King-Victoria Transit Hub

[clasher]

I think it wouldn't be bad to see a real full-size grocery store there with a residential and office-type building on top of it. They would have to get creative with parking and discourage people driving there but it might work.

Again, we shouldn't be trying to "discourage" people from driving. This is a war-on-cars mentality which is counterproductive.

There's been a 60+ year war on pedestrians, transit users and cyclists. Transit users are often told they should be paying for more (or all) of the costs at the farebox. The city doesn't even bother to plow the sidewalks or paths and cyclists are usually just an afterthought most of the time. Meanwhile the gov't keeps paving roads everywhere and every little cul-de-sac in the city gets plowed. But the moment anyone suggests that drivers start paying more for their infrastructure all of a sudden there's a war on the car and well that's just not fair because insurance and gas are expensive... surprise surprise moving a giant metal box around is gonna cost money! Drivers take a bigger slice of the pie and they should start paying more for that pie. Stuff like parking spot levies and congestion charges should be used more often in this province, especially as gas tax revenue drops with fuel-efficiency increases.

I'm not really buying the idea that we can't discourage automobile use. Society tries to discourage all sorts of other behaviours that have negative costs for everyone and driving is definitely something that costs non-drivers money and affects their health in many ways. I agree with you that such approaches should be tempered and that the primary focus should be on providing better alternatives but those cost money and given the choice between user fees for drivers and a general tax increase, I think it's fair that drivers start paying more for their choices, just like transit users are paying more of their costs.