Columnists
A pedestrian subject
Over the next year or two, it’s going to get busier than ever in downtown Picton. The Royal Hotel will open. The renovations to the Picton branch of the PEC Library will take place. Condos will be developed in the upper and lower parts of downtown. It all promises to be very urban-chic.
And yet there still seems to be something missing from the built Picton lexicon. Call me a lunatic, but I find the lack of a pedestrian crossing at the Town Hill intersection of Main Street, the Loyalist Parkway and County Road 49 a serious crimp in downtown Picton’s style.
The intersection is bad enough from a traffic-alone standpoint. The uphill traffic coming from the south has the right of way to turn left at the top of the Hill (a holdover, I am told, from horse-driven days: you need momentum to carry you over the hilltop). Turning right, whether you’re coming from the south, east or west, is relatively straightforward, although it’s vaguely unnerving to wait as traffic whizzes up the Hill and through the intersection without stopping or slowing.
But turning left—whether coming from the east and going south or coming from the west and going east—is a dicey proposition. There is no intersection-specific rule of automotive priority, so you are left with the default rule of ‘first arrival.’ A friend who lives near the intersection and fancies himself as an amateur anthropologist says priority is in fact given to, or taken by, gravel trucks, farm equipment, 4x4s with jacked up suspension (especially if covered in mud or without a functioning muffler) stretch limousines, motorhomes, RVs and trailers. That’s too long a list to formalize on a road sign.
And then it gets even worse for the pedestrian, who has to anticipate traffic from all three directions before venturing forth.
I assume that we would have seen a traffic light or pedestrian crosswalk at the top of Town Hill years ago if it were a simple matter of just installing one. There must be a rule about angles of incline or something similar standing in the way, although you would think that these days with so little equine traffic and so few cars having slippable clutches, that shouldn’t be a problem. But perhaps it is necessary to consider more imaginative options, What about a pedestrian footbridge, for example? They’re just finishing one in Pickering that crosses 14 lanes of HIghway 401. It looks like a Slinky toy on its side, and construction was delayed by years, but they did it; so it should be a piece of cake to build one spanning two lanes, even though it needs to have three entry points.
I suppose there may be a slight problem in building the bridge high enough so that traffic passing underneath it doesn’t knock it out of whack. And if it is built with as much clearance as the bridge at the Belleville train station, it could prove too much of a challenge for those who have barely survived making it up Town Hill from the south (in which case, we should be talking about a funicular running up and down the Hill). But our bridge doesn’t have to carry the weight of automobiles. Why not incorporate the Murray Canal model and have a bridge that can swing on demand to accommodate extra-high loads. And now that wind turbines aren’t coming to the County, how many extra-high loads will there be anyway?
Building the pedestrian bridge to a certain height could become an interesting design challenge. Why not, for instance, replicate the notorious Maman spider statue at the National Gallery in Ottawa, with three of the eight drop down legs being used as stairs? It would be very Star Trekky. It could become a tourist attraction,
And if a bridge is technically impossible, why not a tunnel? They’re considering that option to replace the Little Current swing bridge on Manitoulin Island. If they can do it, surely we can.
I’m not saying that a tunnel is the most romantic of venues, and I admit that it could become a haven for skateboarders and drug dealers; but with a little oldfashioned County gumption the project could work. Who knows: meeting at the underground central chamber supplied by one of three feeder tunnels could become quite a landmark rendezvous point. Besides, skateboarders are not really bad people, and marijuana is legal.
Whether bridge or tunnel, you’ve got to figure there’s a federal grants program out there—infrastructure, safety, transportation, environment, whatever—that would pour money into our project. If Tony Clement could fund a gazebo under the guise of funding a G-summit, Neil Ellis should be able to think of something. And Todd Smith is in like Flynn with Rob Ford, so we could call on him too.
The main obstacle, it seems to me, would be jealousy from other County communities. Wellington still feels it is owed a roundabout after Picton got one at Sandy Hook Road. And Picton has two sets of traffic lights, while Wellington has only one. Maybe, if Picton is to get a bridge or tunnel, it might be necessary to put parking meters on Main Street in Wellington to make it feel like it is keeping stride with its cousin in urban sophistication. That would be a small price to pay,
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