More Lansdowne Woes
City crew start cutting down 12 trees
As part of their plan to narrow Lansdowne Ave, removing parking from one side of the street, City works started cutting down a dozen trees along Landsdowne Ave. here in Toronto.
Resident Ken Wood is prepared to go to jail to save the trees. I heard a report on CITY TV this afternoon. The city has suggested the trees are sick, and that they are creating an unstable land area. Councillor Giambrone suggested that sometimes you have to lose a few trees to support a green project in which there will be hundreds of new ones. Interestingly, Mr. Wood supports the project to narrow Lansdowne, reduce the traffic flow and make it more pedestrian friendly, but he objects to the surprise tree-cutting.
Consultation with the residents of this stretch of Lansdowne has to start, finally, before the city cuts down another tree. The determination to avoid consultation with residents is shocking and unacceptable.
Let me say that if I cut down the tree in my front yard, you can bet the city would be at my house same day to fine me for it. The same rules apply.
In my view, Miller and Giambrone and the rest of the gang at City Hall need to concentrate on improving public transit, and not worry so much about narrowing roads and creating traffic snarls in the city. Stop putting the cart before the horse.
14 comments:
When politicians quit consulting the people they supposedly work for and start assuming they know what is best for the people they supposedly work for, democracy becomes democrazy.
Well, I suggest 25 cent carbon tax per litre of gasoline...public transit will improve as soon as it has more consumers.
People refuse to quit driving...so St.Clair and Lansdowne are going to be sacrificed.
Candy, raising gas taxes is an interesting idea, but the government of the day was not elected on a platform that featured raising gas taxes to discourage driving. I don't recall Mr. Giambrone or Mr. Miller campaigning like that at all. In fact Mr. Miller really had a non-campaign - he mostly tried to stay out of trouble because the competition was not so strong.
Arbitrarily 'sacrificing' streets is one ugly way to administer a city. Chopping down trees and narrowing street without consultation isn't the way I want my city to be run at all.
I agree with you completely. Is it in fact possible that letters were written, probably about ten years ago regarding the trees and widening/narrowing the streets.
Most of the changes ina city once "regular" unsuspecting residents hear about them were put into motion ages before word gets around or people react.
I doubt there is any politician on the planet who would suggest a carbon tax. People talk about carbon taxes...but not politicians.
It is time for peopel to accept that politicians are the least effective way to run a city/or state. People need to respond with their own pocketbooks.
Money talks.
Lifestyle choices talk.
Forget the middle man of Miller or Giambrone. They are the last people to ask for help from.
Just hope Ken Wood (isn't it funny...he is living up to his name) chained to a tree might get public awareness?
Or maybe get all your neighbors to drive their cars to Lannsdowne and park them all over the sidewalks and with banners that say..."we promise to stop driving everyday and to start taking public transit if you stop narrowing this street and choping down the trees" ?
Just an idea....
I talk and talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in fifty years what my father taught me by example in one week. --Mario Cuomo
:)
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.01/amish_pr.html
I'm appalled. How backwards is that to remove trees? If I remember correctly there are some very grand wonderfully old trees on that street. I really hope the city isn't that stupid to remove those.
If this was an overall project for the entire city I might understand "sometimes you have to lose a few trees" concept, but this is for one strip of Giambrone's ward. It is his ward isn't it?
I can't believe this is happening so quickly without consultation.
I should visit this stretch of Lansdowne because I can't understand why they need to remove trees to narrow a road. It seems counterintuitive.
Carolyn Passarelli, 40, who opposes the plan because it would push more traffic onto her street one block east, said she was baffled when she tried to explain the tree cutting to her young son.
"The opposition is not against greening the city," Passarelli said.
Well like I said...it's all about driving cars. I just don't have very much sympathy. I mean I take public transit...so when some car driver starts boo-hooing about some trees getting cut down it just sounds hilarious to me....
"We are against the fact that Mr. Giambrone gave his word in September that the project was being shelved and there would be further community consultation."
Landsdowne, which now sees 17,000 motorists daily, will lose street parking on the east side.
Opponents say idling cars in slower-moving traffic will only create more pollution.
I mean, 17,000 motorists a day on one street...here is my finger and thumb...thats the worlds smallest violin playing.
If people want to drive their cars...then the roads have to be narrowed and some trees come down. Don't look at the politicians...look at our selves.
Oh that quote was from here:
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/226823
p.s. mister anchovy...you know if I ahd my way...there wouldn't be any where to drive in Toronto...all the streets would be narrow for cars...
NOW Magazine:
A long-neglected stretch of Lansdowne is getting a much-needed facelift – trees, wider sidewalks and bike lanes – and residents are up in arms?
It's a little hard for outsiders to wrap their heads around the Toronto Lansdowne Residents' Association's (TLRA) claims that the $2 million plan to take away a lane of parking and narrow Lansdowne from Bloor to College is going to mean traffic chaos.
A mountain of planning evidence suggests that bike lanes and narrower streets actually calm traffic.
Try telling that to the TLRA's Sam Galati , who managed to get some 250 people out to protest the plan while local Councillor Adam Giambrone and Mayor David Miller were taking in the Portugal Day parade along Dundas Saturday, June 9.
"Extensive development north and west of the area has increased congestion," says Galati, whose group filed a complaint with the integrity commissioner claiming that Giambrone's own survey of residents, done during the last municipal election, "served to mislead the public on the level of support on the street for this project."
Giambrone contends that the decision is part of a broader consideration of what makes streets work.
"This is really part of looking at the city as a whole and making some tough decisions," he says.
Further south, the anticipated narrowing is getting good reviews. Miller points out that the area south of College he represented as a councillor also has narrowed lanes, and "it has been an extraordinary success... increasing green spaces and making it safer by slowing traffic."
So, why is it again that to reduce cars and 'green' the street, that beautiful big old trees have to be chopped down. I think I missed that part.
see Timmer's visual comment
Lansdowne without cars = The Big Rock Candy Mountain. See post above.
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