Raise the Hammer

All we need to do is convert the streets to two way traffic and all are troubles will fade away! WOW what an easy way out. NO NO NO the answer is to spend hundreds of millions on transit that is the easy way out! There is no easy way out! I am old enough to remember a strong and vibrant downtown. Movie theaters and restaurants with lineups of people waiting to get in. Stores doing a booming business day after day and all that with one way streets no LRT!

What would make anybody think that there is an easy fix? The deterioration of the downtown is a complex issue that is shared by many cites all over North America most of which have never even considered a one way street system. All cities have commonalities and differences. Hamilton is a very unique place built as it is on the shores of a lake with an escarpment running through the heart of it. The geography just cannot be ignored. Any plan to change the city and/or the downtown must take that into account. Hamilton is a scant hours drive away from the largest city in Canada and one of the largest in North America. As Toronto grows and gets even more expensive more and more people are living in Hamilton and many other cities and commuting to Toronto. If you want to engineer this city better take that into account too.

Urban planners have been trying to revitalize downtown cores all over with very spotty mixed results. Sometimes they get it right and lots of times they do not. If you really think that you with (I assume) little or no education in urban planning, can "fix" Hamilton by converting a few streets to two way traffic or wrecking havoc with the roadways and traffic patterns by spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on a huge transit system a lot of people who spent a ton of money and years of hard work are going to be very upset.

There are no easy fixes no simple solutions. It is a very complex issue in many cities caused mostly by the changes in society slowly over many years. The "fix", if there is one, is equally complex and will take time.

Come on guys get a grip!