Stop the Main madness!

Comrade Vincent J. Curtis

14 May 22

RE: Get moving on Main St. conversion.  Spectator editorial 14 May 22

RE: Who do we build our streets for? Op-ed by Paul Shaker.

It is sadly characteristic of the Hannon People’s Daily that it recommend the most Marxist, most nihilistic, most economically disruptive plan of action for any problem, especially when the crisis is manufactured.  In this case, the manufactured crisis of pedestrian deaths at Dundurn and Main.  You’d think the pedestrian carnage was as bad as a failed Russian river crossing.

When the Spectator was on Frid St., and a husky printer could shot-put a typewriter into the intersection, nothing was said about converting Main to two-way..  Nothing was said about the dangers of crossing Main and Dundurn when reporters were sneaking across to grab a Timmies.  In short, a statistical cluster is not going to be allowed to go to waste.

It never occurs to the editors that something less disruptive might be entertained, such as restricting pedestrian crossing, or erecting a pedestrian bridge.  No, the most disruptive, most chaos inducing solution is all that’s acceptable.  Never mind that two-way traffic on Main will require left hand turns across two lanes of traffic without the benefit of turning lanes.  Never mind that the hazards of this vastly outweigh the present hazards.  No, the end of economic disruption is best served by panicking city council into turning Main into two-way, against the best advice of traffic engineers of the 1950s who manifestly knew what they were doing.

To answer Paul Shaker: streets are for cars, sidewalks are for pedestrians.  As usual, Shaker asks the wrong question.  We build our streets for ourselves, that’s who.  The proper question is: What do we build our streets for?  And the answer to that is for communication and commerce.

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