Comment 93922

By Pxtl (registered) - website | Posted October 29, 2013 at 16:26:58 in reply to Comment 93921

Car owners/drivers pay for the roads with gas taxes and should not be considered less human and of lower value.

This is false. Municipal roads are paid by property taxes. Gas taxes go directly into provincial/federal coffers and are not tied to municipal spending (or any spending for that matter). These are completely disjoint cash-flows.

And remember, there is as many people travelling in the one bus-lane as there is in the other lanes combined. So by giving the buses a dedicated lane the city is not actually making drivers "less human". Automobile traffic still consumes the majority of the road to move fewer passengers. Bus passengers are effectively being allotted a disproportionately small area of the road when the bus is forced to travel with cars.

Consider the major streets outside of downtown - where they have fast traffic, you see the sidewalks spaced safely away from the road. Upper James has grassy boulevards keeping the pedestrians away from traffic, for example. Rural areas will often even have a full ditch dividing their traffic from their pedestrians.

Hamilton's downtown streets have nothing of the sort. Pedestrians are expected to walk only a few feet from live, high-speed traffic. This is inappropriate and unsafe. So move the traffic away from the pedestrians and/or slow the traffic down. A bus lane or a bike lane or a parked car lane will accomplish that task handily.

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