Road Expansion in SSM?
Posted by: Kathie Brosemer (kathie) on July 15, 2004 at 12:45:51
from the got-nasal-congestion?-make-your-nose-bigger dept.
In response to the recent news that the city is looking at extending Willow and/or Pine streets north, to ease "congestion" on Great Northern Road, urban sprawl activist Andre Riopel had this to say. Read his comments below.
Sault Ste Marie is way behind times and short sided when it comes to solving so called traffic congestion. As usual, we are stuck in the past ideology of the motorcar going against the new planning strategy of "smart growth"; the antidote to urban sprawl. A smart community is one where individuals can go to work, school and shop without having to drive. These are compact, high density communities. Public transit, cycling and walking is convenient while driving is not. This is not only healthy but economical.
Our population is in decline and aging yet there are more cars on the roads than we had 10 years ago, we are getting fat in the process and choking on our car fumes. We are sickened by our way of living and we need to build big expensive hospitals to take care of our lifestyle induced diseases. We build big box stores so that small neighborhood stores go out of business and everybody needs to drive across town to go shopping "at the box". Profits are sucked out of town to the biggest Corporations in the world while small family businesses go under and our kids have to go work for Sam for $8/hr.
Cyclists are literally run off the road and must fight tooth and nail for very basic infrastructure while we spend millions and millions to pave our city over while getting rid of the green space. Yep, that's progressive.
I was told by someone in the city's planning dept. that Sault Ste Marie has the second highest per capita km or roads, second to Timmins Ontario. Go figure we need to build even more roads. Current studies (I can provide references) has shown without doubt that building more roads does not solve traffic congestion; it only creates more traffic. Why do you think Toronto is considering getting rid of the Gardiner Expressway. The solution taken up by progressive cities around the world is to make car driving less convenient (more congestion) while making the alternatives (public transit, walking, cycling) more convenient.
Specific to the issue of Willow, of course this is a critical bicycle route and part of the planned bicycle corridor system. Extending Willow to Second line would be a major set back and our club will go to the highest levels to object to this. Pine is also a great cycling road but I suspect that not only are city planners and engineers thinking of extending it to Second Line, they are probably thinking of making it a four lane road ruining it for cyclists and people who live there.
Traffic congestion is measured by a term called "level of service" which is rated from A to F (I think) corresponding to the amount of time traffic is "congested". I have never seen a real "traffic jam" in this city (except at train tracks and construction) where cars were stopped for more than 1-2 minutes. If we want to solve traffic problems we need to take measures to reduce traffic volume and get people out of their cars. We won't achieve this by building more roads. Furthermore, we can't even afford to take care of the roads we have now.
We need a moratorium on any road expansion in this city. We need to give the streets back to the people who live on them. We need pedestrianized zones, green corridors with mid block car barriers on designated bicycle routes. We need to remove parking requirements to any new development to encourage high density development in the urban core. Downtown needs to become a place of small shops, apartment living, slow pace, low traffic, high living quality zone. By extending the uptown roads, we are continuing to promote the decline of downtown living.
The price of gas is going up, global warming is going on and our taxes are going up. It's time to reverse the trend of building communities for cars and start building livable cities for people. Say NO to road expansion.
Andre Riopel
sdfg
by fengying6 on 2011-06-28 05:04:12
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