Friend of PT Sam Khany: “Look at this artfully done interim plaza in a unique part of our eclectic industrial lands with neighbourhood serving shops (Ontario at both sides of Fifth) – amplifying our greenways with nodal plazas that traffic calm and create a place for gathering:”
Before:
Today:
PT: We’ve had a full year of the pandemic, and innovated our way through last spring and summer with bikeways, slow streets, streeteries and patios. Now we know what to expect, and can raise the bar. By end of summer we won’t be going back to some pre-pandemic use of our streets, even as the virus recedes.
Very glad to see these two improvements to the Ontario Bikeway, at 5th and at 7th. I wouldn’t call them interim, they are intended for the longer term. Note the poured concrete curbs, and the rational behind the traffic calming, namely the construction of the Broadway Subway station nearby, with an increasing need to reduce vehicle volumes, and the 4 year capital plan inclusion of these projects, dating back to 2018.
The public consultation on these two diversions dates to 2019. The pandemic got in the way of construction, and we are just now starting to see CoV projects resume that were planned, consulted on, and designed, prior to the pandemic.
Coming up next on Ontario will be the intersection at 16th, which has also had extensive consultation, and design options. Then we can move on to reducing vehicle volumes on the southern portion of Ontario, near 49th and 57th.
That should lead to long awaited improvements on Kent Ave, connecting Ontario to the Canada Line Bridge at Ash.