02-11-2015, 10:21 AM
(02-11-2015, 10:12 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Respectfully, no one "has" to drive to work. We all take decisions as to where to live, and how to get around. If people choose to live ten or twenty or thirty kilometres from their employment, of course it should cost that person more since there's impacts on infrastructure and the environment as a result of that. I know that that particular choice is a complex one, and transportation is only one part of that, but while we continue to subsidize car travel (and we do, massively), the choices that people make will be based on incomplete information, and won't be efficient ones.
Sorry, but the way cities in North America are laid out one has to drive to work. Houses are in one end of the city, schools at the other, work in a different one, restaurants at another. The only way to thread a needle through them is with a car. I started driving to work when the location of my kids school forced me to drive. There really isn't a choice for me. I've looked into moving closer to the iXpress routes and my rent would double.
This is why I'm such a harsh critic of the ridiculous four-storey limit in Uptown Waterloo and the non-mixed zoning of most of the city. It forces people like me to drive. I expounded elsewhere how easy and convenient is to leave the car behind in Europe. I long for the same thing here. Making life inconvenient for drivers does not make that reality any closer. Things like LRT, mixed zoning and intensification do.