[Richard Eade]

OK, I think I get what you are getting at: If we make the path go back and forth, then people will walk in a zigzag, following the path. Basically, if you build it north then people will be tempted to hang around the stations and their environs.

I don’t know if I agree with the concept, though. I have seen too many curved paths with a dirt path by-passing the curve.

If Queen is used, there might be some use of the stores very local to the stations. People will figure that if they have to walk three blocks to get to the station, they might as well go to the barber beside that station. However, I’m not convinced that they will walk four blocks so that they can go to Sparks Street, and then walk back a block to the LRT station. My experience is that people will stop at their final destination unless there is a very compelling reason to go past it and then back.

I’m also not convinced how elastic the morning commute time is. I think people tend to leave home as late as practical to just get in to work in time. I have watched people cram onto full Express Buses at Fallowfield Station because the trip is a couple of minutes faster than the half-full # 95 which makes more stops. Like-wise, I think people generally want to get home after work without delay; thus the popularity of Express buses.

It soundss to me that your concept of ‘planning’ is to ignore human nature and to create utopian areas which ‘should’ attract people to them. Well, the Sparks Street Mall was such an experiment, and look how it works. It is a pedestrian realm with traditional a main street layout. By the ‘planning’ concepts, it should attract pedestrians to it. But it doesn’t; unless there is an event which makes it a destination (Rib Fest, Busker Fest, etc.). Why would people walk from Laurier up to Sparks Street, then back down to Slater just so they can visit a travel agent? There is a travel agent at the Place d'Orléans, where they need to transfer; or they can drive to one after dinner.

I admit that having the current Transitway run along Albert/Slater probably draws people toward those two streets and away from other streets, like Sparks. But putting the tunnel under Queen will only make Queen the draw, not Sparks, and make people walk further to get to the LRT. The LRT stations are the destination, and from my experience looking at the rut in the grass cutting off the arc of the curved path, people tend to bee-line for their destination.

The problem with Queen Street was stated early in the DOTT study; Queen is too far north. Since the majority of the workers are south of Queen, they will generally head south in the morning, and north in the afternoon – but only as far as Queen.

A similar thing will happen with Slater Street; people who work north of Slater will head north in the morning and south to, but not south of, Slater in the afternoon; those working south of it will go south in the morning and north, back to Slater, in the afternoon. The difference is that the pedestrian traffic will be more evenly split from Slater so that there are not the huge, uni-directional, crowds trying to use the north-south sidewalks.

Of course, using transit to help establish development and land use patterns is a valid thing, but it works best when there is a clean slate. For example, I am in favour of developing a rail line through Riverside South as early as possible. But where patterns have been set over years of development and use, I think it is better to provide a service which matches the need.

And, yes, digging under Queen would be less disruptive to the Transitway, but the Transitway is going to be so disrupted during the conversion that if both directions were temporarily pushed onto Albert it probably wouldn’t make that much of a difference.