Quote:
Originally Posted by FairHamilton
I think she's confusing a boon for car travel in the city, with a boon for the city. Her letter (article) makes that perfectly clear. At least to me.
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This says it all. The logic behind Turcotte's argument is perverse, and her conclusion facile. The article betrays the fact that she is completely out of touch with the notion of a modern urban dynamic. The one-way/two-way issue is not about traffic facilitation and getting drivers to pull over and shop (she's right, this probably isn't going to happen); it is about forging a liveable urban environment in which one does not feel alienated from one's surroundings.
"The frustration of driving on two-way streets does not encourage motorists to pull into a parking space (if one can be found) and visit one of the businesses along the way.
Instead, it just makes them want to get out of the city as quickly as possible, and never come back."
This argument has almost no basis in fact. Most of the world's great cities (both large and small) have at least a majority of two-way streets. To suggest that the experience of driving on a two-way street is so horribly frustrating that no one would ever want to visit these places is simply laughable.
The age of pandering to cars is over. The drivers passing through downtown, whom Turcotte refers to, do not alone hold the fate of the city in their hands.
It depresses me every time the Spec prints something like this.