Hamilton Truck Route Plan To Face Further Studies As Industry, Advocates Crash – Hamilton | The Canadian News

A stalemate continues between industry and safe streets advocates when it comes to the movement of goods through the lower town of Hamilton.

The city’s truck routing subcommittee has spent several hours listening to delegations regarding the proposed changes to the trucking master plan.

Ultimately, councilors voted Monday to send the plan to staff for further study and to make sure it aligns with Vision Zero, a strategy that aims to eliminate traffic fatalities and serious injuries.

A consultant’s recommendations, presented and debated by the subcommittee on Monday, would have banned heavier rigs in some residential areas in an attempt to balance economic interests with quality of life.

The recommendations would not have prohibited trucking trucks from traversing downtown, on streets like Wellington, Victoria, Cannon and Queen, as a means of traveling between Highway 403 and the city’s industrial bayfront.

“Residents will accept an outcome if they believe the process was upheld in accordance with established principles,” Ward 1 Coun said. Maureen Wilson. “They may not always like the result, but they consider it valid, and I think that’s where the challenge lies.”

Safe streets advocates have been advocating for changes that would require trucks, entering and exiting the Industrial Bayfront, to use the Burlington Street corridor to access QEW and Red Hill Valley Parkway, and eventually 403 and the highway 6.

Among them is Linda Lukasik of Environment Hamilton, who describes trailer trucks on downtown streets as “the elephant in the room.”

“How can we build an inclusive and climate-resilient Hamilton in these circumstances?” Lukasik pointed out. “How can we build the whole communities that we are committed to building, with the really important decision of the city council to hold firm to our urban limits?”

Trucking companies and industry opposed forcing them to use the Burlington Street corridor to access the road network surrounding the city.

“In a time of rising inflation,” said Stephen Laskowski of the Ontario Trucking Association, “the city of Hamilton is establishing a trucking route that will add cost, travel time and more GHG emissions.”

Several residents with homes along Dickenson Road East in Glanbrook also appeared before the trucking routes subcommittee on Monday, asking the city to prioritize building a highway to connect the busy Hamilton Cargo Airport to the Red Hill Valley Parkway. .

They say an increase in truck traffic on rural roads in the southern mountain has created a dangerous scenario.