Councils always cater to cars
Does anyone want to have an actual conversation about transportation costs and safety?
By virtue of the letters in this paper, it sure doesn’t seem like it. Hot takes abound — the bike lanes are expensive and are not “safe” as people will die.
Just a quick reminder: people are dying crossing the street downtown now and nothing is being done. The solutions are known: fewer cars, slower speeds of said cars, and better and safer crossings.
Start with this basic idea: if there were no cars, no one would die these senseless deaths. A bike lane will transfer car trips to bike ones. In 2021, drivers killed one pedestrian at Nanaimo and Winnipeg, put another in critical condition on Main Street, and left a third on the asphalt after putting the pedestrian right over the hood of their car.
I’m sure almost all drivers go 30 kilometres per hour or less downtown, it’s just when I took a radar gun to Main Street just south of Eckhardt and took the speeds of 15 cars, there were precisely zero that did.
$5 million in taxpayer funds to remake an intersection on Galt Street. $1 million to park 20 private cars on the old Greyhound lot. Under-collected revenues for parking cost millions annually.
Demolishing housing for parking at the SOEC in the middle of a housing crisis. These things are totally fine. It’s not expensive if it’s for cars.
Property tax assessment infographics say we spend 20% more covering the costs of a 5,000-seat hockey arena than a baseline service like public transit. Surely the band Foreigner showing up once a quadrennial will more than make up for it in economic impact though.
It’s not like it’s 45 degrees out for multiple days in a row or forests are burning out of control or anything. Carry on.
We could have safety and fairness. Instead, we largely socialize parking and road consumption, grossly-underfund public transit, limit funds for sidewalks, and bundle parking costs with the costs of other goods.
So, people who don’t have cars pay more for rent and groceries.
The NIMBY lot frequently weaponize the OCP to keep more badly-needed housing from being built. This same colourful document prioritizes transportation investments to sidewalks, bike infrastructure, and public transit above private vehicles.
Thank you to this council for having the guts to carry it out.