Pedestrians as walkers and as people using the street generally are quite polite about it, because the consequences of being foolhardy or inattentive can be deadly. There is still a lot that can be done to make walking easier, more comfortable and convenient in Vancouver and across the country. Walking is all about the details-curb drops, wide sidewalks, smooth surfaces with non glare treatment, lots of visual interest, benches and ensuring there are places to walk to and through. Perhaps it is because walking is not sexy-it is done by the disenfranchised when they are young, and the elderly when they become disenfranchised from vehicle driving-and by everyone in between from a trip by bike, bus or a vehicle. Making the walking environment the best is vital as it encourages sociability and health, and all indicators are pointing to walkability as the number one factor to make folks healthier and happier.
Price Tags has written about the antiquated Ontario Motor Vehicle Act and the town of Perth Ontario where the business association created marked crosswalks at intersections, but vehicles don’t have to stop for the shoppers crossing the road. Indeed the crosswalks are called “courtesy” crossings, hoping a car will be polite enough to stop, with a warning to pedestrians to ensure the cars stop before they venture off the curb. In Ontario a vehicle is not required to stop at a marked crosswalk unless it has overhead lights, usually a six figure cost, or a crossing guard, to protect kids. You just can’t make this stuff up. So twentieth century.
Another supreme insult to pedestrians noted by CBC Ottawa occurred last week outside the Alt Hotel located at 185 Slater Street downtown. Imagine-the hotel decided to paint in bright purple a “loading zone” for the hotel right on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, to show guests it was quite all right to just drive onto pedestrian terrain to unpack their luggage.
Ottawa is not a place that has very generous sidewalks, continual curb drops, or many amenities for walkers. But painting two parking spots for guests on the fronting sidewalk? The general manager of the hotel stated “If [vehicles] stay on the purple, then I don’t really see a problem. But I’m not sure for a busy downtown street, with a lot of pedestrian traffic, I don’t think it was the best idea.”
Surprisingly the City of Ottawa gave the go ahead to the Alt hotel to purple up their sidewalk in advance of a full-time loading zone which will eventually be built. Even worse, the City of Ottawa’ engineering manager in charge of this transgression calls it a “bit of a pilot”. The manager stated: “Every time we make changes on the public roadway it takes a bit of time for the people to figure it out. We’ll see how it works. We’re monitoring it, we’re working with the hotel operator and the developer as well, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll remove it.”
Now you will notice that the City is dealing with the hotel owner and the developer, but no one is talking to the pedestrian, who used to be the full-time user of that sidewalk. Motordom reigns supreme in the country’s capital. And this is just plain wrong.
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Reblogged this on Sandy James Planner.
Good for CBC for reporting it.
The article quotes a taxi driver: “I think there is enough space for both. We have to learn to co-exist — bike lanes, pedestrians and cars. That’s the future for sure.”
“We have to learn to co-exist.” Brilliant framing. And that’s the last line in the article, summing it up. Black is white, up is down, purple is beige. It should not be possible to redefine the terms of debate like this: it should be so obviously ridiculous that it’s not possible to print it without rebuttal. But there’s no-one speaking for pedestrians, so newspeak arguments like this get a pass.
Some day, I hope, pedestrians will organize, just as cyclists have. (I know “hope” is weak, but I’m afraid I’m not going to do it myself just now.)
Well, goodness, what’s the alternative? Parking on THE ROAD?! That would temporarily inconvenience motorists. Millions dead. You can see the bind the city’s in, Shirley.
Slater Street in Ottawa has a bus lane. Surely they should get rid of it so more commercial and personal traffic can get through, then allow parking on the road.
A couple comments:
– The photos of Slater don’t show a marked bus lane, but if it is a transit mall, then there is an analogy to Vancouver’s Granville Street – where delivery trucks, taxis and police cars regularly mount the shallow curb and park on the sidewalk. Note that the inaccessibility of the current Best Buy / Winners building at Granville & Robson to tour buses (because of the L-shaped lane and lack of access from Granville) had been cited as a reason preventing that site from development for a hotel.
– Is the Alt hotel a retrofit or new construction? The story says it opened in Sept 2016. If it is new construction, it should have a driveway / porte cochere for pick-up and drop-offs. I suspect it was a retrofit, so making the best of the existing awkwardness. The other alternative would have been to prohibit the [re]development of a hotel at the site if it could not adequately accommodate drop-off and pick-up.
The Granville Mall’s sidewalks are 8 metres wide! On both sides. The one pictured is lucky if it’s three.
There is no excuse for this insanity.
Reminds me of my time in Auckland when cars would routinely park on the footpath (sidewalk)
Because drivers were being courteous to other drivers. Park on the sidewalk so other drivers didn’t have to maneuver around their parked cars. Perverse, but polite at heart. Oh, Auckland.
This calls for a handful of balaclava clad pedestrians, late at night, with a bucket of paint.
The hotel and condo tower is a new infill build. Directly across the street from the hotel drop-off is a recently widened sidewalk, part of the set back BMO and the BMO Plaza. The widened sidewalk removed one of the original three lanes of traffic on this one-way street. The next lane is a bus lane. Google street-view shows this with the visible signage along the block, the diamonds on the roadway are less visible due to the brutal winters which require constant scraping of the roadway with snow ploughs, that incrementally remove the markings.
The four lane through street is now down to two lanes. Allowing drop offs and pick ups at this hotel and conference centre would reduce the traffic lanes down from four, to one lane. So the cut-out has been created but it is compensated with the new widened sidewalk immediately opposite.
I don’t see much difference between the photo above, which clearly indicates three lanes (one bus lane perhaps limited to rush hours), and 3-motorized lanes on Hornby Street in front of Hotel Le Soleil, one being a loading zone, and the 4th being the barriered bike lane.
There is a major conflict between pedestrians and vehicles in the Toronto case where the traffic department opted to give human beings 1/2 of a sidewalk and motorized vehicles the equivalent of 3 1/2 lanes.
Ridiculous.
There are places like NYC and Times Square, which have orders of magnitude more pedestrians and vehicular conflicts where enlightened planners took traffic lanes out in favour of pedestrian space.
The bus lane in the image above (Ottawa by the way) is 6am – 6pm. All day. This leaves two lanes for general traffic. There is no parking lane or loading zone.
Hornby has a parking lane with meters, outside the hotel it is a loading zone and two traffic lanes, plus the bike lane. Altogether a much wider roadway.