Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I had no idea the Micmac rotary ever even existed. Definitely before my time lol. Looking at those images the first thing that comes to mind it, "Why does everything around here have to be so damn ugly??" With that setting surrounded by lake and trees and rolling hills this could have been really beautiful - even a civic landmark. But instead just a plain highway grade road surrounded by a bunch of crushed rock around an empty featureless pond with a couple more empty ponds on the side? how about a fountain in the center pond? Or a small island with some type of monument? And instead of crushed rock, how about an attractive retaining wall draped with vines? Why aren't there any landscaping elements in the triangles?
I've often thought the current set up was fugly but I chalked it down to being an expressway, but given the way it looked before that's obviously not the case. In other countries such a thing wouldn't be allowed. This is not normal behaviour.
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No mystery there. Standard practice in NS has always been function over form - spend as little as possible to make it work, and don't worry about how it looks.
This attitude still exists today - just look at all the complaints everytime something 'nice' is planned for our city. Prepare for the outcry... "we can't afford it"... for buildings it means we get a low bid piece of junk that lasts 30 or 40 years until it has to be replaced again. Of course the economics of replacing a building every few decades doesn't add up when compared to initially building a higher quality structure that will last twice as long, but we're continually limited by short-term thinking here.
Another case is when they installed accent lighting on the Macdonald Bridge - IIRC, the pricetag was something like $60,000, and there was outrage about wasting so much money on lighting. Forget the fact that this lighting makes the bridge look great at night - nobody seems to put value on that...
Luckily, though, I've noticed lately that good things still seem to happen despite the outrage. Let's hope it continues to improve.
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