The nearest service provider will respond to the request, and their cars will be washed and cleaned in no more than an hour, removing the fuss and cost of. Customers request for their cars to be washed and cleaned from the comfort of their homes or where ever they are. So the whole length of Pearl becomes a safe, useful and interesting walk. Springit is an On-demand mobile car washing and cleaning requesting service. There are now pedestrian lights to get those on foot across the five fast lanes of traffic at Main and four at King. It runs from York Boulevard, past fine churches, GO Transit stops, and homes big and small to its southern terminus - the recreation mecca that is the HAAA grounds, the Ryerson Rec Centre and the Hamilton Tennis Club. With demolition, the bridge will cost $770,000. And McHattie did that for the Pearl Street bridge. Still, McHattie says, as far as the city considering funding for a new pedestrian bridge, 'it was nowhere on the priority list.' However, in addition to voting on budgets for arterial roads, councillors do get to advocate for road projects in their own wards. A count performed in the spring of 2008 showed about 230 people a day using the bridge. It has been closed to cars for nearly 60 years. McHattie knew the Pearl bridge was nearing the end. People die or get hurt on those busy streets, and we've seen that already this year. He believes that when you cut off streets by knocking out bridges, it forces pedestrians out onto high-traffic thoroughfares. So that left just the one old wooden bridge, at Pearl Street.īrian McHattie, councillor for the ward, is big on walkability.

It cost $250,000 to demolish and the railway didn't pay a dime. Seven years ago, the city said the bridge at Ray Street was unsafe. CP Rail, which had swallowed the TH&B, tore it down and promised to build a new one right away. In 1986, high winds tore some timbers loose on the Poulette Street bridge. The other three stayed just as they were. Then the car came along and the bridges at Locke and Dundurn became modern paved thoroughfares. The bridges were wide, plenty of room for horse and buggy traffic to move both ways. They built them strong, using robust timber from old-growth trees. The TH&B said it would look after those bridges forever and a day. So the railway agreed to build five bridges - at Ray, Pearl, Locke, Poulette and Dundurn. West of Queen, the suburbs back then, the big ditch remained an open wound.Įven then, the city knew you can't just carve up a neighbourhood. Three men died on the job.įor the section of track east of Queen, they created a tunnel by covering over the top of that chasm. Hundreds of men worked around the clock to dig a trench four storeys deep.

The Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo Railway steamed into the new Hunter Street terminal in downtown Hamilton on Dec. The Pearl Street bridge may well be Hamilton's oldest, and they're about to knock it down.īuilt nearly 120 years ago, the bridge will be replaced.

Springit on big ditch