Comment 91970

By kevlahan (registered) | Posted September 10, 2013 at 14:11:42 in reply to Comment 91964

So, there are no grocery stores or fire services in dense pedestrian friendly cities like Vancouver, Paris or New York? Commerce and trade are chronically weak in London and Copenhagen?

There are actually police stations on pedestrian streets in Paris for goodness sake! If economically vibrant cities like Vancouver or Paris or New York are "able to conduct commerce and trade" (far better than Hamilton) we certainly don't have to worry about two-way conversions or cycle lanes harming ours. Quite the opposite.

No one is saying that all streets would be closed to traffic, just that the costs of maintaining an under-used highway style design for urban city streets are high and the options for reducing these costs have not been investigated. The traffic department themselves acknowledge that almost every arterial and minor-arterial is way under capacity and that traffic has declined significantly in the last few decades.

And just to illustrate how wrong the "free flowing motor vehicle traffic = economically dynamic" argument is, as pointed out in a previous article downtown Vancouver has invested heavily in pedestrian and cycling infrastructure as well as increased transit and has simultaneously seen a huge growth in population and a decrease in motor vehicle traffic. And it consistently ranks among the top cities in the world on livability indexes.

Comment edited by kevlahan on 2013-09-10 14:31:19

Permalink | Context

Events Calendar

There are no upcoming events right now.
Why not post one?

Recent Articles

Article Archives

Blog Archives

Site Tools

Feeds