Calgary Public Transit II

[Policy Wonk]

Originally Posted by sim

If you would like to continue to pretend to understand the technological differences between all the modes, go ahead and keep arguing.

I am extremely confident in my understanding and seek your approval of precisely nothing.

But more to the point, if you quite simply can't get the land-use - transportation interaction, feel free to admit it. I already know you don't, and you just raise some other points to redirect the discussion.

No, in this too I am also very comfortable. I just don't believe that land use and transportation are weapons to be used by eccentric minorities to impose their will on the public at large.

But this is really the kicker. You stated that had we built more freeways, a Centre St alignment (let's just say surface going for simplicity) would be more viable. I stated the opposite is likely true.

If you seriously believe that if the role of Centre Street as a vehicle and transit corridor was performed by some other more suitable road that Centre Street would be a less likely alternative you occupy a head space unreachable to most of us. Centre Street is too many things to be favoured to serve only one of them poorly.

Originally Posted by sim

I recently read a report about the impending gridlock that was to befall Canmore (ca. 1995) were they not to do anything about it. They didn't do anything about it. Gridlock there right?

Gridlock is very efficient if a transit vehicle zooms right on by it all and you aim to get people to patronize it. It's also very efficient if your only objective isn't to move vehicles.

Gridlock wasn't theoretical before the Glenmore interchange was built.

And since vehicles are how most people choose to move about the world that preference should be reflected in processes and planning. I realize you reject that on a deeply visceral level, but that's just the world we live in. Moving vehicles efficiently is a noble goal. If you have to strive to make driving terrible to make transit appealing, your failing on the transit side of the equation. (Edit: for the record I don't believe that is what Calgary has done.) Driving is not a vice, sin or moral failing. It is the primary way that people navigate their world and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that or that preference being reflected by government and society. If you make yourself tone deaf to that, you aren't going to find many looking to you for solutions.

Like said, I know you don't and probably never will understand the complexities involved. No one truly does, hence some of the most complex models you'll ever come across. That's not to say it isn't understood generally.

And as I have always said I wear the scorn of the likes of you and your planning fad driven philosophy as a badge of honour.