nobody listened in '69

"There is an increasing acceptance by the traffic engineering and urban planning professions to the concept that carparking should not become and end in itself, but be recognized as only one phase of overall planning and transportation policies. It is further recognized that carparking policies and pricing can have a major influence upon the successful implementation of transport programs. Simply put, cheap parking encourages heavy usage of the private auto, and concurrently requires larger parking facilities and costly roadway improvement works.

We believe that the University should limit its responsibility in such access/egress matters to:

providing only a sufficient quantum of carparking to serve the needs of those users willing to pay the full economic charges for same
soliciting and encouraging public transport authorities to improve service schedules and routes.

From our experience and from the literature of our profession, it is apparent that hospitals, colleges and universities throughout North America have become more aware of the realities of the carparking problem through the past decade. They have realized that without definitive policies, carparking demands can swell into enormous appetites for greensward conversion, capital and operating funds, and administration and policing attention....

Through the years of increasing affluence and motor vehicle registrations, the initial small parking areas gradually encroached upon lawns and playgrounds, and pressure arose from late arrivals to be granted equal accommodation privileges or 'rights'. Supervision and rationing of parking spaces became administrative nightmares. No parking charges were levied, yet the users wanted ever improved facilities - asphalt paving, reservation signs, engine heater, prompt snow removal and the like. Patronage of public transport facilities, of course, decline in the vicinity."

R.F. Smith, Manager of Engineering, Health Science Centre, Parking Design and Development Ltd. Letter dated 4th March, 1969, in Revised Interim Internal Traffic and Parking Report, June 1969 by H.G. Acres and Company Limited, June 1969.

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Binkley's Pond, gone for parking

Jacob Binkley (1806-67), great grandson of Marx [Binkley], built the handsome stone house that still stands at 54 Sanders Blvd at the head of a ravine. The house was completed in 1847 and named Lakelet Vale, as it had a little spring-fed lake at the rear. Binkley's Pond, as it was known, was used for skating, fishing, and good times. It is now the Zone 6 parking lot at McMaster University on the west side of Cootes Drive. Loreen Jerome, The Way We Were "The House that Jacob Built" Ainslie Wood/Westdale Community Association of Resident Homeowners Inc. (AWWCA) http://www.awwca.ca/articles/ Skater's on Binkley's Pond circa 1917, now a McMaster parking lot

Stairs Connect Us: Please Sign A Petition

A group of residents in the University Gardens neighbourhood are seeking improved connections for active transportation. The neighbourhood sits on a plateau above McMaster's west campus parking lots. A path through a wooded section between Grant Boulevard and McMaster's parking lot "P" is the shortest and most direct route that connects hikers, and commuters walking or cycling, but it is on the side of a hill that becomes treacherous in winter. At the bottom of the hill, a concrete bridge spans the narrow Ancaster Creek that is the dividing line between Hamilton's Ward 13 (Dundas) and Ward one's Ainslie Woods North neighbourhood. SIGN THE PETITION HERE Existing stairs were removed by the Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) with no plans for replacement. Area residents have started a petition to request a replacement set of stairs and will use the petition as support when they go to the HCA Board meeting in early June. The text of the petition reads: The Ham...

Design for nature not cars in McMaster west campus

Monday, January 20, 2020 Rethinking McMaster's West Campus Floodplain and Simple I really hope that the vision for west campus does look to rehabilitate the floodplain under McMaster Parking Lot M. In these times of global climate emergency, what better contrast than cars parked on top a coldwater wetland. One is a source of our current predicament, and the other is a part of the solution to mitigate the issues we face. Meanwhile: Trail to Trespass McMaster still has to come to terms with the fact they won't allow people currently parking in the west campus to use the perfectly lovely remnant of the former Royal Botanical Gardens nature trails to access campus. It's very odd that it was easier to get hundreds of parking spaces removed to create the required 30-metre buffer to the coldwater creek there than it is to get McMaster to stop blocking access to the trail. I'm hoping to open (another) conversation with McMaster about this trail. In the mean...

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