Mayor Abducted
I was over at The Presurfer this morning, and discovered that the Mayor of Centerton Arkansas was abducted by Satan worshippers 30 years ago. He did the right thing and resigned.
Now, here in Toronto, Mayor Miller has been involved with some pretty strange activities, such as the recent narrowing of Lansdowne Ave. I wonder....
5 comments:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it” Max Planck
Heh heh. I guess the Satan worshippers are gonna have to cart me off too...because I think narrowing Lansdowne and as many streets as possible reflects a positive trend.
I am against the trees being cut down. Keep the trees make the street narrower IF...residents don't need parking.
Narrow streets are a positive method of calming traffic and offering pedestrians more sidewalks.
I suspect that as long as the neighbours continue to park their cars on the two side lanes of Lansdowne...then the street is being narrowed by that permit situation naturally.
I think someone has to analyse what's really going on with the residents at Lansdowne. There is a movement among urban planners and residents to traffic calm cities. It's not the trees, it's not the narrow street. People want to protect their parking spots and others want to slow down speeding and reward Public Transit, bikes, pedestrians.
I think that is fair...and it should be addressed as such instead of phonies pretending they care about the environment and chaining themselves to trees.
They actually want to protect their parking permits. Fair enough. As long as there is a two lane parking on either side of Lansdowne that provides a natural social control of traffic calming.
There are likely several reasons that David Miller has failed a s a Mayor, but his commitment to environmental urban planning isn't one of the reasons. Unfortunately there are still a lot of people who are misguided about how to go about protecting Public Transit, encouraging people to use public transit and bikes and drive less in cities...
What we are witnessing is change in attitudes towards education and information regarding urban planning. We are seeing a switch and more awareness. During this transition in attitude peopel are going to butt heads and rely on personal motives and bad science until we get a younger generation implemetning all the great information we have come to learn about...
Urban planning has undergone a huge revamping in the last 30 years. Conflict at Lansdowne relects change in attitude and resistance to change.
It's more like a comedy than a tragedy.
I respect your comments Candy, but frankly the narrowing of Lansdowne is one complete mystery to me. The change is complete and it does zero to "calm traffic" Nothing. Nada. What changed? Less parking. Is the street slower? Not at all. I drove it yesterday. Is it an improvement for the residents? I can't see what has improved. As near as I can tell, all it did was piss off residents who used to have more parking available than they have today. Why take away their parking? You say narrow streets are a positive method of calming traffic and offering pedestrians more sidewalks, but I say, go look at Lansdowne. Nothing is "calmed". There was no shortage of sidewalks before. It isn't even more attractive. It was a costly and unpopular change made at a time when the city politicians were talking about raising taxes because they didn't have enough money to run the city. If the idea is to gradually make the city more difficult for cars to promote the use of public transit, that is putting the cart before the horse. Invest in improving public transit. Look seriously at better transit to the airport and to York University. Look seriously at improved transit east/west along Eglinton. If I could reasonably get to work by transit, I would happily do it, but it would take me hours to do so today. Instead, what we see is squillions being spent on a TTC right-of-way along St. Clair. Better would have been some strategic "no-left turn" signs on St. Clair. When I worked downtown, I used the St. Clair street car every day. The only problem was that at maybe 4 intersections, left-turners slowed the cars, and to compensate the TTC inspectors would short turn east-bound cars at Lansdowne instead of running them all the way to Gunns loop. We didn't need a dedicated right-of-way to fix this problem. In fact, when I took the St. Clair car daily, I thought the service was very good on that route, even with occasional short-turns. I would much rather see an investment in transit along routes that badly need it.
If David Miller wants to succeed as Mayor, he needs to start listening to people in the neighbourhoods his urban planning ideas affect.
Well, like I said, it seems to be that the two sided street parking would have naturally been traffic calming. It seems redundant to narrow a street when there is two lane parking.
I'm not a fan of many rules or regulations that people seem addicited to...so I am not really the person to stand up for contemporary urban planning heh heh.
I would get rid of every one way street, and all the speed bumps and have less traffic directions. I would take down hundreds of traffic signs.I would make the ttc only a $2.00 and carbon tax like crazy. A dollar for every gallon. I love high taxes too...ha ha so I am a bit of a freak I realize.
I believe traffic falls under evolutionary biology and behavouiral psychology. Animals always work it out...I don't believe in outlawing cars, and understand lots of people can not afford the time to take public transit. There isn't any morality around the situation in my eyes...
I like small roads, more benches, especially facing each other, less intervention, which includes less parking permits, less stop signs, more bikes and more walking.
Change only happens when people feel they can't afford one action over another...it's not because we make laws or wider roads. And change happens when one generation dies out who might be stuck in their ways of thinking.
I see the Lansdowne narrowing as a return to original sizes of streets in urban centers where people all unwritten agree they don't want to have an accident or die...they take more care and find their own ways around the city. They don't drive when they don't have to go to work, they walk with a cart to the grocery store, they take the bus to go see a concert. etc etc.
And...they figure out on their own how to manuever through the traffic...we don't really need all these silly traffic laws. But I'm a bit of a Naturalist in this regard I realize. Animals can work it out thank you very much.
I suspect Lansdowne is now how it was about a hundred years ago before we got more and more madcap about controlling animal behaviour. Urban planning went towards a totalitarian regime..sort of like fire fighting in parks and nature...till we figured out we should just let the natural pattern occur. Lansdwone is like not fighting the fires in national parks any more...
and sorry...I'm a huge believer in high taxes. I support higher taxes in Toronto. Some of the most wonderful cities and societies depend on high taxes to take care of the people and infrastructure. When you fight for lower taxes it is the pathway for privitized contracts for infrastructures.
great roadways, good public schools, subsidized universities, mental health facilities all depend on high taxes...the more taxes the better the city to live in for everyone.
Hip hip hooray for taxes ha ha I can feel the ire of most people on me right now...sorry everybody...
:)
Deleted a post - retarded English on my part.
Gardenia said...
Narrowing useful streets has to be from hell.
In my mother's hometown, they City poured cement pieces every so often along the curbs. These cement pieces jutted out into the street. After many citizens complained about ruined tires and accidents, the pieces were taken out. Poor engineering.
What I would like to see is bicycle & scooter lanes!
The mayor/pastor story - I started to read some and got a headache. I think he would fit down here well with all the UFO folks.
I agree with Candy about taxes, however, I don't like it when the money is spent on stupid stuff. However, I like it when spending actually improves the quality of our lives. The problem is when, too many times, politicians don't like to ask ordinary people whose lives are affected if they want proposed changes.
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