wide west of York, with a return to three lanes wide west of Spadina. The westbound offramp at Spadina would be closed to prevent weaving of cars west of York.
If that is done, it would mean that rather than merging with an already congested highway, cars entering the westbound Gardiner at both York and Spadina would get their own lane. A question that would have to be answered though is how much congestion would result by reducing the number of lanes from three down to one or two between Jarvis and Spadina.
Since I started heading down to this part of the city on a regular basis, there has been one traffic experiment that I would be interested to try. A significant component to congestion is caused by merging traffic at onramps, and weaving cars. Why not see what would happen if the westbound Gardiner was reduced to one lane wide west of Jarvis, two lanes wide west of York, with a return to three lanes wide west of Spadina. The westbound offramp at Spadina would be closed to prevent weaving of cars west of York.
If that is done, it would mean that rather than merging with an already congested highway, cars entering the westbound Gardiner at both York and Spadina would get their own lane. A question that would have to be answered though is how much congestion would result by reducing the number of lanes from three down to one or two between Jarvis and Spadina.
adma
Superstar
Maybe Simcoe and York were meant to balance each other a la Richmond and Adelaide?
3Dementia
Senior Member
Neither one of them are very busy. Maybe a rethink is in order given the Union Station precinct plan (taxi issues for one) and the new link for Simcoe.
Andrew3D
Active Member
December 29th 2007
ShonTron
Moderator
Thanks for the update. Looks like it should (hopefully) be ready by the summer. It would make a much more pleasant bike route to get down to Harbourfront than York or Bay (I've used Bay and Yonge).
cassius
Active Member
^ Agreed. Using either Yonge or Bay can be a scary event on a bicycle. Simcoe should be a much more pleasant router.
MetroMan
Senior Member
That looks very narrow. How many lanes are planned?