David Reevely, who I normally agree with, wrote this post in response to Eric’s post about Cambridge, between Somerset and Primrose.
I’m not really crazy about the deliberate impression it gives that the street is blocked to cars. Streets are meant to be publicly accessible, not secret passages for those in the know; particularly in a downtown with a lot of one-way streets and sometimes difficult parking, having an open street that pretends it’s something else seems like bad design to me.
Cambridge St. is perfectly accessible for all, and it’s far easier to deal with than measures used in the suburbs to prevent through traffic. Mr. Reevely, you talk about fairness, but it seems to be fine for you to say that all streets downtown should be widely accessible only to cars (which makes them pretty inaccessible to everyone else), but when I find myself driving in Barrhaven or Kanata, I find that streets are far more inaccessible to cars due to their twisty nature. Every residential street in Kanata is a “secret passage only for those in the know”
Suburban developers want to provide safe streets for kids to play in. Why can’t urbanites have the same thing? There are plenty of arterial streets downtown where cars are king. Let the residents of the downtown neighborhoods have safe residential streets, just like the residents of Barrhaven, Orleans, or Kanata.
Part of the case for gridded streets is that they do a good job providing alternative routes in the event of blockages or, presumably, really bad traffic. If Bronson can’t handle all the load, then it makes sense for neighbouring streets to take it up.
Just by the tone of your post and your comment, you seem to be forgetting that people, even families with young children, live on these streets. You seem to be viewing them as some kind of impediment to you getting where-ever you’re going. There are plenty of arterial roads near Bronson that can be detours without sending tons of speeding cars down residential streets like Cambridge
Fairness and the woonerf - Greater Ottawa