Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
You say that expressways running through neighbourhoods have caused devastation, and yes there is some truth to that in the neighbourhoods adjacent to those roads, but you leave out that cars have allowed industrial businesses to move out of some neighbourhoods and relocate to parts of the city planned for industrial use, therefore reducing pollution, noise, truck traffic, etc. in the areas they moved out of.
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All we have to do is look at the Cogswell to see an area where literally thousands of people were displaced by government fiat to accomodate auto infrastructure. Smaller-scale examples of that can be found across the region, and larger examples in other cities. Some American cities were more or less dismantled for the purposes of running expressways through them. That's not explicitly the fault of cars so much as poor planning--but our societal over-enthusiasm for car infrastructure resulted in the degradation and in many cases total elimination of entire communities. That's not an exaggeration.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
In terms of "autobody shops" in the north end, I can't say that I'm aware of any more of them than any other type of business, but again... it's business. There wasn't a plot by the automotive industry to tear down houses and punish local residents by forcing them to live near unsavoury automotive businesses, there was a business case created by land values and zoning regulations that allowed those businesses to locate there. If it hadn't been car-oriented businesses it would have been some other type of business.
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Probably hundreds of houses were torn down over the decades to make way for streetscapes that look like
this, or
this, or
this, or
this, or
this. Every other block has one of these in some areas, and there are a couple where entire blocks have been largely razed and converted to garages. It's strange enough that I had a friend visiting from out-of-town last year remark upon all the "car businesses" in the neighbourhood, and she wasn't a super-urbanist type who would be attuned to that sort of thing. It's not normal to have this many garages and parking lots and so forth littered across a single neighbourhood.
I'm not saying there was any plot to do so, but it was an unfortunate consequence of the under-valuing of urban neighbourhoods and the aforementioned enthusiasm for all things automobile.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark
If your idea is to force these people to ride bicycles instead of driving cars or trucks, and to dampen their enthusiasm for their 'sporty' vehicles, then this would sound like forcing one's values on others, and would perhaps add fuel the argument that there is a 'war on the car'?
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No one wants to force anyone to do anything, that's a red herring. The idea is to create more infrastructure for other road users as well and create alternatives, especially at the level of individual neighbourhoods, or adjoining neighbourhoods. If cars have gotten 95 percent of the road space and infrastructure spending over the past half-century, any change in that status quo may appear to be a "war" on the car, but it's just providing more choice. And sure, it will probably mean people's drive time may be lengthened or their convenience mildly curtailed, but that's in the interest of rebalancing things, and creating more convenience, efficiency--and more importantly, safety--for people who choose other modes of transport.
And let's not forget that most people who are cyclists and pedestrians are also drivers. Most people who advocate for cycling infrastructure aren't trying to induce some large-scale social-engineering project to force everyone out of cars and make bikes the dominant means of transportation. This is a false notion. But a city of Halifax's size and compactness (centrally speaking, and in the inner suburbs) can easily become the kind of place where a very substantial percentage of trips happen by bike. Compare to Victoria, where seven percent of commuters cycle to work. That's a city in most ways not much different than Halifax. And seven percent of all trips, not just commuting, happen by bicycle in the city (not CMA) of Vancouver, up from four percent in 2013.
Those cities have less severe winters, but we can look at cities like Ottawa and Winnipeg and Montreal, with longer and/or colder winters than Halifax, and see even better numbers. In some parts of central Montreal, fully one-fifth of trips are by bicycle, and in some parts of Winnipeg, around 15 percent. For that matter, 10 percent of commuting trips originating in the South End already happen by bike. There's plenty of room to expand and improve those numbers throughout the regional centre, which will reduce pollution, reduce congestion, etc.
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