The long-winding, short-sighted new sidewalk or walking into a drainage ditch of death!
A few weeks ago I complained about the lack of a Sidewalk on the stretch of Southdale Road between Pine Valley Crescent (that is neither in a valley or a piney retreat) and Farnham Road/Bostwick Road in South London. Even though there's a townhouse complex on Dalhousie Drive, it seems the developers never foresaw a day when people would walk along Southdale Road. My walk to the newly built (3 yrs ago) nearby Power Center with Starbucks therefore involved a portion of soft shoulder or grass walking - fine at my age and fitness but not so much for the elderly.
As if my voice was some sort of Midas Touch of Infrastructure, within days of my Facebook post, a bobcat-like tractor appeared near Farnham Road. It began clearing sod and dirt for what I instantly knew was to be a sidewalk. Brilliant, I thought. People remarked that I was now to be known as 'Infrastructure Man' for my clearly magical powers!
As the process continued, I began to become a little concerned. Let me paint a picture of the pre-existing condition to set-up the story a little. Like many suburban roads, for most of the length of the stretch there were two lanes for vehicles and a soft shoulder of about 5 feet on both sides. On the south side there was a drainage ditch about 10 feet wide and a further 10-15 feet of grass and trees until the backyards of the townhomes and in some cases parking lots. Just east of the townhomes is a Right-of-Way, then about 500 feet of Hydro Property where a fairly large Transfer Station sits, setback as far as the row of townhouses. To the west of that, there sits a small commercial strip mall about 200 feet wide. It would appear that when all of these developments were approved, planners took care to ensure the setbacks were of a similar distance. This is mosy likely to accommodate future road-widening.
So, with that picture painted let me continue. It seemed to me that the logical route for a sidewalk would be behind the drainage ditch for the entire length. My walking route followed this straight path from the Right-of-Way (I used to walk through one of the townhouse parking lots) to the commercial strip. In fact, there was a fairly well-worn strip of grass where other pedestrians clearly had the same idea.
The sidewalk started out with this set-up for the entire length of the townhomes. For some reason though, it now takes a swing towards the roadway and replaces most of the soft-shoulder until it gets east of the Hyrdro Station, at wich point it cuts back away from the road, closer to the commercial strip plaza's parking lot and the small grassy knoll that sits in front of it.
So, while I was a bit disturbed by this, it only just occured to me last night that there might be some drainage issues. The sidewalk was sitting a good 4 inches above the soft shoulder for this stretch of road, but at least there was still some soft shoulder. Today, my worst fears were confirmed. (well, not really worst fears, I fear bear attacks slightly more than poorly planned infrastructure!) The builders of the sidewalk did not put-in any storm sewers or drainage, which I at first worried (and still do) would lead to ponding of water along the side of the road leading to the inevitable drive-by soaker.
However a drive-by soaker may now be the least of the pedestrian's worries. Today, I watched in horror as the rest of the soft shoulder was asphalted over and get this, raised to be at the same grade as the sidewalk that now runs right next to the 80K roadway!!! In other words, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to prevent cars from driving onto the sidewalk for about 400 feet! In addition there is a turn-lane for the Home Depot and a very slight merge just to the west of Pine Valley Crescent!
I can see the close-calls and potential deaths already! No white line can prevent a car from driving over a significant portion of this sidewalk. Let me explain again - the road is on the exact same level as the sidewalk - it is an asphalted/concrete hard shoulder - not a sidewalk guarded by a 4 inch curb designed to kill a car's suspension! I cannot for the life of me imagine the stupidity behind this piece of road/sidewalk design! I'd rather have no sidewalk then a nice smooth transition into my legs!
The engineer who designed this should be fired, preferrably from a cannon!
The blatant disregard for pedestrian safety ought to be enough to strip him or her of any certification in his/her chosen field!
Not only is this situation unsafe and potentially deadly, its a short-sighted waste of taxpayer dollars. There is no reason this sidewalk needed to be built in this fashion save for current expediency. I can only guess that the City was unable to secure the portion of road allowance (see, makes little sense) in front of the Hydro Transfer Station. But a Road Allowance is exactly that! It allows for future Road Widenings. And sidewalks!
So, in the eventual case that this portion of Southdale is eidened from 2 to 4 lanes, this sidewalk will have to be torn up and relocated where it should have been built in the first instance - in line with the rest of the sidewalk on the outside of the drainage ditch!
Oh, and did I mention its all unlit?
So I'll feel relatively safe while the construction barrels are in place but guess when they go, I'll be back to using the well-worn path in the grass.
Meanwhile the City's part-time City Council wrestles with tough issues, like whether or not to hold public meetings to discuss the issue of putting content filters on Library Computers. Idiots and Asshats!
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
London Lunacy part 2
Part 2 in my possibly ongoing series about the stupidity that exists in London's City Hall deals with Traffic. Specifically, Traffic Lights.
First, there does not appear to be any central control or coordination of traffic lights. For a City that thinks its big and will soon be quite large, this is a gaping hole in the City's Infrastructure.
Secondly, while I admittedly do a lot more walking, particularly at odd hours, like 3am, I'm appalled by London's system of traffic lights and a significant lack of sidewalks. How does any property get developed in this City ever without the landowner being required to put down sidewalks. If not the developer, then the City should use the powers of The Ontario Planning Act to at least get the funding for sidewalks. Perhaps this has already changed and I'm crying over spilled milk that's already been cleaned up but the absolute dearth of sidewalks in South London makes me suspicious.
Its not that there aren't patches of sidewalk - there are. Unfortunately, these patches are the orphans of infrastructure, connecting to nothing at all. Its bad enough that any neighbourhood constructed in the 1980s turns its back on main roads but when they're next to older sidewalks, its also sad. One wants to hug the sidewalk to make it feel less isolated from anyone who might be inclined to use it from time to time. Late at night the pedestrian plays a sort of blind Russian Roulette or walks head on into oncoming traffic, depending on the desire to cross an 80K road to determine whether there is actually a wide and tame enough soft shoulder to walk.
You might ask 'who walks on an 80K roadway?' I do. A couple of other intrepid souls do. But without sidewalks, what could one be expected to do? I'm fairly cavalier sometimes towards my own safety. But for the safety conscious, a soft shoulder just doesn't encourage use of the most natural form of transportation. Don't the local Starbucks and Horton's wish to attract more traffic, perhaps from the neighbourhoods adjacent to the Power Centre? What hopes do pedestrians have for a peaceful, safe co-existence with cars without a thin strip of concrete to walk on? How complex is this notion? I tend to assume London's transportation Planners skipped all classes related to sustainability, safety and pedestrian-related infrastructure.
Sidewalks in this setting also serve more than just pedestrian needs. The cyclist faces a choice of soft shoulder (fine on a Mountain Bike but who commutes on knobby tires?) or riding on the same 80K road as cars going upwards of 100K! So the notion that no one walking doesn't support the infrastructure is clearly faulty - both needs can be served with proper signage and respect between sidewalk users.
Anyone who has paid for gas in the last 2 years, save for the post-crash period when oil prices dipped drastically, knows that the new trans fat of driving is idling. While London's Council passes expensive-to-enforce By-Laws against this atrocious act, they neglect to act to reduce it themselves. As I also occasionally drive late at night, I wish I had a nickel for all the minutes I've been forced to wait up to 2 minutes for a four-way Light to change in my favour! There's an easy fix to this and in case London fears being compared to St. Thomas, a great example exists in Canada's second largest City, Vancouver. There, traffic planners realize that there's no point requiring drivers to wait while nothing passes them perpendicularly.
Anyone who's driven in Vancouver at night knows that a flashing yellow in one direction means caution while a flashing green in the other direction assigns right-of-way. Hell, anyone anywhere knows that's the rule when there's a power outage. In fact, a majority of London's traffic lights could be fully powered-down overnight. But if that's too scary for the control freaks that have diplomas in Traffic 'engineering', then I'd settle for the flashing option.
And this solution would address where cars and pedestrians meet (one hopes metaphorically only.) At some of the major crossroads, light cycles are barely long enough for 2 or 3 cars to get through. So the pedestrian has enough time to get halfway across one half of a 4 or 6 lane roadway. Now, I do recognize the unique nature of my late night walks. Not every insomniac or ass-itcher goes on 90 minute walks to look at infrastructure and new cars. But if the Traffic Planner is concerned enough about the safety of vehicles to leave lights on that often cycle for no one, then shouldn't they be as concerned about the occasional walker? There are no crosswalks. There are no 'helping hands' to get one safely from one side to the other. A wrong step or a drunken hike can result in certain death where the predominant road has a limit of 80k and a bend.
So here's a new challenge for London. Try it out somewhere. Let's see what happens at Waterloo or Colborne and Oxford at 3am on a Wednesday night. Surely control boxes have such settings - since these lights in the suburbs have a 5-second cycle function that doesn't exist during the daylight hours?
Next post: the long-winding, short-sighted new sidewalk or Walking into a drainage ditch of death!
First, there does not appear to be any central control or coordination of traffic lights. For a City that thinks its big and will soon be quite large, this is a gaping hole in the City's Infrastructure.
Secondly, while I admittedly do a lot more walking, particularly at odd hours, like 3am, I'm appalled by London's system of traffic lights and a significant lack of sidewalks. How does any property get developed in this City ever without the landowner being required to put down sidewalks. If not the developer, then the City should use the powers of The Ontario Planning Act to at least get the funding for sidewalks. Perhaps this has already changed and I'm crying over spilled milk that's already been cleaned up but the absolute dearth of sidewalks in South London makes me suspicious.
Its not that there aren't patches of sidewalk - there are. Unfortunately, these patches are the orphans of infrastructure, connecting to nothing at all. Its bad enough that any neighbourhood constructed in the 1980s turns its back on main roads but when they're next to older sidewalks, its also sad. One wants to hug the sidewalk to make it feel less isolated from anyone who might be inclined to use it from time to time. Late at night the pedestrian plays a sort of blind Russian Roulette or walks head on into oncoming traffic, depending on the desire to cross an 80K road to determine whether there is actually a wide and tame enough soft shoulder to walk.
You might ask 'who walks on an 80K roadway?' I do. A couple of other intrepid souls do. But without sidewalks, what could one be expected to do? I'm fairly cavalier sometimes towards my own safety. But for the safety conscious, a soft shoulder just doesn't encourage use of the most natural form of transportation. Don't the local Starbucks and Horton's wish to attract more traffic, perhaps from the neighbourhoods adjacent to the Power Centre? What hopes do pedestrians have for a peaceful, safe co-existence with cars without a thin strip of concrete to walk on? How complex is this notion? I tend to assume London's transportation Planners skipped all classes related to sustainability, safety and pedestrian-related infrastructure.
Sidewalks in this setting also serve more than just pedestrian needs. The cyclist faces a choice of soft shoulder (fine on a Mountain Bike but who commutes on knobby tires?) or riding on the same 80K road as cars going upwards of 100K! So the notion that no one walking doesn't support the infrastructure is clearly faulty - both needs can be served with proper signage and respect between sidewalk users.
Anyone who has paid for gas in the last 2 years, save for the post-crash period when oil prices dipped drastically, knows that the new trans fat of driving is idling. While London's Council passes expensive-to-enforce By-Laws against this atrocious act, they neglect to act to reduce it themselves. As I also occasionally drive late at night, I wish I had a nickel for all the minutes I've been forced to wait up to 2 minutes for a four-way Light to change in my favour! There's an easy fix to this and in case London fears being compared to St. Thomas, a great example exists in Canada's second largest City, Vancouver. There, traffic planners realize that there's no point requiring drivers to wait while nothing passes them perpendicularly.
Anyone who's driven in Vancouver at night knows that a flashing yellow in one direction means caution while a flashing green in the other direction assigns right-of-way. Hell, anyone anywhere knows that's the rule when there's a power outage. In fact, a majority of London's traffic lights could be fully powered-down overnight. But if that's too scary for the control freaks that have diplomas in Traffic 'engineering', then I'd settle for the flashing option.
And this solution would address where cars and pedestrians meet (one hopes metaphorically only.) At some of the major crossroads, light cycles are barely long enough for 2 or 3 cars to get through. So the pedestrian has enough time to get halfway across one half of a 4 or 6 lane roadway. Now, I do recognize the unique nature of my late night walks. Not every insomniac or ass-itcher goes on 90 minute walks to look at infrastructure and new cars. But if the Traffic Planner is concerned enough about the safety of vehicles to leave lights on that often cycle for no one, then shouldn't they be as concerned about the occasional walker? There are no crosswalks. There are no 'helping hands' to get one safely from one side to the other. A wrong step or a drunken hike can result in certain death where the predominant road has a limit of 80k and a bend.
So here's a new challenge for London. Try it out somewhere. Let's see what happens at Waterloo or Colborne and Oxford at 3am on a Wednesday night. Surely control boxes have such settings - since these lights in the suburbs have a 5-second cycle function that doesn't exist during the daylight hours?
Next post: the long-winding, short-sighted new sidewalk or Walking into a drainage ditch of death!
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