Quote:
Originally Posted by Beedok
So, yo can have your buildings burn down because the fire department can't reach them or because it's under funded. That's an even point. (Except congestion will hurt your economy so you'll probably be looking at funding issues anyway.)
An excess of roads is actually good for your lungs. It means that the cars aren't filling the roads around your home for 2-3 hours of backed up rush hour traffic, instead they drive past and you get only the slightest wiff.
For walking, I'll admit that some of Hamilton's roads are a little wide, but by using one way that means there's only a ~5 lane street to cross at the widest. In Ottawa (which is only moderately bigger and much much much more congested) instead you have one 10 lane two way street that's roughly twice as pedestrian unfriendly, plus two way leads to much longer traffic light cycles which are discouraging. Now speed limits, those Hamilton could work on.
Growth does mean more traffic. Even if you're very efficient at getting people on buses (like Ottawa has managed by spending huge amounts of money on transit ways and whatnot) you'll still have extra vehicles. Hamilton has no where to build transit ways, so you'll be left with bus lanes at best, and you'll have many streets where that just isn't practical so the buses are just a segment of congestion.
I will agree that Hamilton has too much road space, but the price of removing it, rebuilding infrastructure, reassessing lots, and everything will probably lead to negligible savings. Plus even if the city were to be highly efficient by the time you remove the excess capacity the city will have grown and commuter patterns will have changed to the degree that you might well lack needed capacity when you're finished. Taking into account actual municipal politics anywhere and you'll be looking at serious problems.
Almost every established city in Canada is short on cash, but unlike the others desperately trying to build capacity on no money Hamilton is instead sitting on excess. I'd rather my city be bankrupt but built for tomorrow than effectively bankrupt and not built for yesterday.
|
Only in Hamilton would anyone suggest that converting our over-built five-lane one-way highway-streets to two-way traffic would mean a “10 lane two way street.” King and Main have excess capacity, and could both easily be reconfigured to two lanes each way or less, and still have excess capacity for the traffic. Similarly for streets like Wentworth, Victoria, and Wellington.
The operating cost of one kilometre of one lane is $1,400. Every year, year in and year out. That doesn’t include the opportunity cost of maybe having something in that space that contributes to municipal revenue.
It’s kind of strange to think that congestion is bad for the economy, or the environment. Cities like New York and Paris have plenty of congestion, but their per capita economic output is higher than ours, and their per capita impact on the environment lower. Your arguments are mostly predicated on the notion that driving in cars is going to be the only game in town (anyway, this town) for the majority of people, forever. There’s a lot of evidence that this is changing in a big way, and people are starting to desire alternatives. It may wind up being that our city is built for yesterday and, to boot, bankrupt.
Threaded Mode