Sudbury city-wide corridors study to start with Lasalle Boulevard

How can Sudbury, Ont., improve the busy and noisy Lasalle Boulevard?

That's what the City of Greater Sudbury plans to determine over the next few months.

The major east-west street is the first thoroughfare to be studied in the city-wide nodes and corridors study.

Future streets to be studied include the Kingsway, Notre Dame Avenue, Barrydowne Road and Lorne Street says senior planner Ed Landry.

The study costs $200,000, but Landry says half of that is funded by the provincial and federal governments. Because of this the report must be wrapped up by March 2018.

Lasalle Blvd not pedestrian friendly

Landry was part of a small group who recently walked a portion of Lasalle Boulevard as part of early information gathering.

The group consisted of representatives from the roads, transit, economic development, planning and communications departments, along with consultants.

The walking tour was meant to record initial reactions to the street.

Landry admits the noise from the street is loud, particularly at certain times of the day.

"There's opportunities for shade, so we're looking also at bus shelters. Where can we best put them," Landry says.

"Some of those [problems] you could ... really only tell while you're walking the corridor ...How you're feeling and the noise, the sun, or if we were doing this in the wintertime, how cold we could get."

Maley to take truck traffic from Lasalle

The work currently going on to extend Maley Drive is one of the reasons why Lasalle is now being studied. Maley and Lasalle run parallel to one another.

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"It's one of the major drivers, to take a look at Lasalle first because it`s anticipated that Maley Drive will reduce the truck traffic along Lasalle."

Landry says the Maley Drive work means that the city needs to come up with a new vision for Lasalle,Boulevard.

As for positives from the initial walking tour, Landry says there have been a few new developments along the street and the road connects a number of residential areas.

"Lasalle, very much is a spine to the surrounding neighbourhoods. How do we bring the surrounding neighbourhoods to the spine?"

Idea-jamming coming soon

There will be an idea-jamming session held in September for residents to add their input. Landry says the city is just working out the date and venue for this meeting.

"Just put all your ideas, what do you like about Lasalle, what could be improved, what can be capitalized on, what should we be doing more of?"

A full strategy and an action plan will go to Sudbury city council in March.

Landry says this report will be divided into items that could be fixed or changed easily in the first year. While other suggestions could take longer since they would require policy recommendations, for example changing zones of certain sites or community improvement plans.