Parkside Urban Towns (née 83 Elmsdale Dr) | U/C

[MidTowner]

Well, no, it's not great -- but it is what it is, and changing this one project wouldn't make it fine, either.  The street interaction would be pretty useless given the traffic speeds and volumes.

I would rather focus street interaction/enhancement efforts on the core downtown areas, rather than throwing darts at scattered suburban areas that are heavily car-focused (and difficult to change).  Downtown now is starting to have critical mass, it will take much longer to reach that in various suburban areas, and especially ones far away from the LRT.

Why not both?

Exactly. It's presenting a false choice to say that we should focus on improving streets in the downtown core, "rather than" outside of them. Just like you say, it's baby steps and some building needs to be the first.

By the way, the Region of Waterloo's traffic counts show less than 17,000 vehicles a day on this part of Ottawa South. That makes it a good candidate for a road diet one day: it needn't stay four lanes forever.