The city is beginning to make good on its plan to make streets safer by changing how trucks are allowed to travel through Hamilton.
Starting next week, signage will be going up across the lower city and parts of the mountain to indicate the city’s new truck route, which restricts trucks with more than four axles from using certain streets – except for those making local deliveries.
The concept of a “ring road” for big trucks was approved by the previous council last spring and is one of the city’s strategies to improve road safety across Hamilton.
Ward 2 councillor Cameron Kroetsch was previously part of the citizen push to re-route trucks away from downtown thoroughfares and residential areas.
He said the modified truck route had nearly unanimous support from community and neighbourhood associations across the ward.
“One of the big issues, especially in the core, is people’s ability to walk to school, for instance … or pedestrians’ ability to get around. And that’s really difficult when you have a lot of really heavy traffic. The priority is for that traffic when it’s a truck route and not for the pedestrians who live in these neighbourhoods.”
It will take about six weeks to install more than 600 signs in the areas that are impacted by the changes, which impact Main and King Streets, the Claremont Access, Concession Street, and parts of Bay, Victoria, Wellington, Queenston, Parkdale, and other residential streets.
The city says Hamilton police will be “progressively” enforcing the new routes once the signage is all up, but Kroetsch says redesigning Hamilton’s road system with things like the planned two-way conversion of Main will do a lot more to improve road safety.
“One of the reasons why some non-local truck traffic will cut through certain parts of the city is because it’s easier and faster for them to do so,” said Kroetsch.
“Ultimately, the thing that has to happen here is we have to change some of the roads and change the design of the roads to make it less friendly in terms of the speed at which the vehicles can travel to the cities to make the streets safer.”
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