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Showing posts from April, 2024

SEYMOUR AND ST PAUL

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 Victoria Street is great. Its a great street. Wide walking lanes, short cross walks, lots of shops, restaurants and vibrancy. Its the logical choice for all sorts of public events, and the nicest street in our City. But it is hemmed in on both sides by high-speed, wide, loud and dusty Lansdowne and Seymour. These two streets were designed in a bygone era: of large chip trucks coming through Downtown, and based on ideas about traffic engineering in the 70s  and 80s that have proven ineffective - that is why big cities all over the place are replacing their large, high speed, one ways with slower speed two lane streets - with slower average car speeds, but overall higher capacities. And improved Commercial Vibrancy. In 2019, then Councillor Denis Walsh was asked "what single thing he would fix about downtown". Mel Rothenburger was surprised to hear Denis say - make Seymour a Two-Way Street again. As the article mentions, despite it being an idea 'on the books' for 20 y

Connecting the North Shore to Lac Du Bois 'Batch Nature Park'

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 The South Shore has a special privilege when it comes to park spaces. Nearly every neighbourhood has some level of Nature and Recreational Park area - Barnhartvale, to Valleyview, to Peterson Creek, Kenna Cartwright and Pineview/Iron Mask Trails. The South Shore supports vast mountain bike networks, dog walking trails, unique landscapes and trails for all weather. Importantly, those parks are connected to their communities in a way that folks can walk, bike, ride, walk the stroller, right from home, without having to get in a car. However on the North Shore, the area of the City with the most number of folks cycling, the flattest land, and the fewest drivers - North Shore residents have no convenient access to a nature park without significant amounts of driving - yet Lac du Bois Provincial Park (Colloquially "Batch") is extremely proximate to almost every part of the North Shore - yet one cannot access it on foot or bike from these very areas. I obviously am here to advocat