King-Victoria Transit Hub

[panamaniac]

What are the traffic counts like on Lancaster? My recollection from the time that I commuted along Lancaster was that it was fairly busy, but that's very much anecdotal.

Are you thinking to shift that traffic to Margaret?

It’s only a 2 lane street from Union to Wellington, so it can feel busy without having a huge amount of traffic.

Let’s consider southbound traffic; northbound should be more or less the same but in reverse. Divide this traffic into vehicles originating north of the expressway, coming on to Lancaster from the expressway ramp, and vehicles originating south of the expressway in the neighbourhood. Also, we’ll assume the goal is to get to Victoria and Lancaster even though obviously it is actually headed to a wide range of destinations across downtown.

We will also assume the new link routes under the railway are built. These are, on the west side, from the southbound expressway offramp at Wellington, under the tracks and Victoria, linking up with Edna where the offramp does now; and on the east side from the northbound expressway onramp at Wellington, under the tracks, linking up with Bruce and Victoria. That’s why the building with Kitchener Glass was demolished.

Traffic from north of the expressway can take 3 different routes: (1) down Riverbend to Wellington, then across to one of the link roads; (2) across Bridgeport to the expressway, then down to Wellington and continuing on one of the link roads; (3) across Bridgeport to Margaret.

Traffic from the expressway can simply continue down to Wellington and on to the link roads rather than getting off at Lancaster.

Traffic from south of the expressway, in the neighbourhood, can avoid the Lancaster crossing of the tracks by going east to one of the link roads or by going one block west to St. Leger or two blocks west to Margaret.

I would also rename Otto St. to Margaret St. to help people understand that in practice Margaret St. goes all the way to Frederick and therefore provides access to all the same places Lancaster does in that area.

Overall, I feel confident about the above even without traffic counts, because one lane of traffic spread over all these different routes including the 2 new link roads simply isn’t enough to overload them all. In addition to solving the Victoria & Lancaster problem without building a grade separation, or at least not a motor vehicle grade separation, it would also take traffic off of Lancaster south of Victoria, which really isn’t an appropriate route at all for through traffic.

Anything is doable, but it would seem odd to me to use anything other than Lancaster if i were headed to the north ward or Bridgeport from DTK,  Margaret would see a roundabout route.