New site: The Highways of Hamilton (Ontario)

[Andrew T.]

I have a brand-new site and project:  The Highways of Hamilton. (HTTPS version)



The format is very similar to my West Virginia project from a few years ago (I'm probably the only person on earth who's lived in both places), and took two and a half weeks of work.  I did make two tweaks: Each page leads off with a map of the highway's location within the entire municipality, and all alignment adjustments are listed in chronological order.  Comments are welcome!

What's next for the project?  More coverage of Hamilton-Wentworth's "phantom" de-numbered regional roads, that's what.  These had a number system I find absolutely fascinating, although there's little left to see of the system now.

[Andrew T.]

Big update:  I've added all the information I could find about pre-2005 county and regional roads!  There were at least 179 of them altogether, although a fair number were renumberings (all 2-digit roads became 3-digit in 1979) or internal designations (i.e., municipally-maintained connecting links of provincial highways).  These are grouped together at "The Highways of Hamilton, Part 2: Former County & Regional Roads."  (HTTPS)




I also flew in a few corrections to the other pages, and added around two dozen new pictures.  Many of these are of bypassed and abandoned segments of extant highways, like these evocative scenes just off of Highway 5 and Highway 20.

Enjoy!

[Andrew T.]

And, another update...

After a research visit to McMaster University last month, I was able to locate a variety of Wentworth County road maps dating back to 1940.  This allowed me to flesh out the history of Hamilton-Wentworth's regional road system in much more detail than I was able to do in my original draft, as well as get a grasp of what roads disappeared due to city or county annexations and had their numbers reassigned.

The flip side of this is that the site (or at least the pre-1979 County and Regional Roads page) is now a long, meandering mess!  I'd like to improve the organization and visuals, and was curious if anyone had specific advice.

Barring that, this will probably be my last post in this thread.  I don't see the point in having a monologue by myself.

[formulanone]

Big update:  I've added all the information I could find about pre-2005 county and regional roads!  There were at least 179 of them altogether, although a fair number were renumberings (all 2-digit roads became 3-digit in 1979) or internal designations (i.e., municipally-maintained connecting links of provincial highways).  These are grouped together at "The Highways of Hamilton, Part 2: Former County & Regional Roads."  (HTTPS)

Thanks for that!

It explains the RR 450 and 455 off QEW. Those made me wonder, as few regional routes seemed to reach triple digits.

[Andrew T.]

A new update for the month of May:  New maps!  Eight of them altogether:  Seven to illustrate the 1979-2005 regional road system (one per hundred, plus an inset for downtown Hamilton), and one to illustrate the earlier two-digit system.  Here are examples:




The colour coding is a spectrum: Highways with low numbers are red and orange; high numbers are blue and purple.  The intent is to emphasize how roads with similar numbers were sometimes grouped close together.

These maps are clickable and interactive.  Plotting and typing in all the coordinates was a real beast, but there are worse ways to toil away for a week.