Raise the Hammer

Regarding "backwards city", I would like to disagree with that. Perhaps historically it may have been fine to call Hamilton a backwards city. I can understand too!

Hamilton successfully converted several streets to two-way, including James Street North (and we know Jason Thorne is pro 2-way). Something that some other cities did not do. There are many Canadian cities that did not do 2-way conversions; lest other cities like American cities. Here in hamilton, I think we can certainly continue the progress in an incremental manner, and I would certainly be in the camp of Main 2-way (as a detour); but obviously as one of the leader of the #HamLRT advocacy, we've got to let voices be heard, have people be glad they expressed themselves publicly, and let the better individuals in the city make decisions.

Remember, we have 10 years, that is pretty much half a generation for population to get comfortable with change -- it is not literally overnight -- so what might be difficult today may even be easier tomorrow especially when people realize how more-subway-convenience the Hamilton LRT is, with the traffic-separation / more predictable and convenient / daisychainable(up to 4 cars/20 segments) / green-lights-synchronized / subway-style-stop-spacing (1-2km), that Hamilton LRT actually is, compared to the slower TTC streetcars.

Stepping back with the whole world in the picture (from London to Syria, from Boston to Greece, from Beijing to Los Angeles), Hamilton is actually surprisingly more progressive than many Canadian citizens.

Calgary got a crosstown bike lane later than Hamilton. We were first!

Vancouver doesn't even have bikeshare at all. We were first!

And as much as we all (myself included) like to complain about infrastructure, it's worth noting to look at our nearby city of love/hate -- and their previous mayor who went by "Rob Ford". We even out-Twitter Toronto at the moment (#hamont advocacies such as YesWeCannon, to mayor/councillor engagement directly with citizens) so that is on one angle of viewpoint, pretty progressive. With the LRT, let's focus on the positive; we got awarded it and as citizen advocates, help advocate it to a successful soft landing on time.

Comment edited by mdrejhon on 2015-09-14 13:56:54