The Torontoist has posted an interview of Adam Giambrone in which Adam goes into greater details of the controversy around the Lansdowne reconfiguration, among other small potatoes stuff such as the closing of the Sheppard subway and Transit City.
Giambrone talks about the controversy surrounding Lansdowne:
Fundamentally, this comes down to a case where people are unhappy with what is going on. Their positions have been listened to, we've made changes where we could, we dealt with individual cases, but it's one of those difficult situations. We saw the same thing on Dundas East with the bike lanes where we're putting in [new ones]. You've got very difficult decisions here in the city: if you want to achieve city objectives, i.e. increasing the width of sidewalks, because [Lansdowne's] were substandard, smaller than normal; if you want to put [in] bike lanes. We talk about doubling the tree count—not 10% more, not 20%...doubling. If you're going to double the tree count you can't just plant them in parks and ravines, you have to make tough decisions like this. Those factors combined with the fact that the parking issue wasn't as big of a concern—they had over 200 spots for something like 100 permits, so even after this, there remains 40% more spots than there are parking permits. Does that mean there is less parking than there was before the narrowing? Yes—but it's a balance here.
It seems as if he's saying bike lanes will be put in on Lansdowne, when actually the driving lanes will be widened which will still better accommodate cyclists.
On balancing who gets a say on what happens on major streets like Lansdowne:
And so, people have a right to object to how the city is doing things, but on a major street like Lansdowne, imagine the converse—[if] only people on that block get to decide. Well, hold on a second: does that mean that on Bloor Street, between, say, Bathurst and Spadina in the Annex, if all the residents get together and they say, "we'd like to close Bloor Street permanently" [and] everybody agrees, are we as a city prepared to do that? I don't know. Interesting pedestrianization of Bloor Street, and I'm sure there'd be people who'd be very excited abut that, but I'm not sure that it's only up to them to decide on a major street, and Lansdowne is a major street.
And on how we can look forward to more fights over space between cars, parking and bikes:
So we have to make some tough decisions. The whole issue about Dundas, over out in Etobicoke with [Councillor] Peter Milczyn [and bike lanes on Kipling]...these are really just the beginning. We have made all the easy choices. We've put trees or we are going to put trees in the easy locations. Why not put them there? There's grass; we'll put a tree. We put the bike lanes in the easy parts. Now we have difficult decisions to make, and Lansdowne is going to be symptomatic—if we say we're going to complete the bike plan by 2012, which the mayor has reiterated, it's happening. If you look at community council there are more bike lanes coming than have happened over the last couple of years. If that's going to happen, you're going to see a lot more fights like Lansdowne, which are going to be fundamental fights: room for cars and parking versus room for bikes...let alone the trees, which is a whole other issue.
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