Raise the Hammer

Sean and Rusty. I'm not defending needless driving nor am I a proponent of driving when walking isn't necessary. More roads don't necessarily generate more traffic. Traffic studies and my plain old driving on that stupid Highway 20 show that the vast majority of the trips going up and down Centennial are from people who aren't living or doing any business downtown in the Creek or anywhere near it, merely trying to get from the QEW to the Mountain in the quickest way possible...not to mention the trucks that currently use 20 when they'll now use the expressway.

My argument is that it'd be impossible to make the changes that we want to downtown without making it easy for car dependent individuals (they're always going to be there) to get off of them. What would happen if we didn't....

Imagine for a second there's no way for traffic to go around the downtown core on the east side...

We change all downtown streets to two way, improve ways directly around the core (Cannon and Main) and what've we done? Pushed the traffic into another area that's not meant to handle it. We now have an expressway that is made to handle it...close some streets, make them two way, the people will now use the expressway to the closest point and then the arterial roads from there. Highway 20 had the traffic load of a highway but was only meant to be an arterial road (moving traffic from a highway to a collector road). Maybe now it'll function as such. Our downtown here in the creek is two way and has an acceptable way around it (Queenston) and I love it. Of course it's not as "intense" as the Core but it has a great sense of community and a couple patios to boot... We'd not be able to have that without the way around it.

The reality of things is that car use is here to stay for a while until oil prices go up enough and the transit system is built properly.

Here's what I'm hoping for...as of right now, I live nice and close to a beautiful beach front area but I can't get to it any way except by car unless I plan on taking my life in my hands to bike or walk the way there down Centennial. I'm hoping that as traffic goes down and a better cross section is built, I'll be able to walk or bike with my visitors down there and walk the trails through the parks there.

There are other areas to the city than the Core. Understandably as I posted somewhere, fix the heart and the rest will follow...but if the heart's not working properly does that mean it's wrong to set a broken leg so that it can heal as well?