01-11-2016, 07:29 AM
(01-10-2016, 10:11 PM)Canard Wrote:(01-10-2016, 10:43 AM)ijmorlan Wrote: They should expropriate. Sound harsh? That’s what they would do for a highway; it wouldn’t even be a discussion. Non-motor-vehicle traffic remains a second-class citizen.
...because a trail moves less than 1/100th of the volume? (1/1000th? 1/10000th?) The cost-per-expropriation-per-trail-user would be orders of magnitude higher than if it were for a highway.
Nonsense. First, a complete trail would attract more users than the incomplete trail. I don’t know actual numbers in this particular case, but some trails attract significant traffic. Second, the amount of expropriation required would be tiny — maybe a corridor 6m wide. On top of which, as was pointed out by another commenter, an easement might be sufficient.
We’re not talking about a pet project of some nutter here. This is a project which, even in a political environment in which motor vehicle construction and traffic is still privileged, has managed to attract political interest, millions of dollars in donations, and a significant fraction of the needed construction. The point is that a route has been selected, funds raised, and politicians have said that it should be built. If it were a road, it most likely would have been, and concerns of existing property owners on the route would have been sidelined.
Heh, unless by “volume” you mean the actual physical volume of the traffic. That might be less by a factor of 100. My car is probably several hundred cubic feet. I by contrast am maybe a couple of cubic feet. Taking into account trucks, you wouldn’t need to have much traffic on a road to have 100 times the “volume” of traffic of a typical bicycle trail.