King Street Bus Stop Moves To Reid Street
A bus stop at the bottom of King Street near Front Street will be moved to Reid Street, between King and Court Streets, effective Monday June 20th, the City of Hamilton said today.
“The City of Hamilton announced in March this year a permanent change of direction to King Street traffic flow, making King Street one-way from Front Street up to Reid Street,” a spokesperson said.
“This therefore makes the King Street bus stop redundant and the new stop will be just outside of ChopFusion Restaurant.
“The City of Hamilton and Department of Public Transportation have worked together to determine the best placement for the new bus stop, with the view to providing good service to bus users while balancing the needs of area businesses and residents.
“The change to King Street is effective in August and signage will be posted in advance. The bus stop is being moved this month to ensure passengers and motorists have sufficient time to become accustomed to the change.
“The change means that motorists will no longer be able to turn left from Reid Street extension down King Street. Traffic travelling south on King Street coming from Church Street will be forced to turn left or right, as the option to continue on King Street will be removed.
The primary reason for this change is safety, the City said.
City Engineer, Patrick Cooper said; “There is no clear line of visibility onto Front Street at the corner of King Street for east-bound traffic and turning right into Front Street is also hazardous.
“This change will result in motorists using Court Street to access Front Street, with the added safety of traffic lights.
“The additional benefit to the changes is that it will ease congestion at the junction of Reid and King Streets as all traffic in the two left hand lanes will flow in one direction to the east.
“The bus stop move also addresses safety concerns, as this location is safer than the current location which is on a pedestrian crossing.”
Good Bus stop move. I applaud that.
Waiting for the Press Release from Alaska Hall……
So, the lower part of King St becomes one way. Very little traffic goes that way, in part because making a left onto Reid is near impossible with the volume of inbound traffic.
That part of King St will become a dead zone.
Making right coming down on to front street ain’t no cakewalk either.
I actually use that direction of King Street a few times a week…dang. :-/
The King St/Front St intersection was never busy; the Court St/Front St is always backed up. This will make that considerably worse. I have never once seen or even heard of an accident at the King/Front intersection. This just makes it harder to get around.
A bus stop on Reid will only make the most congested street on the island worse. Nice job.
There have been a few, but it has not involved buses, but rather people not paying attention and crashing into bikes/cars by trying to swing into Supermart parking lot, for imstance
The move on the surface sounds like a great move as far as the king Street side of things go, but as for the reid street side were the bus now will stop, I don’t see it being a good idea when it comes to the business on that street, namely the Supermart and chopsticks restaurant, any commercial vehicle that has to deliver to either one of these places can attest to the congestion that is there at the present, with double parking constantly to deliver goods, and so taking away more of that parking area by putting a bus stop there is stupidity.
Just do away with the king street bust stop, scrap the reid street bus stop idea totally and put the bus stop back outside the custom’s building were it use to be for years, and this would still service the same area for passengers. sometimes you really have to wonder who the brains is behind some of these decisions.
I think the issue is the buses coming from Cavendish Road. It is a mess when they turn left onto King Street from Reid Street extension and then right onto Front Street from King Street.
What they probably should have done is prohibited any bus from turning left onto King Street from Reid Street extension and again moved the bus stop from Front and King Street to where as stated it used to be outside the Custom building. That would make more sense.
i’m confused. is this then no bus on front st. never had them on reid before
I don’t think this is a good idea. I agree that they should remove the bus stop on King St. However they should also remove 1 if not 2 parking bays at the junction of Front St. and King St. to improve visibility as you enter onto Front St. What they are implementing will significantly add congestion to Reid St. and Court St.
What kind of sense does this make. Once you get to the junction with Reid St, you will only be able to turn left. So what happens to the right hand side of the road. Making a one way street usually means you can turn left or right. Now you will have more traffic on Reid Street until you get to the traffic lights.
As SMUDGE stated, I’m confused as well. Does this mean that all buses coming into Hamilton will now turn up King Street from Front Street and turn left onto Reid Street from King Street.
Also I would assume that the bus continues left onto Court Street from Reid Street and then right onto Front Street from Court Street. This was never made clear in this article.
For buses this makes a sort of sense – they now will be turning down Court Street to get onto Front Street, where the junction is controlled by traffic lights and therefore buses will not be relying on drivers on Front St to let them make the turn (as was the case with the buses using King St). Good during rush hour, limited improvement at other times.
For other road users there is little, if any, benefit. That part of Reid St is already a choke point for traffic coming into town. Now drivers will have to contend with buses trying to stop and trying to pull out in addition to double-parked delivery trucks and selfish drivers doing the same (double-parking). Is there really so much traffic turning on to King St from Front St that justifies making King St one way there? All it is going to do is bring more incoming traffic on to Reid St, where it has to deal with the choke point (see above).
That road will be terrible now. I agree! Delivery trucks, buses, parents dropping off children to dance class. I already avoid that road. Will definitely be avoiding now!
While your moving things around. Move the collection time for garbage pick up so that they are not slowing traffic movement every morning. Encourage businesses to deliver their goods earlier to free up Reid Street. Use alternate side of the street parking on certain streets to make cleaning easier.
Turning left from Reid to Court is going to prove very interesting.
City engineer is a dreamer.
Let’s do have any works similar to this in nature…please be scheduled for April first …then perhaps hiding the bustop would have numerous undertone and be better understood.