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City promotes congestion and exasperation

Be thankful you live outside the urban madness

AHEAD OF THE HEARD

Most folks visiting urban centres may be understandably perplexed by the traffic madness that is a feature of large cities. Traffic can be so furious that it is indeed a threat to health and safety, and one can’t wait to get out of town. Visiting a city for business or pleasure has become something of a chore to get done as quickly as possible. You would think that efforts are constantly being made to make visiting a city a more pleasant experience. If for nothing else than to entice more folks to spend their time and money in the city. Well that may be the plan in some cities but not quite in Calgary.

It would seem that city planners in Calgary go out of their way to make traffic congestion worse as a matter of policy and philosophy. Those planning geniuses have decided that the automobile is their enemy and needs to be discouraged from being used particularly in downtown Calgary. To achieve that goal they have dreamt up grandiose plans to encourage cycling and walking over automobile use. Well no problem with such a noble goal but it becomes nefarious when one form of transportation is targeted by deliberately making its use more miserable. The approach of planners is to make driving a car in Calgary so aggravating and frustrating that citizens will switch to cycling and walking.

It would seem that city planners are intent in affecting a social change on Calgary citizens and are using tax dollars to force it down their throats. Incredibly citizens and a complacent city council just go along with this scheming against the automobile. This goes on despite the fact that traffic congestion is usually one of the top issues during municipal elections. A couple of years ago city planners forced through a scheme that saw a number car lanes eliminated and converted to bicycle use only. These weren’t just bike wide lanes but half the street size complete with barriers and separate lights and stopping areas for bicycles only. These changes cost tens of millions of dollars, all for a few hundred cyclists - even fewer during winter time. Oblivious city planners did note a growing resentment to this blatant favouritism for the few elites. To placate the protest, planners had the audacity to state that the changes were part of a pilot project that would only become permanent after a study of actual use. To no one’s surprise that turned out to be a blatant misrepresentation. It got so bad that some city councillors were demanding that a third party auditor be brought in to confirm the number of cyclists that were actually using the new bike lanes. That was after city planners were making outlandish claims that countless thousands of bikers were using the new lanes.

Not content to aggravate traffic congestion even further, city planners have now created another master plan to encourage more people to walk. No problem with that more healthful practice, but the planners’ intent is to once again make automobile congestion even worse, with the hope that citizens will just give up using their cars out of frustration. The approach seems to be to slow down traffic even more at intersections and finding ways that favour pedestrians. Another indirect way to achieve their ends city planners are allowing huge condo buildings to be built without any parking facilities for owners or guests.

City planners like to state that they want to make downtown more livable and vibrant with people on the streets and not rushing through in cars. That’s a delusion at best; Calgary is not an old European city that is conducive to walking because of geography and history. People go to downtown Calgary mostly for business and jobs; you don’t see open tourist buses or horse drawn carriages touring the non-existent sites. If citizens in Calgary want to go for walks or cycling they tend to favour open and scenic areas and parks, and not downtown sidewalks and streets.

The best goal for downtown Calgary is to get people in and out fast – and that means more public transit and better and faster automobile traffic patterns. Trying to force people to walk and cycle into downtown Calgary is madness at best. But then until citizens get the gumption to rein in out of control planners and oblivious city aldermen, the madness will continue. It makes one appreciate the joys of living in rural Alberta and in small towns.