Comment 38923

By E-moter City (anonymous) | Posted March 20, 2010 at 16:51:43

Well yeah. Much as I don't care for his logic one thing I can say about Foxcroft is that he does more than talk about issues. He barges ahead and imposes many of his "solutions." I wish a more of those who contribute to RTH (perhaps myself included) would do that.

Thing about cars though is not the pollution or the energy costs. Those can and to a large extent probably will be solved, or at least reduced, by technology. Thing about cars is the congestion. Solving that requires something a little more disruptive and innovative. The result won't be the disappearance of cars but the decline of their primacy.

In North America that decline has already begun. That's what the recent economic crisis was all about. The utility of our current transportation structure (which affects everything from industrial manufacturing to housing construction to social networking) has peaked. It was no accident that it was the automobile manufacturers who required bailouts, along with banks, in the last recession. And those billions went to shore up industries while they cut back production. We're buying time, not rebuilding.

Most of those who say they don't want or like to go into Hamilton's centre seldom cite a lack of interesting things to do there or the costs etc. They complain about things like available free parking. That's a congestion complaint, not complaints about the cost of energy or air pollution. They don't like bikes and public transit because they see these forms of transportation as competition for available roadspace. They also don't like rubbing shoulders with people they consider "undesireables" but that too is all about congestion. And the fact is that in densely populated urban areas, more cars on more roads don't mean more room, however cleanly or cheaply they run.

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