Raise the Hammer

Why do I promote making downtown less car friendly despite liking cars? Because although I like cars, I don't see how having a major street/highway running through downtown. I've not only driven downtown, I've walked and shopped downtown. I'm not an idiot and I see how having a street like Main Street running through downtown is a major hinderance to creating a downtown environment that promotes life.

Reducing the bus fare or making it free doesn't transform the image of transit. It actually serves to make it worse because as you can imagine the issue to most people isn't that it's to expensive it's that it's not clean. Bus transit doesn't have a "hip" image. The point of LRT is a transformation of the perception of transit as well as a more effective method (fiscally, environmentally etc) of serving busy corridors.

When did I refer to cars being subsidized by public monies? Roads most definately are. I also don't think that it's our responsibility to keep the economy focussed on backwards practices. As non-renewable resources are used up or get harder to attain it's necessary to refocus. That's something that the North American car industry hasn't been able to do and that's why it's floundering right now. The Big 3 are slowly changing their focus but it's far to late.

Finally, it has nothing to do with car hating and everything to do with loving the city. Sometimes, it's necessary to make sacrifices in order to maintain a city with the image we want to have. I was a proponent of the RHCE (although I'm supremely p.o'd about the "business development" at the top) and I'm also a proponent of shutting down the Gore and making it a pedestrian zone as well as making downtown streets two-way and having desychronized lights. I plan on always having a car (at least for now) in fact I plan on restoring one as soon as I get my own place to work on it and I don't think that the answer to everything is "get rid of the cars" however with respect to our downtown, it's the vehicular traffic that's cutting off the life of it. To go from the Hunter station to downtown one has to cross Main Street which is dangerous at the best of times. Our sidewalks are too small and synchronized traffic is plain scary to a pedestrian. Agreeably, it's not the best for getting from one end of the city to the other, but...that's what the 403, Burlington Street, the Linc and the QEW are for.