Willis Way Pedestrian only

[danbrotherston]

But I think we need to get over the fear of restricting drivers...the Netherlands didn't achieve their livable city utopia by accomodating cars in everywhere all the time in every direction.

Doing things like restricting turns and forcing a few drivers to go around the block has a limited effect on a few drivers, but can potentially make other modes much more reasonable, and can also improve safety.  A good example is Westmount/Glasgow, which does not have room for turn lanes, but the region has repeatedly allowed four lanes of through traffic with turns permitted from through lanes despite this being a known-unsafe configuration...driver convenience has trumped safety.

Totally on board with restricting drivers, as long as it’s done in a way which actually achieves the goals.

I have to differ a bit on Westmount/Glasgow. I don’t think either the current arrangement or the arrangement before the temporary bicycle lanes was good for driver convenience. What is good for driver convenience is having at least one through lane whose sole purpose is to move vehicles straight through the intersection, with vehicles waiting to turn sitting in turn lanes. Even without right-turn lanes, I claim it would be an improvement for drivers to make Westmount have one through lane in each direction plus left-turn lanes (total width 3 lanes) at Glasgow. Add in right-turn lanes and capacity would be way higher than it is now, with the width on each side still only 4 lanes, but offset so the total width of the combined intersection is 5 lanes.

We shouldn’t always do what is convenient for drivers, but I think narrowing a lot of our streets to 2 lanes plus turn lanes would actually improve them for drivers while saving a ton of money on maintaining the pavement surface and making mid-block crossings much easier for non-motor traffic. In other words, everybody would benefit. The current designs are just bad, regardless of which modes one cares about.

I mean, I agree, and regional engineers would rather pave over the entire neighbourhood and put in left turn lanes as they proposed (they'd also like to widen the lanes by about 3 meters) but that was opposed by Westmount residents.

But ultimately, regional engineers felt that four lanes improves throughput, and so they chose that configuration, even though that configuration was explicitly removed 20 years ago because it resulted in many "excess" collisions....

Whether it is better for traffic flow or not, doesn't matter, they believe it is.

(FWIW, I don't actually think our policies do a very good job of creating an environment that is good for driving either...which is the real irony, despite it being the only priority, driving is still not great...places like the Netherlands which prioritize every other mode have a better experience for drivers).