Comment 93873

By Lerosh (anonymous) | Posted October 28, 2013 at 21:33:51

It's been a very nice experience, having that lane. Well, driving the road that is, and walking down it.

On the other hand, the rhetoric being thrown around by some prominent promoters of the lane has begun hitting the "you're making it hard for me to agree with you, even though I agree with you" level.

One particular giant thread on Facebook that started with Matt Jelly basically wishing anyone who drive in the lane illegally would be charged so much money they'd go bankrupt started a giant shitstorm of angry responses from people who were best left alone to let the idea sink in properly, and being backed up by others who basically inferred people driving cars were elitist who were murdering the planet for their own selfish immoral motivations. I won't even go into how many people this hurt who didn't bother responding, I know people who were in quieter corners and are just giving up now and staying out of it all, myself included. It seems to be both about improving the city AND oneupmanship of the rhetoric. Some day, perhaps soon, it'll just all be about the rhetoric.

I don't see how it helps when you've basically won a round in the debate of the balance of public transit, pedestrian, and auto traffic needs to then spit in the eyes of the opponent while they're down. I also think it's driven me to just stop defending against the accusations of urban elitism, because those assessments are now clearly correct. Some urban activists have now become what they've been accused of being.

It's great this lane is working out. It's too bad that one of its costs was a bit of our soul and goodwill.

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