01-08-2016, 08:40 AM
A half-kilometer walk next to non-interactive walls/buildings is a very negative pedestrian experience, especially if you are pushed across the main/sole entry point for all vehicles going into a three-tower mixed-use site. From Wellington to Victoria, there is nothing good about the pedestrian experience on the west side (400m/1310ft). On the East side, there is nothing good from Moore to either a well-designed interactive transportation hub (150m/490ft), or else nothing to Francis (425m/1395ft), assuming we don't see a matching negative experience on the East side (Wellington to Francis would be 585m/1920ft). Comparatively, it's 600m/1970ft from where the Quizno's is across from Laurier to Futon Delight, Ethel's, and the start of UpTown.
That's not a stretch of mind-numbing, pedestrian-discouraging experience we want to duplicate. Especially not when we have the potential for adjacent trees and homes (Waterloo example) to be replaced with opaque glass and/or concrete walls in Kitchener.
As a comparator, if you made the entire section of Weber from Wellington to Victoria, using the underpass, fully concrete-walled (including preventing views of homes right from the north start, to preventing access to any new developments which could arise between the tracks and Victoria St, that's a comparatively modest 245m/800ft.
That's not a stretch of mind-numbing, pedestrian-discouraging experience we want to duplicate. Especially not when we have the potential for adjacent trees and homes (Waterloo example) to be replaced with opaque glass and/or concrete walls in Kitchener.
As a comparator, if you made the entire section of Weber from Wellington to Victoria, using the underpass, fully concrete-walled (including preventing views of homes right from the north start, to preventing access to any new developments which could arise between the tracks and Victoria St, that's a comparatively modest 245m/800ft.