Road design, transportation and walkability

[danbrotherston]

Frankly, I don't even think not building the highway would stop this, but what we could do INSTEAD is build transit and build developments which are car light and transit friendly. It isn't difficult, other countries have figured this out...we already have a rail line to centre on.

I have to ask: which countries? As far as I can tell, all ‘1st world nations’ are car dependant, having at least 1 car per household. Most ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ cities have good public transit system, though they still rely on cars, a lot.

As for KWC, we’re not even considered a ‘sufficiency’ level city (Sufficiency -> Gamma -> Beta -> Alpha). We have a long ways to go to populate the corridor and have a amenities along that corridor to make it useful. Even then, transit will never be a great option for the majority.

No going to argue that we need to improve transit, though I would say we have spent a lot on it over the past 10 years. But I can’t envision this city, or really, any city, that can give up the car for the majority of people. In Canada, it makes it even tougher. We are huge geographically, which makes relying on good transit hard.

If you have a family and/or take care of anyone, transit really isn’t a great option. It’s time consuming, and gets expensive quickly if you need to leave town. And transit, as we have seen with strikes and Covid, is less than 100% reliable. And that is huge factor.

I don't understand why you think this.  The world is what we choose to make it...if we wanted transit to be a great option for the majority, we could make it so. Instead we're building highways, which ensures that transit isn't a great option.

We've been through this before, all of the problems with transit you list are choices.  If we cars a toll per passenger, and transit was free and communities were designed transit first, and cars last (basically the opposite situation we have today) you've be arguing building a highway is stupid because it doesn't work for most people.

But that is exactly what I am saying, instead of building an unusustainble car first sprawling suburb, build a transit first complete community.  As for what other countries, the one I'm most familiar with is the Netherlands, basically all of their new cities (and they do have new cities, some are just new, some are built on land that didn't exist before 60 years ago), are centred on a central train station with frequent trains to nearby major cities, and have ubiquitous bike infrastructure. In most cases driving is more expensive and slower than biking + transit, and their mobility is better than ours.  And for those who do like to drive...the Netherlands is reliably rated as better to drive in than our country.  We should be building that here, it's better in every way.