The redesign of Barton Street includes renewing and upgrading municipal services and utility relocations. Pictured: Hamilton City Hall. Photo Credit: City of Hamilton/X.
The City of Hamilton is currently reviewing road configuration options for a long stretch of Barton Street from Locke Street North to the Red Hill Valley Parkway.
The city says that the “intended outcome of the study is to identify a preferred design plan that provides enhanced safety, efficient movement for all users, enhanced active and sustainable transportation, and improved pedestrian space and a vibrant streetscape.”
The city website adds that the study will be applying a “Complete Streets approach.”
The term “Complete Streets” is defined by the city as an approach that “considers the needs of all road users, including pedestrians, cyclists, transit users, and motorists.”
In fact, the city has a 192-page “Complete Streets Design Guidelines” manual that was created in June 2022 and outlines different elements to “improve” streets.
One of the first images in the document shows a four-lane road with two-directional traffic and suggests that it should be switched to a two-lane road with bike lanes, street trees, and more pedestrian space.
It is unclear if the city plans to reduce vehicle lanes on Barton Street, although it appears that it is a real possibility that staff are considering.
That same City of Hamilton manual says that an “equitable Complete Streets approach” is needed because it “recognizes that mobility has been unequally distributed depending on a person’s race, gender, sexual orientation, age, income or ability, and creates policies and practices that seek to eliminate those structural barriers to mobility.”
The redesign of Barton Street also includes renewing and upgrading municipal services and utility relocations.
City staff already held Business Improvement Workshops in September on their Barton Street Functional Design Review Study.
Additionally, staff are taking public feedback online until October 30, 2024 through the city’s Engage Hamilton platform.
Feedback can be provided at www.engage.hamilton.ca/bartonstfunctionaldesign.
An in-person public meeting will be held on Thursday, Oct. 17 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Westinghouse HQ on Sanford Avenue North, located just north of Barton Street.
After public engagement, city staff will be evaluating preferred design alternatives throughout the fall and selecting their preferred design based on community feedback.
Staff are expected to report back to the public in the late fall or winter 2024 with the information they gathered during engagement sessions.
The city website says that they aim to finalize the preferred design in December 2024 at which point they will determine construction sequencing and the timeline for implementation.
City Council has already been criticized for their planned redesign of Main Street, with suggestions that the removal of vehicle lanes along that corridor will create a significant traffic bottleneck.
The planned LRT along King Street will already result in a reduction of vehicle lanes along that road as well, with tracks taking their place.
It remains to be seen if the city will be reducing vehicle lanes along yet another heavily used east-west corridor with this Barton Street redesign.
Based in Hamilton, he reaches hundreds of thousands of people monthly on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. He has been published in The Hamilton Spectator, Stoney Creek News, and Bay Observer. He has also been a segment host with Cable 14 Hamilton. In 2017, he received the Chancellor Full Tuition Scholarship from the University of Ottawa (BA, 2022). He has also received the Governor General’s Academic Medal. He formerly worked in a non-partisan role on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
