Quote:
Originally Posted by thebasketballgeek
Lol these idiots need to take a trip to Québec City where most of the streets in the city centre utilize pedestrian crossing. I can guarantee the intersection of Honoré-Mercier/Rue Saint-Jean has more pedestrian, vehicle, and bus traffic than River/Osborne yet if Québec City removed the scramble I shit you not there would probably be riots. Having the ability to cross a road diagonally instead of waiting an additional light cycle feels life changing and is so safe (especially with no rights on red lights but that’s another topic).
Hell even where I live in Rimouski, which is the size of Brandon has quite a few scramble crossings.
Shortsighted, incompetent, and incapable of critical thinking. Sounds like the Winnipeg public service I remember…
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Quebec City has an extensive and efficient provincial highway system that runs through many parts of the city, with plenty of interchanges and grade separations. This alleviates a lot of traffic pressure from having to run through city streets to get across the city or to major employment centres.
Winnipeg doesn't have such a luxury. We have no major highways that get anyone close to major employment centres in the central part of our city. As a result, everyone - semi trucks, cars and busses - are dependent on using oversized stroads like Pembina, Osborne, Portage and Main to get to where they want. The end result is that what should be our densest and most walkable neighborhoods are intersected with oversized streets, completely killing a lot of pedestrian interaction which would enhance vibrancy.
You're not going to get rid of cars and busses and semi trucks in the next 100 years, so if want to enhance the vibrancy of our central areas including downtown and Osborne Village, we need to operate on the assumption that people will need to continue to commute to where they work, and given this assumption, how do we plan a better transportation network that takes cars away from areas that should be pedestrianized without adding significant commute time to existing and future traffic which would reduce Winnipeg's potential to accommodate both population and job growth.
Too many simple minded knee-jerk reactions that advocate "taking cars off streets" without providing a realistic alternative - and no, you're not going to shift the 300,000 people who take cars to work into transit overnight by simply adding another rapid transit line or implementing the Transit Master Plan. So lets get reasonable here.
Like it or not, a proper highway network can actually alleviate road use in residential neighborhoods which makes things better for pedestrians and enhances vibrancy. Winnipeg lacks a proper highway network so people are forced to use our oversized arterials that cut through our neighborhoods, killing any hopes of walkability.