Victoria Park

[danbrotherston]

Sure, but just look at the map of Victoria Park. Jubilee is a necessary road to connect Victoria and Queen.

No, it is not.

It'd be nice if there were an alternative,

There's a bunch of other alternates

but it offers a good shortcut between two major roads which is particularly useful now that Joseph got narrowed down to a sliver for a bike lane. Without it, you'd just add congestion to nearby residential streets.

No, you wouldn't. If you ever drive that way you'd see that the evening traffic is 1) Park→Jubliee→Courtland→Stirling and down towards Southdale or Forest Hill, or 2) …Courtland→Ottawa down to Country Hills or

Put bollards on Jubilee between Heins and Water to prevent vehicles from using it as a through road. Then the major traffic flow for 1) is Park→Strange→Highland→Stirling, Park→Victoria→West→Highland→Stirling or better yet Park→Union→Belmont→Highland→Stirling.

For 2) Park→Union→Westmount→Ottawa.

Because of how slow this rush hour traffic is going along Jubilee, those other routes end up being faster by about 5 minutes. If you try cut from West to Homewood to get back to Courtland, you add those 5 minutes back on.

Besides, Jubilee barely runs through the park itself. The big field next to the clock tower is more of an event space than anything and doesn't see that much use for anything besides that (would be nice if they had some soccer/football nets or some cricket patches for people to enjoy).

I live right next to Victoria Park. From May to October when there is no event, there are lots of people playing soccer, frisbee football, and more. Your assertion of "doesn't see that much use for anything besides that" is objectively false.

It's a low speed street anyway, so at least the traffic is usually going through it at a tolerable speed. I don't frequently hear of anyone getting hit from cars using it, though I'm sure it has happened.

Cars frequently drive Jubilee at 50+km/h in spite of it being signed for 30km/h. At best they see the digital sign, slow down, then speed up right away after it. Many just ignore it.

One of the worst things, though, is coming out of the park at Queen & Courtland. It becomes two lanes, one for left and straight through, the other for right turns only. When I go out to walk the dog I am pretty much guaranteed to see some numbskull trying to go straight through in the right turn lane.

Lol...I'm always amazed at how people will justify this. Yes, a change is in fact different from the current situation. Yes, a change is possible.

I've tried this thought experiment a few times and nobody I've tried with grasps it. In a different universe, Highland Rd. doesn't turn south, and instead continues through the park and connects to Water Street. In this universe, you still exist, but you insist that this road through the park is absolutely necessary to functioning of the road network, and removing it is impossible. Yet, if we go back to our universe, you'd never argue for building this road, despite the fact that it would be very convenient and it would provide the very same convenience to us. Jubilee is the same road. The ONLY reason people balk at removing it is because it is there now. If it wasn't there, nobody would even consider building it.

As for whether people use the field, this suggestion is both stupid and wrong....it's wrong, because as you point out, people DO use the space extensively. It's stupid, because even if they didn't (like they don't use the triangle made by the two legs of Water St.) it isn't because its unused, it's because it's stranded on the other side of a god damn highway. Sadly, there was plans to close the end of Water St. for the bike project, but the pro-traffic, anti-bike, anti-city urban NIMBYs killed that idea, so now, we continue to have traffic in that area.

FWIW...here was my idea of what to do in the area: Close Jubilee to cars, Close Joseph to cars, run the park straight through the old transit mall and increase the park space...something that a lot of NIMBYs have claimed is important to them. Straighten David/Ontario to make that a through route. Now that the Joseph bikeway exists, I don't think this is particularly likely, but the whole point was create an urban area around the transit centre and the parking lot to the north, but that would require an ambitious city.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1...sp=sharing