Raise the Hammer

This is a fair comment to make, but is a different argument then road conversion on a street that is predominantly used to access a highway and a mountain access.

I would argue though that it is not traffic adjustment which is making this infeasible, but a lack of downtown density due to lack of incentives for urban development and appropriate density (6 stories or more) and far too many incentives to develop sprawl.

Dense areas lead to higher pedestrian traffic and can support local business that drive an economy. While large corporate developments do assist an economy, they don't provide anywhere near the same benefit to an economy as many successful small businesses do.

Traffic flow I would say though is not anywhere near as large a deterrent as excessive taxation, somewhat excessively high property values and feelings of unease caused by lax property standards and the presence of undesirable people due to the clustering of social services.

On could go even so far as to argue that large commercial centers which provide said jobs WANT quick access to large road systems. One needs only look at the financial success of the commercial locales close to the LINC, specifically Limeridge, the Meadowlands and the East Mountain. While I wouldn't say they are the type of developments I would like to see, you can't argue that they aren't A) Profitable and B) In good repair, unlike large swaths of the core. It's just they don't provide the same economic benefit to a city as many smaller businesses.

We don't need to run these businesses out of town though, and start tearing down their traffic access and thus operating model that clearly works for them (at least for now, we'll see how gas prices/electric car use effects it) and provides jobs. We just need to stop sprawling and reimplementing it because it's starting to hurt our city's budget, infrastructure and as a result, economy.

Comment edited by -Hammer- on 2012-07-15 01:21:29