Raise the Hammer

Ryan, I understand from your posts here and in other discussions that you believe by turning the core into a 2 way traffic limited zone it is going to blossom into the kind of place people will actually want to endure traffic limitations for. Park the car stroll around eat, shop, enertainment etc. It seems to me that you are putting the result ahead of the reality. Do this now and you have a traffic pain in the ass and not much more. Upper James, Mohawk, Fennell and all the rest of the Upper Blahs are two way streets where pedestrians need to take care crossing. Why should they too not have the benefit of traffic flow reductions. I am sure many residents of those streets would support that strictly out of self interest. I guess the reason there is not a ground swell of support for such a plan is that all but a very few knew when buying their property it was on a busy roadway. The same can be said for residents in the core. I live in the lower city and for years lived in the core of the city. Only once did I live on a busy street (King)and I moved from there not because of the noise from traffic or anything related to it. It was pedestrians, insane ones; at all hours that propmpted me to move. People I deal with cite personal safety for one and fewer conveniences being the other main reason they do not go downtown much. I don't believe a build it and they will come approach will work with this two way traffic proposal. It will only result in traffic jams initially and then traffic avoidance, neither of which will put people on their feet. They will drive their cars to the malls and power centers (ughhh to both) and be on their feet there until there are powerful draws downtown. Wait until people are fighting to get down here until we start limiting vehicular access or introducing 32 Kph disincentives to even pass through. The ony way we will see a revitilization of the core is as you have said Ryan get people on their feet. A lot of those feet have to be from other areas and to draw these people the core has to compete with other shopping and restaurant and entertainment destinations. That is the really tough part encouraging people to try something new something even less convenient than what they may be used to. Or better yet corner a market. We have 3 decent large entertainment venues, the Art Gallery, these are only available here if you have enough of these "only downtown" destinations and great parking and lots of on the ground security it will again become the kind of place where people want to spend time on their feet.