Raise the Hammer

It's up to us, Sean.

I agree with what you are saying. I take this route daily now too and traffic slow downs as a result are minimal if at all. I am sure the residents aren't pleased as signs and police and city vehicles are trying to stop traffic from going down one specific street. Resident's on side streets are paying a price now surely.

It's up to us to take inventory of all these things in my opinion and either by Tactical Urbanism or other citizen means, we need to bring up these conversations ourselves. That's how we save/lower our tax contributions because we all agree they are redonkulous.

I have wondered the same thing about Burlington Street overpasses the entire way. It's ugly and areas under bridges are not desirable. Neither is the view from higher ground into metal scrap yards or hydro substations.

Push a Burlington/Harvester type landscaping/building maintenance standard across Burlington St, and I wonder if traffic would be any worse for wear and how much would this not only improve the look/design of the entire street, but how much would be saved in overpass maintenance.

Some of those overpasses look like they are due for repair and we are all well aware of the street level 'winning' awards for worst streets in Canada. Let's start this conversation ourselves. Start our own review list. Start a simple site to track these conversations/projects.

There should be a central site for all work being done all over this city from the new Mac downtown site, to the property on the corner of my street where a house was torn down and now I have transport trailers on one half parking there, and a used car lot having taken over the other where clearly a storefront with upper apartments should be the only zoning available.

We need a better way to track all of this including details on vacant buildings and a complete understanding of every corner of our city.

King/Kenilworth is happening. It doesn't hurt to ask the questions to help us understand how we got here, but let's vow to do better ourselves. Take matters into our own hands. Take this as an opportunity to look at other areas to force the conversation that should have happened at Kenilworth to happen well in advance of that work being planned/forced.

Comment edited by lawrence on 2013-09-10 12:52:14