By Pepper Parr
July 9th, 2018
BURLINGTON, ON
A picture is said to be worth a thousand words.
The following is a set of renderings on the city’s web site that few people have seen.
It is part of what is behind the outrage that many feel over the changes being made to the Downtown core – It wasn’t quite what many had in mind when they first heard the phrase Grow BOLD.
Elizabeth looking south towards the lske
Lakeshore at Brant looking east
Brant Street looking north – with city hall on the left.
Brant street looking south from about where the shopping plaza is north of Caroline.
Bold indeed.
Concrete jungle. Where did our Burlington go??
The comment about an LRT is not as far-fetched as it seems. Ideally the street/road currently designated Plains Road/Fairview Street would be ideal for Light Rail Transit.
The right of way both directions could be beside the curb lane (pity about the bicycles, not),
with stops spread in a logical fashion. Ideally a loop track into and exiting each GO station would also assist. Trams/trolleys what ever you wish to call them could enter each loop at each station; unload passengers, reload and then proceed outbound with the option to to turn left or right. Ideally (mind nothing is ideal these days) the line could well extend west to the Royal Botanical Gardens and beyond entering Hamilton and perhaps connecting at some point to their ill-planned LRV system.
In the opposite direction with proper planning, operations could extend east to Burloak Drive and maybe into Oakville, shades of the long abandoned Radial Railways?
As Metrolinx hauls passengers on their current tracks (with the hope of electrification in the next few years), this does not preclude municipalities doing so likewise on their streets or private rights of way.
If Burlington wanted to be truly ambitious, east-west service LRV service along Upper Middle Road and/or Dundas Street is not unobtainable. In this era of advancing electric powered vehicles, solar powered rubber tired passenger-hauling vehicles could connect the north-south streets with the east west electrically power trams.
Unlike Mississauga where roads in the Square One vicinity are three lanes each way (e.g. Burnhamthorpe, Hurontario) most streets in downtown Burlington are one lane each way, two if you are lucky. Add in the ubiquitous bike lanes, situate the buildings physically close to the road, and make no upgrades to the roads or transportation network, and you create the perfect conditions for shadowing, wind tunnelling, congestion and an overall feeling of claustrophobia!
Greg is absolutely right: the renderings de-emphasize the scale and magnitude of what the downtown will look like post-intensification.
Maybe the Planning Department should hire those 12 year old kids from ECoB to build a more accurate Lego model. It probably would be a better representation than this fictionalized account.
It’s time to sell City Hall and move it to a more central location (ie Guelph Line and Harvester). I’m assuming the building is owned by us, the citizens of Burlington. Getting to City Hall now is a pain, even at 7 PM. Brant Street has too many lights. Will be worse with that population density.
A mass transit plan is really needed if this is to be the future. Even if the plan is an LRT from Burlington GO station to Brant and Lakeshore every 5 to 7 minutes. (for starters)
Palladium Way in Ward 6 has lots of space for new City Hall . Never going to happen as Downtown is everything and north Burlington has nothing to offer in the minds of some running the City
Lovely……… NOT!
Some of the highrises appear to be “dimmed” to make them less noticeable.
Looks great.
Where is the traffic? They seemed to have left that out and will these streets have no parking, -I don’t see any vehicles parked anywhere. However, I am glad to see that we will be having a WHOLE FOODS grocery store.
These have been designed to de-emphasize the size of proposed buildings. They are either clipped in the foreground of “faded out” in the background.
They left out the insufferable traffic that we already have.