Raise the Hammer

I don't think the issue is about proportional lengths of time for each project. It's more about how those lengths of time were spent.

If the crosswalk had taken a year because the City just did it slowly, just took their time planning and scheduling the construction, we would shrug and say 'Ah, Government. What can you do?' The reason this is an issue is because the road happened so much easier - it was 10 years the city spent designing the project. With the crosswalk, it was a year that the citizens spent lobbying for a project that seems like a no-brainer in a densely populated area, and one which takes almost no planning effort and costs very little. The point is, why does an $18 million, 10-year road project happen largely under staff initiative, while a comparatively insignificant crosswalk requires intense citizen activism to accomplish? How can car-centred roads projects happen so easily and pedestrian-favouring projects be so unnecessarily difficult _in a city where streets are already optimized for car traffic_? There is already so much road capacity for cars relative to other modes of transportation, the scepticism should be slanted in the opposite way. The process for planning this road was normal public consultation. The process for planning the crosswalk was not - the point is, it should have been. It should be easy to get both projects planned, if they make sense. Have you ever heard of citizens campaigning for 10 years to get a few km of roads built?

Also important is the fact that the traffic department denied the request for a crosswalk - a matter of public safety for many local residents. Did they deny this road, which given its location will be serving only to reduce congestion? I think it says something about their priorities when expensive projects to ease passage for vehicles are approved while cheap projects that ease passage for pedestrians are denied.