Raise the Hammer

My letter:

Dear Council member,

I am writing to voice my displeasure at the long awaited truck master plan study giving Hamilton more of the same old outdated thinking and low quality of life in our urban neighbourhoods. Back when Red Hill was being debated, downtown residents were lied to (and we knew it at the time) when we were told that through trucks and traffic could use Hamilton's new highway system once completed instead of cutting through downtown neighbourhoods. I regularly follow transports to/from my neighbourhood (York/Locke) and so far I've never followed one that had a local origin or destination. They have all come from the far northeast industrial district, sometimes right next to the QEW and are simply cutting through the city to reach the 403. I've also driven the routes and compared travel times with the highway times. Using either the QEW/Skyway/403 route or Red Hill/Linc/403 route my travel times were shorter by a few minutes than cutting through downtown.

I would urge you to think of the safety of our children and the health of our downtown and central city neighbourhoods. Economic Summits and Code Red series' are completely useless if we are going to just turn around and keep making the same mistakes that have landed us in such a mess. This is one of those issues.

I would furthermore ask that our lower city freeway network - Main, King, Cannon, York, Wilson, Queen, Bay etc..... be converted to two-way streets with street trees, parking and bike lanes as soon as possible. I believe that this alone would send the trucks onto the highways. They won't traverse typical city streets when fast moving highways are at their doorstep.

Perhaps someday Hamilton will have a Chamber of Commerce that actually understands urban economies and urban neighbourhoods, but in the meantime I'm calling on you, the leaders and watchkeepers of our great city to send this plan back to the drawing board. It has no business being city policy in the twenty-first century.

Thanks for your time, and for your hard work on behalf of Hamilton.

Comment edited by jason on 2010-05-30 20:10:55