Road design, transportation and walkability

[danbrotherston]

And what if you factor in the environmental costs of the road and the sprawl that it will generate?  It won’t improve traffic, it will simply induce more traffic. Still a bargain?  What else could we have spent that 8 million on?

Well, considering how much home owners paid for development fee's, $8M is very little of that total. It has needed to be done for a long time, and it simply can't be left alone. You can also expect more and more businesses to open in that area as well. I do get that there are some people that don't own a car, and never will, and hate the idea of any roads being built or expanded, but it is what it is. And with the likelihood of covid-19 sticking around for a long, long, long time, I can see people becoming more dependant on cars rather than filthy public transit.

I agree the road needs "some" work, it could instead be upgraded to a urban cross section without being doubled in size as they are doing now--that would easily handle todays traffic.  Of course the city could also have decided not to sprawl another couple of KMs larger a few years ago and there would be no demand for widening the road.

My dislike of this road project has nothing to do with my owning a car or not, it has to do with my dislike of the unsustainable, broken land use sprawl policies, and broken transportation policies which led to it.  And yes, more businesses will open in the area...BECAUSE of the road.

And like I said, I would dislike it far less if the communit that was being built there was not designed to mandate every single resident own a car...as is, there are zero other feasible transportation options.

As for COVID, yes, it will impact public transit, but it won't be sticking around a "long long" time, we will have a vaccine almost certainly early to mid next year, how that will impact use of our very clean public system long term is yet to be seen.