Quote:
Originally Posted by 1overcosc
Since when does the 'community' decide what's built? It's time we as a city learn to ignore these people and go with what's best for the city as a whole. A shallow berm will keep the trains out of sight & hearshot of the people nearby and has a minimal cost. A full bored tunnel is an extra billion dollars, roughly, and 'community' concerns for only a few thousand people cannot justify that expense. When you do the math that would come out to spending something like $20,000 per person in Kitchissippi Ward. Not fair to everybody else.
And seriously, who can stop us? Watson could easily get a council majority for a shallow berm across Byron Park. Leiper and the inner city people would probably vote against it, and Watson would probably lose votes in the area, but the rest of the city with its 90% of the voters wouldn't give a damn. NCC can't stop us, OMB can't. Let them cry.
God. First Scott Street then this. I wonder if we shouldn't just expropriate the whole damn ward and kick all these whiny nuts out. Would make building up this city so much easier.
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It would make sense for this entire alignment to cut underground from Westboro Station and then come up through your berm along Richmond. In the case of Rochester Field use, the train misses a huge chunk of the population along Richmond, and then pops out where all the single family homes are.
Also: While forcing this through may be beneficial, it would destroy trust between the community and the city, which will lead to further problems down the road. And if we can force issues like this past a community, who says it won't become the norm. This is one time I think a lengthy consultation process may be beneficial, if it starts ASAP. The city needs to lay out the options, and show the community how they will benefit, and how their landmarks will not be permanently ruined, indeed, can be improved by this construction. The community needs a chance to work with the city to ensure the best possible procedure is taken.
There are still 4 years until construction would possibly start, so time is on our side - for now. Ottawa needs to use transit to build community engagement and support, and I think we need to find a way to promote urban planning and design as an exciting force of change in this neighbourhood.
Show them how the linear park can be redesigned, show them things like the starry night bike path (
http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor...Bike-Path.html), Superkilen in Denmark (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superkilen), and other projects that have revitalized and brought together communities. If the parkway is going to be destroyed to make way for more greenspace, than Byron linear park makes more sense as something cool and novel than as another greenspace.
Jeff Leiper needs to take the initiative here and start this conversation, instead of following a NIMBY pattern of resistance. We can arrange it so that the entire city benefits; rather than giving in to unreasonable demands or completely shutting down anybody's concerns, we can walk a middle road of true democracy.
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