Comment 78459

By Serendipity (anonymous) | Posted June 13, 2012 at 14:02:30

"Former head traffic engineer Hart Solomon claimed that Cannon Street would never change in our lifetime - that this expediency to through traffic was simply too crucial to the movement of goods through our city."

Hart Solomon told me, in 2007, whilst at a meeting for the North End traffic plan that it would be "over my dead body" that speeds would be reduced on both James N and Burlington Sts in my neighbourhood.
The last traffic casualty on Burlington St that I'm aware of (dec 2011) was not Hart; rather, that of a local, 10 year-old boy crossing the street at Burl/Hughson Sts. He was taken to hospital and survived. The driver, a woman in her 40's, made a southbound turn on John and disappeared into the night.

People like Hart (thank goodness he's gone) and every traffic engineer in this city has done their job and left a fine, deadly and polluted mess that we are still not coping with. Is it not time that we cut this department down, or out, and look to environmental planners and citizens/residents alone to fix the problems traffic engineers seem to have no concerns about? For the life of me, I have never understood why traffic engineers continually have the last words about how we are supposed to live with the deadly traffic blight that they not only created but continue to be the decision makers concerning how we move forward in trying (unsuccessfully) to make our neighbourhoods and streets livable, breathable, walkable, rideable etc... Truly, their time has come and gone but until they are truly and really gone, our nightmare continues.

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