Quote:
Originally Posted by supafamous
The viaducts don't actually carry much traffic (even in their pre-bike lane days) relative to how much land it takes up and the impact it makes to dividing the neighbourhood. Cities around the world have been tearing down elevated roadways in city centers for a while now b/c they realise how much negative impact it has to neighbourhoods.
Replacing them with surface streets adds a couple mins to the commute but makes the whole area safer, cleaner, easier to live in while also freeing up land to build housing on.
re: Laneways - the concept of laneways is great but the actual use/design of them has been pretty underwhelming. Too many of them are built/designed by terrible builders so they are ugly and poorly laid out - many of them feel more like college dorms than homes. The nice ones are far and few between (see: https://smallworks.ca/projects/ or Lane Houses ? Lanefab Design/Build).
The original design was a compromise so NIMBY's didn't show up with pitchforks at City Hall but now with 10 years of them we should have learned that they fit in just fine and fixed the parts that don't work which include:
- Allowing full 2 story laneways. The half storey 2nd floor was designed to avoid casting too many shadows on neighbouring lots but this makes the upstairs pretty awful to live in.
- Allowing larger laneways (tied to the above).
- Requiring more parking. Turns out most garages aren't used as garages and that uncovered parking is more effective so let's allow double wide carports or allow the laneway to be setback further so people can park perpendicular to the lot (along the alley).
- Allow different types of parking options. Let me do a 2 story laneway with a double garage downstairs and a 450sf studio upstairs (or extend the upstairs so it's 600sf). |
Does it not serve the purpose to cutting through all those lights? The elevated viaduct is effectively 4-5 blocks long if you get on from Venables/Prior street.
I can't pretend to know because I haven't looked at the studies.
About the laneway homes, it's also because most of them goes to the lowest bidder and they are just trying to get a rental unit up and running for the lowest possible cost. There are some amazing looking laneways (the one across the back alley from my place comes to mind) but the parking situation is guaranteed to suck.
Even for my house with a 44ft width, it would suck. I currently have a 2 car garage and 2 sxs parking spots outside next to the garage. If I build a laneway I'll probably be left with 1 large parking spot or two really tight ones. We have two cars right now, we have a basement suite that will most likely have one car (renting to a friend), and if a laneway house that's another car.
The NIMBYism is going to go strong as long as the old bugalows are still around because (stereotyping) those houses are the lowest and are usually lived in by older folks who are also the most vocal about these things. Those ppl will be the ones that complain that these monster laneways are taller than their homes.
I agree the laneways should definitely take on the stacked townhouse concept where living space is all upstairs and leave the ground floor area for parking. A standard 33ft wide lot would actually be perfect as you can still have a 2 car garage and the extra 8ft or so on the side can be used for the entrance area. But hey we are making too much sense.