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Originally Posted by CoryB
One intersection doesn't make a scratch of difference on if downtown Winnipeg is or is not walkable.
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It does if it's THE intersection... especially considering it connects to the baseball stadium, and a host of underutilized lots that should be developed and are likely going to see spikes in property value when P+M opens one day. It connects opposing sides to the exchange and the forks, each highlights of Winnipeg, and is the corner where the highest earners work. Key parts of our downtown are seperated. A barrier at Ellice and Smith or whatever would be less critical.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rrskylar
So the myth that downtown folk would overwhelmingly vote open turned out to be just that, a myth, with the open vote just slightly over 50%, all the urbanists slagging the suburbs over the vote have to eat a little crow when the vast majority of yes votes did in fact came from the suburbs!
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If that's true, I'm slightly surprised, but it wouldn't make any sense... If those living downtown, with less of a need to drive, are protecting vehicle traffic, then they're dumb
Another example showing that this should have been a civic decision based on planning principles and landlord cooperation
Nonetheless, most voted open.
Furthermore, it's very likely that those voting open from suburbia either have a vested business interest in downtown, whether as employees or owners.
And speaking of skew, no kidding the majority of yes votes were from the suburbs, more than 95% of Winnipeg lives outside downtown.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bdog
Very insightful article from Curtis Brown of Probe Research, the firm that did the poll from about 6 weeks ago.
According to their regression analysis, the single biggest argument that resonated for those who wanted the intersection open was the we should design downtown for pedestrians as well as cars. The accessibility argument in fact barely registered at all with those wanting the intersection open, which is interesting, since it seemed to be one of the most prominent arguments by Team Open.
For those that wanted it closed, the argument that resonated most was that the intersection would be unsafe for pedestrians, something that didn't seem to be brought up at all by the open campaign. Close behind were of course costs and traffic.
I wonder if Team Open had had access to this information at the time, if they would have targeted their messaging differently, or not. I also wonder whether they would have done their own internal polling, to see what arguments resonated most with voters. I get that polling is expensive, but maybe that could have been one of the items that the Go Fund Me could have raised money for. I'm still shocked that with all the business support and what's now been shown to be support from residents in more affluent neighbourhoods, that the fundraising campaign didn't manage to gain more traction.
Anyway, very interesting analysis by Mr. Brown.
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A few thoughts... forgive me if they're, well, honest...
For some people focusing on disability alone sounds like tokenist or identity politics based on special interests. It can feel like that exaggerated millenial compassion that leads many "realists" from the suburbs think we're missing the true point... traffic effects and safety (
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It's very easy to see the issue with a mild populist spin. Not that accessibility should have been ignored, but the idea got sold as a favour to the disabled and the suburbs asked "where's my favour, nay, why would I have to sacrifice my time for this?" Also, sometimes "accessibility", while geared towards those who have physical issues with it, can be misunderstood as simply accessibility for the avg person... while lacking, the no crowd has already made their peace on this.
And a simple, cold observation from me personally is that I see few people with accessibility issues in the big buildings nearby. Not that they don't deserve it, but just "so much effort" for so few people.
I also think that some of the elitism from the openers could have come from thumbing noses at cars. Throughout the traffic debates, vehicle worship or pollution often crept up, and that creates an easy right/left political divide on the matter (which rrskylar championed). Debating traffic concerns and their importance could have been done without the snickering at cars.
The arguments I've always pushed have been the economic effect, or social livelihood. I'd imagine that these are far more tangible benefits for a suburbanite. I don't know how the safety and traffic concerns weren't approriately debunked, but these needed to be higher prioritized compared to disability accessibility. Among those under 40, the idea that cool cities that we all wish Winnipeg was more like, well, don't have this... that all these small positives can add up to simply making our downtown a cooler place to spend time, which the previous 40 years haven't. That went surprisingly far, I thought.
Similarly, most people did not get that we're still going to be spending repair money anyway... cost somehow still had traction with the no crowd.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CoryB
This is something Team Open seemed to heavily ignore. Things like the getting pedestrian countdown lights and better snow clearing on sidewalks downtown is going to go a lot further to improving an already very walkable downtown than opening up a single intersection.
The challenge is the plebiscite question was presented by councillors that seemed to be strongly opposed to the opening of Portage and Main. Adding a third choice along the line of "need more info" could have won the question but might ultimately be a soft "yes open it". Forcing those soft yes votes into hard yes and hard no camps pushed a lot of them into hard no as they lacked information they needed, ie a study of the impact to traffic on all of downtown that was done professionally and shared openly. The study that was somewhat public focused only on the impact to the flow through P&M.
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While pedestrian counting lights are neat, I honestly don't think VoteOpen would have gotten any added traction with this and snow clearing... we're one of the world's snow capitals, so it's never going to be good enough, but I can't say I've ever loathed the clearing effort for this. And the lights should be updated, but we all know the flashing means time's running out.
Access is still way bigger than "a nice touch"...
But you're right, council could have done a much better job of pushing a collaborative solution rather than triggering a dumb binary vote.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rkspec
NYC goes underground to get access to the subway system, WPG goes underground to cross the street.  |
Hence "sub"
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