(12-11-2015, 04:14 PM)MidTowner Wrote: The changes you said you'd like to see (eliminate one lane of car traffic to allow for infrastructure for people on foot and bike) are not only not particularly expensive, but reduce the Region's expenses in the long-run: you will have eliminated a pretty significant ongoing maintenance cost in favour of a lesser one. So it's not a question of funds. Switching these streets back to normal would not be particularly costly, either.
Lots of things aren't particularly expensive. That doesn't mean they're worth doing. I honestly have no sense of what the cost of this would be, but I suspect its at least a couple of million when all is said and done (and probably more).
I'm not sure what maintenance cost we're saving.
(12-11-2015, 04:14 PM)MidTowner Wrote: When I hear that this isn't the place (and by place I guess we're meaning maybe a two-kilometre by five hundred or so meter swath of Waterloo) to worry about a friendly environment for people on foot, that doesn't sound like some of us are looking for trade-offs.
Who? I think almost everybody ITT has pointed out that we want it to be friendly to people on foot. But I think many of us don't take it as fact that:
a) It's particularly hostile right now
b) There are a significant number of pedestrian being influenced by this.
c) This is a priority for spending limited resources to improve pedestrian friendliness
d) Switching to two two-way roads is enough of a benefit to pedestrians to offset the significant disadvantage to cars.