Eva Amos can't wait for New Street to be returned to what she felt it should have been all along.

News 100 yellowBy Staff

November 28, 2017

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Eva Amos is pleased and happy knowing that she did her bit to prevent the New Street diet from becoming a fact that would have changed the way traffic moved along one of the more important roadways in the city.

“My biggest complaint” said Amos “was with the stats. The comment I kept hearing over and over again was there was an increase of 33% in cyclists from 60 pre diet to 80 post.

New street - being rebuilt“Do 80 cyclists warrant changing the road configuration for 15,000 to 20,000 drivers?” This is now. What will the vehicular traffic be when all the intensification is complete. Had there been 10 cyclist’s pre diet and then 20 post would we say the cyclists have doubled?

“Also there was little mention of the cyclists on the sidewalk. How many were actually on the road or crossing from the Centennial path?”

“I guess the numbers made a difference – our numbers. The 3282 signatures on the online petition with accompanying comments. The 675 signatures on a hard copy of a petition.

Articles in the papers, letters to the editors and the calls to Council members made a difference. And the hour long television feature on The Issue helped.

“Maybe numbers in the end did win out.”, said Amos

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4 comments to Eva Amos can’t wait for New Street to be returned to what she felt it should have been all along.

  • Tom Muir

    While I am all for biking to work and to appointments – I did it for 30 years – it was apparent from the start that this road diet was never going to be accepted by people.

    The people pushing it, in my opinion, all of us in the comments section here, were dreaming of a new world of biking utopia all over town. It might be nice if it could just be dropped here changing everything, but come on.

    People who want to bike have to pick their own routes – this is key, route selection. It’s what I did, and I changed routes as I became more comfortable with safety.

    This last Tuesday, I was heading to the New Street Education Centre and we passed 2 bikers together, lights flashing brightly and luminous striped tops, heading East – on the North sidewalk.

    Okay, it was at 6:30 PM, but traffic was light, the road well lit, and so on, but still, the sidewalk beckoned – SAFE.

  • George

    What astounds me is the city is painting bike lanes all over the city by scouring out the center yellow lines and moving them over several feet to one side then painting a bike lane on the other side. All this work in November just before the winter snow, salt and ice. The salt and melted snow will get into the scoured cracks and open up the asphalt to freezing and thawing and result in large cracks down the center of existing community roads. Again this expense is being done in November when the bicycles typically stay in the garage. This is a great way to foolishly spend taxpayer money.

  • Allan

    Yes, congratulations to everyone! I’m sure the road diet was Councillor Jack Dennison’s initiative. Hopefully he will get his comeuppance and be ousted at the next election!

  • Stephen White

    Eva Amos did a great job of galvanizing public support in opposition to the Road Diet! Well done Eva!

    The two most insightful comments at Monday night’s meeting came from Paul Sharman and Marianne Meed Ward. Paul’s comment was that this initiative should never have been implemented in the first place because it had no clear objective, and there was never a clear target of what would constitute a successful launch. Marianne’s comment was that this City needs to focus on other transportation needs to benefit citizens, particularly public transit.