07-15-2018, 04:05 PM
(07-15-2018, 03:24 PM)jeffster Wrote: I think what would have been really great along here would have been a stop close to the Food Basics (so almost behind Partsource). That's one thing I didn't understand, as there aren't a lot of stops, at least in Kitchener, close to any supermarkets.
I was looking at an older satellite image and there seemed to be two trails, one right by McDonald's, and the other close to Michaels. The one at Michaels seems to have a sidewalk going in between two houses, perhaps put there by one of the property owners.
I only say Partsource/Fresh Burrito because, at that location, you could put a sidewalk in between the two apartment units on Traynor and also one between Partsource and Fresh Burrito. You're avoiding most vehicular traffic. Right in front Partsource and Fresh Burrito are a set of traffic lights, with pedestrian right of way. This is the main entrance to Food Basic (that has a pharmacy) and the LCBO, Dollarama, and Petsmart.
The sidewalk off Balfour Crescent (the one across from Michaels) is an official access from the neighbourhood into the trail, it is the only one I see, but there could be others.
But in the context when this was constructed, this area was intended to be publicly accessible but it was intended as a recreational area.
'Proper' people would never walk to the businesses in behind, they would get in their cars and drive. Welcome to the 1950s and upwards planning...its only recently that we've thought about changing this, but even today, we suck at pedestrian infra in new neighbourhoods.
It was simply good luck that this recreational facility backed onto businesses that people wanted to walk too, and thus were able to trespass/unofficially have access too those businesses.
This particular case is striking because access that used to exist has been lost, but more generally, we need to figure out a way to retrofit better access into our neighbourhoods across the city. Nobody is even talking about this, and on the rarest of cases when we actually try, neighbourhoods oppose it...because...well I don't have a better explanation than simple fear of change...any change.
As for the LRT, a stop near Traynor park probably could have been good. There's a lot of space for redevelopment, and connecting down Manitou would have been useful as well.
There could have been a stop in the business park north of Hayward, as there's lot of land for development and more than a few of existing jobs there. Plus, better access across Courtland would have connected too a fair bit of housing there as well. For that matter, the stop at Conestoga could have been located along Kingsway and been substantially closer to a lot of housing there.
I hope that the planning staff ran through these possibilities and modelled them and found they weren't worth the cost of the added trip times. Either way though, the Courtland/Fairway corridor does seem to be one of the more poorly planned corridors for pedestrian access--and that's in a project which hasn't shown they've planned well for it.