Road design, transportation and walkability

[ijmorlan]

This discussion is good. We don't need to all agree but we do need to be civil.

Personally, I don't think keeping roads at two lanes will have any significant impact on climate change. If we want to (significantly!) reduce vehicular emissions, we need to bump up carbon pricing (or gas taxes). By a lot. A bit of congestion won't have a significant impact on people's choices, and it also impacts transit and commercial traffic.

4-lane roads (by which I mean proper ones with turn lanes, not the pseudo-4-lane roads we have too many of in this Region) can carry twice as much traffic as 2-lane roads. So choosing to build 2-lane roads will definitely affect how we get places — it will simply be impossible for a 4-lane road’s capacity of vehicles to travel on the 2-lane roads.

That being said, yes, the carbon tax should increase significantly (and simply be paid out per capita, with no special deals for anyone).

If there are to be 4 motor vehicle lanes, 2 of them should be for transit.

There is no reason Fischer-Hallman could not be re-built with an urban profile with excellent segregated bicycle lanes, wide sidewalks, and still just one lane in each direction for motor vehicles (plus turn lanes everywhere that turns are permitted to keep through traffic moving).