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07-25-2016, 07:06 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-25-2016, 07:11 AM by Canard.)
Rumbly! The concrete foundation and polished concrete floors is going to make those ground-floor units facing King kind of awful. View will be great, though!  . The ground floor units were cheaper (by a lot) when we bought our condo there (we used to live on the fourth floor, facing Victoria). That whole corner has changed so much in the last decade; it's pretty incredible.
The radio reminded me this morning that Wilson's shutting down between Fairway and Kingsway for a couple of months (track installation). That's gonna be a nasty one for folks in that area.
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(07-24-2016, 10:32 PM)mpd618 Wrote: That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway.
Soon enough, with the transit hub and other projects near King/Victoria, foot traffic will increase and it will become dangerous in addition to being a terrible experience.
That would have obliged converting the block of King to one-way, no?
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(07-25-2016, 08:43 AM)panamaniac Wrote: (07-24-2016, 10:32 PM)mpd618 Wrote: That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway.
Soon enough, with the transit hub and other projects near King/Victoria, foot traffic will increase and it will become dangerous in addition to being a terrible experience.
That would have obliged converting the block of King to one-way, no?
Or turning it into a pedestrian haven. *dreams*
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07-25-2016, 09:25 AM
(This post was last modified: 07-25-2016, 09:26 AM by Canard.)
My other half and I always believed that King should have been made a pedestrian+LRT corridor right through the heart of Kitchener, from Victoria to Frederick/Benton. Leave Duke and Charles as-is and close King. Lots of cities have done this, with fantastic results.
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(07-25-2016, 09:25 AM)Canard Wrote: My other half and I always believed that King should have been made a pedestrian+LRT corridor right through the heart of Kitchener, from Victoria to Frederick/Benton. Leave Duke and Charles as-is and close King. Lots of cities have done this, with fantastic results.
Hear, hear.
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That is a good idea and will probably has safety and financial merit to it as well.
_____________________________________
I used to be the mayor of sim city. I know what I am talking about.
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Yeah, completely closing at least that block of King to through car traffic would be a practical way of solving the problem.
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(07-24-2016, 08:20 PM)Canard Wrote: ![[Image: attachment.php?aid=1809]](http://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/attachment.php?aid=1809)
(07-24-2016, 10:32 PM)mpd618 Wrote: That sidewalk in front of Kaufman is awful, and it's going to be extremely expensive to fix it in the future. It's mind-boggling that they didn't narrow the rest of the roadway
Yeah, they clearly aligned things based on making sure they could fit in the King-to-Francis left turn bay, which is frankly unnecessary. If you're on King St going into downtown, you're in for a slow drive regardless.
The plan for that area:
Jeez, that Eastbound-to-Southbound turn radius is massive. How many tractor-trailers an hour are they expecting to be making that turn?
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It's not for the trucks. It's for the swing-out radius clearance for the nose of our fixed-bogie LRV's.
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I'm not talking about the LRT turn radius, I'm taking about the one for cars.
They have clearly marked that thin wedge as a "pedestrian refuge", so no LRV stuff is going to be swinging into it. But to that point, it clearly could have been larger, with a tighter turn radius for the cars.
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A possibly stupid question. Once this is completed, won't most pedestrians use the entire space (sidewalk, ION ROW, bus platform (will it be elevated all the way east?) as a sidewalk? That will leave only the stretch of sidewalk on the Francis St end as narrow. I ask this in all seriousness - I hope someone is not going to tell me that there will be some physical barrier between the sidewalk and the ION ROW.
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People will use the ION lane as a sidewalk probably just as much as they use car lanes as one, which by my estimation is "only under heavy sidewalk crowding"*.
Being a street running section, I don't see them installing a fence, unless it becomes a problem. But it would be a real shame to make it impossible to cross the street.
[edit] *Also... possibly at night if they really run the LRT only every half hour.
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Shouldn't you cross at the crosswalks at Francis or Victoria?
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You definitely should, Canard.
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Crossing the street mid-block, contrary to popular belief, is not illegal.
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