Grand River Transit

[PhilippAchtel]

Are they just moving the bus routes or is the street going to be completely closed?  I don't think I've ever seen a case of a street being closed for a private construction project.

If there's no corresponding adjustment of the 6s, 34s, and 7s to Waterloo, it's probably just due to be closed in one direction, and closing a single lane for construction is not uncommon.

[Square]

According to the City of Kitchener Road Closures, Gaukel is closing both ways up to Hall's Lane. GAUKEL ST CHARLES ST W TO HALLS LANE W Reason: Site Servicing
Start: Aug 20, 2018
Details: CLOSURE FOR NEW DEVELOPMENT CONSTRUCTION UNTIL DEC 2019
Detour: VIA CHARLES ST TO WATER ST TO KING ST

[GtwoK]

What's the reasoning, out of curiosity? Neither Duke nor Young were shut down for City Centre construction, and neither King nor Victoria were shut down for One Vic (albeit, there were sidewalk coverings and scaffolding. Why does Charlie West need the entire street, both directions?

[KevinL]

Available space, I'd guess. The entire property is the footprint of the building, leaving essentially no space beyond Hall's Lane for staging. They will have large deliveries and other logistics coming in and out.

[ijmorlan]

Available space, I'd guess. The entire property is the footprint of the building, leaving essentially no space beyond Hall's Lane for staging. They will have large deliveries and other logistics coming in and out.

Also Gaukel doesn’t go anywhere. Closing it to traffic will make very little difference to traffic patterns (except for the buses, obviously). I don’t know how much the City charges for closures or how they decide whether to allow them, but if I were making those choices I would quote a relatively low price for closing Gaukel compared to a lot of other streets I can think of.

[danbrotherston]

Available space, I'd guess. The entire property is the footprint of the building, leaving essentially no space beyond Hall's Lane for staging. They will have large deliveries and other logistics coming in and out.

Also Gaukel doesn’t go anywhere. Closing it to traffic will make very little difference to traffic patterns (except for the buses, obviously). I don’t know how much the City charges for closures or how they decide whether to allow them, but if I were making those choices I would quote a relatively low price for closing Gaukel compared to a lot of other streets I can think of.

On that point, once the terminal closes, I would strongly argue for Gaukel to be closed to traffic, and instead have a greenway to the park.

[Pheidippides]

I hope they at least keep Gaukel open to pedestrians (they've already close the site side of Charles to pedestrians) as there are enough full time closures already inconveniencing pedestrians.

I know there are permit fees for this kind of closure in Kitchener, but are there other fees like they have in other cities for street occupancy (e.g. Toronto) that might encourage the limiting the closure to the shortest time possible? Even the City of Waterloo charges $29/lane/day for minor roads, $125/lane/day for major roads, and $250 per month when it affects sidewalks and pathways (which itself is revealing - lane closures are charged by the day, but sidewalk closures only by the month; you can inconvenience pedestrians for 29 days without paying a fee, but inconvenience a single lane of a road for a day and its a minimum of $29 a day plus the $123 application fee despite that the application for states that "Maintain safe and convenient passage for all pedestrians through or around the work site").

20-Aug-2018 to 31-Dec-2019 is 499 days. Even at the low end of the Waterloo rates $14,000 seems like a small price to pay given the total costs to everyone's time/fuel over that time period resulting from the detour.


(Unrelated note, I noticed that the sidewalk snow clearing fees for Kitchener are in that document and are as follows (per linear ft):
King St. $7.91
Other Downtown Streets and gov't properties $2.40
Crosswalk clearing (schools, etc.) $3.12)

[ijmorlan]

Also Gaukel doesn’t go anywhere. Closing it to traffic will make very little difference to traffic patterns (except for the buses, obviously). I don’t know how much the City charges for closures or how they decide whether to allow them, but if I were making those choices I would quote a relatively low price for closing Gaukel compared to a lot of other streets I can think of.

On that point, once the terminal closes, I would strongly argue for Gaukel to be closed to traffic, and instead have a greenway to the park.

That would be awesome and very consistent with some of the other things happening in Kitchener. And in this particular case, essentially no impact on motor vehicle traffic, not that that should necessarily be a veto in cases where there is an impact. There is already a big entrance area of Victoria Park immediately across Charles from Gaukel so it would even make sense with the rest of the existing design. And at the other end, it’s right across King from City Hall. So it would connect two important points. At Charles, the left turn lane space and the portion of the intersection in line with the left turn space could become a massive pedestrian refuge, making it easier to cross. Some interaction between motor vehicle traffic and LRT traffic would even be removed.

So overall, a great and inexpensive project with really no downside.

[panamaniac]

Also Gaukel doesn’t go anywhere. Closing it to traffic will make very little difference to traffic patterns (except for the buses, obviously). I don’t know how much the City charges for closures or how they decide whether to allow them, but if I were making those choices I would quote a relatively low price for closing Gaukel compared to a lot of other streets I can think of.

On that point, once the terminal closes, I would strongly argue for Gaukel to be closed to traffic, and instead have a greenway to the park.

That's not a new idea, but it's such a good one that I wish WRC had some sort of mechanism that would allow us to urge the City to do this, "on behalf of the over 1,000 members of WRC".

[KevinL]

Especially when you consider that the lower part of Gaukel will likely see both sides redeveloped. Great opportunity for pedestrian-focused urbanism through here.

[Rainrider22]

Especially when you consider that the lower part of Gaukel will likely see both sides redeveloped. Great opportunity for pedestrian-focused urbanism through here.

1000 members. All in favour of closing Gaukel and making it a pedestrian Greenway to Victoria park, say aye.

[danbrotherston]

Not to be 'that guy', but wouldn't it be prudent to wait and see what kind of development will take place at the existing terminal site before we consider closing roads?

Not sure what you mean...what type of development could occur that you think would necessitate the road being open?  There's already two access roads on either side (Joseph and Charles).

Further, at the end of the day, the city has a fair bit of control over what type of development goes in. I don't think the development is what would justify closing the road, I think the road already warrants closing given it's position within the city as the pathway between the civic square and the central park. The city should only allow developments that are consistent with that.

[panamaniac]

Indeed, since the site already fronts on three other streets, I can't see what difference it would make if Gaukel were pedestrianized.

[danbrotherston]

Indeed, since the site already fronts on three other streets, I can't see what difference it would make if Gaukel were pedestrianized.

Duh! Three, what am I thinking, I literally live on the third one.

[ijmorlan]

Not to be 'that guy', but wouldn't it be prudent to wait and see what kind of development will take place at the existing terminal site before we consider closing roads?

Look at how Gaukel fits into the rest of the transportation network. Note that there are no left turn lanes at either end, except off of King to allow buses to get in to the terminal. It runs for two blocks, ending with a T-junction at each end. There are no driveways on Gaukel, except for a couple of parking lot entrances immediately next to Hall’s lane and of course the transit terminal. In short, it contributes almost nothing to motor vehicle connectivity, but would be a very wide and pleasant pedestrian connection if pedestrianized. As pointed out by others, the development at the terminal can use the adjacent streets on the other three sides of the site for motor vehicle access. There is no point in it connecting to Gaukel because the traffic would just have to turn off immediately onto one of 3 streets, 2 of which are adjacent to the site anyway.

I have to say, this is one case where I’m about 99.5% sure that closing it to motor vehicles is the right thing to do. There really is absolutely no downside.