Quote:
Originally Posted by Truenorth00
Attractiveness of the walk, or destination proximity aside, I am going to argue that something that can and should be fixed is how badly we design and build sidewalks in our cities.
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Time and time again people on streets in suburban areas with no sidewalks keep lobbying against sidewalk installations (which are not on their land). This has happened in London, this has happened in Etobicoke, this has happened in Burnaby. There have also been people in Burnaby who have tried to have a bus service
removed from their street because they don't want it. Fortunately that didn't get anywhere, as bus service is provided by TransLink and they are accountable to the province.
Municipalities and even higher levels of government need to be empowered to impose sustainable infrastructure such as sidewalks, bike lanes, and public transit on neighbourhoods, even if the locals do not want them - the ability of local homeowners to reject sidewalks needs to be taken away, as long as they're being built on municipal property. New Westminster is doing this very thing right now - a bike lane has been imposed on my neighbourhood even though most people did not want it and still do not want it now (claiming there's been a loss of parking, which I'm not seeing), and to give the city credit they've basically ignored all the opposition and are pushing forward with future plans. Unlike pushover cities like London where locals sabotaged the proposed LRT and where a single resident was able to block construction of a new CN bridge for years, New Westminster has a backbone and doesn't cater to NIMBY people. From a big picture level the bike lane will be very important once Douglas College re-starts in-person classes, and it will be important to the regional cycling network once the new Pauttillo Bridge is built. (For my part I have expressed my support for the bike lane to the City multiple times, even though I don't know the first thing about bicycles.)
With the climate emergency, governments are going to need to take this level of leadership to lower the carbon footprint of their local transportation infrastructure.