09-02-2020, 08:52 AM
(09-01-2020, 10:29 PM)dtkvictim Wrote: Decided to visit the Grand river today, since it's been a long time. I hopped on Google maps to see what part would be the closest to walk to from DTK, and then set off for the area behind Riverbend drive. And I have to say, most of the walk north of Victoria/Lancaster is thoroughly unpleasant. The sidewalks on Lancaster were haphazardly repaired, or blocked off with tape periodically. I decided to pass through Woodside, which has no sidewalks on either entrance despite one of them being a pedestrian pathway...
Despite no sidewalks, Spring Valley Rd was probably the nicest part of the walk because it was the evening and there was only a couple cars. The Guelph St underpass had a sidewalk! The bridge is also impressively massive. Too bad the sidewalk disappeared halfway through the block... And of course, no sidewalks on Riverbend despite having trail connections.
On the bright side, the Grand river was beautiful in the setting sunlight.
Heading home I thought maybe I'd try Victoria even though I know it hate it. The Wellington/Shirley crossing sucks every time I've had to use it, and I'm surprised they even put in a pedestrian crossing at all... The lack of sidewalks on Victoria and highway crossing both suck, and were as scary as the way I took there.
On a more positive note, I ended with a nighttime walk through the Frederick/Civic residential areas which was very nice. I spent most of my life taking walks after dark, and I've just realized how much joy that brought me and how much I've been forced to miss out on that by living downtown.
Yeah, you are definitely talking about some of the most pedestrian hostile parts of the city. I was once referred to an appointment on Victoria...I demanded that the the referrer find me another location because it was unsafe for me to get there, being no sidewalk...I ended up in Chicopee, which was much farther, but safer...albeit still extremely unpleasant.
I was thinking today though, while our city does have extremely dangerous and unpleasant areas for walking, and this is a huge equity issue. It could be worse, there are places in the GTA which have all the problems we have, but with bigger blocks, and six or eight lanes of traffic----we have truly dug outselves into a really deep hole of toxic land use.