Comment 111931

By mdrejhon (registered) - website | Posted June 02, 2015 at 14:02:59 in reply to Comment 111928

This is very true. I'll be first in line for a very safe-record automated car that has a reasonable cost premium.

But as we all know, the point is there's lots of flexibility how we convert Main Street to 2-way, driverless cars or not. Lots of car demand? Less car demand? (even due telecommute) Human drivers? Driverless cars? Adjust Main to compensate. Heck, if car traffic falls dramatically enough, reduce lanes. Maybe widen sidewalks and reduce number of lanes on Main, or put a massive tree-filled median (convert Main into a 2-way boulevard, center lane becomes gardens and trees!) if the traffic is observed to go down a lot and if people want this.

The point is, the flexibility is there, the door is open. The flexibility is there to an extent with Main 2-way LRT (as we can do the same to King instead), but as we know, International Village is a car bottleneck that is hard to lobby carowners over, to the point where we have more car-owner-satisfying city-wide-satisfying options with a Main 2-way street (e.g. presenting the option of 3 lanes towards 403 during peak, during dynamic center lane compromise). It might be what we need to do to get Mountain councillors onboard, as an example, for any eventual 2-way conversion. I don't like the visual impact electronic overhead center arrows, but it's a decent interim step in a city's lifetime as a lesser evil over our current urban expressway situation (Even though I love the sync'd green lights), at least during construction detour (a convenient "trial" of 2-way), as long as it gets the whole city, including Mountain, onboard on the best revitalization route.

This combination (overhead electronic arrows for changing lane direction, and start this as an LRT construction detour trial) seems politically much easier way to convince the population to do eventual permanent 2-way conversion of either Main or King.

It doesn't have to follow the suggested year milestones. And heck, it could happen a lot sooner (e.g. permanent curbside parking and bumpouts on Main by 2025-2030) if Main-King traffic suddenly falls dramatically in the post-LRT era and developers come door-crashing.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-06-02 14:25:06

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