Comment 39204

By d.knox (registered) | Posted March 27, 2010 at 13:16:40

I have to confess that I am not particularly distressed that the LRT is dead. I read all the reasons why it was a great idea, but it still struck me as a whole lot of money for aims we can accomplish right now in other ways. I got the feeling in much of the LRT discussions that we were losing sight of what our goals are: to make the core more livable and walkable.

Jonathan Dalton covered the main points quite nicely. But we can be even less ambitious and still make significant progress. Let's not even worry about widening the sidewalks right away - let's just make changes with what we have in place already - convert our significant streets to two-way traffic and eliminate the synchronized lights. That change alone would improve the lower city. Slower traffic = safer streets => more pedestrians, more cyclists, more businesses.

Obviously it would take longer to get through the city than it would with the LRT, but I really didn't worry about that argument either. 10 minutes difference, even 15 minutes difference to get from one side of the city to the other just isn't enough for me to get excited about. Anyway, if the changes to the downtown happened, fewer people would be trying to just get through to the other side; they might actually be headed for the downtown.

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