Friday, January 19, 2007

Reply, in the Main, misses the Concern

Jim,

Thank you for your email.

You should be aware that the local councilor Brian McHattie and the neighborhood in Westdale have applied significant pressure on the University with respect to traffic and they have forced us to take construction traffic and service vehicles through campus. There have been a lot of meetings with Hamilton Police Services and the local politician and the University has been forced to do this.

Basically the neighbours want all of our traffic of their streets and sent through the centre core of our pedestrian campus - this is a real challenge that we are facing right now.

Things could get worse - I wish I had better news. We have been juggling zoning and planning issues, by law issues, ticketing by HPS and so on.

We are continuing to work with the city to try to find a workable solution.

On the plus side we were successful with our negotiations with GO transit to install a transit terminal on the west side of main campus - behind the clarke centre - this has resulted in all GO buses coming off the campus to the periphery - it should open later this month - and there is a drop off area in that location as well.
We are also close to completion of our plans for the College Cres/Cootes entrance to improve pedestrian safety . A number of new initiatives are coming from this.

Long discussions with the city - again.

Karen Belaire

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