Narrow Lansdowne
Lansdowne is due for a makeover. A lane of car parking is being taken out; the sidewalk widened; the main drive lanes widened; bike lanes being put in between Bloor and Davenport; and a boulevard of trees put in. And the residents are up in arms. Their message: never, ever touch our precious parking.
I ride Lansdowne a lot. It sucks. The lanes are incredibly narrow for such high traffic - there is no easy escape from the car doors. The road bed is a mess of potholes that have sprouted along the buried streetcar line that you can sometimes see visible through the holes. (Once upon a time the streetcar came down from St. Clair in the steepest and tightest turn in the city.) Plus sections of Lansdowne look decrepit and lonely with a lack of trees.
The proposed roadwork will solve all the main issues of Lansdowne, and may even bring up some property values in the area. What the residents are calling "narrowing" is not something random and capricious: it is a way of rebalancing the space on the street to accommodate the real uses by cyclists, pedestrians, and even cars driving through. And all it means is a few people lose their parking.
I ask the residents to just start using their back alley parking again and get over it - we don't need to sacrifice our safety just so you get prime car parking.
You can read the staff report (pdf), and tell Giambrone you think he's doing a good thing (that is if you agree with me).
Comments
luiga (not verified)
Herb, Joe,
Fri, 06/22/2007 - 16:51Both of you are refering to the city's report as if it were the gospel truth. I have yet to see anything from either of you that indicates you have bothered to verify any information in that report.
Do you have any intention in doing some background work on this? or are you just going to keep referencing the same thing?
You say you use the road, well when are you going to get off your bike's and start knocking on some doors? And when do you think you'll be making some phone calls?
This is not personal to Adam, if any other councillor had behaved the way that Adam has towards the people of this community, they would be recieving the same opposition. Quite frankly I'm saddened that it is Adam. (yes herb and joe, I voted for him also)
You don't have to keep defending or advocating for him. Thats great you support him. That does not exempt him from being accountable. Accountability means being willing to accept responsibility, ignoring people because they are raising opposition is not accountability. It sends the message that you don't care. A community is made up of individuals, and when one of those individuals is a 76yr old, 5ft, maybe 90lbs Portuguese woman, who is the primary care giver of her 40yr old disabled son, and these are the people he's chosen to ignore. Minimally I'd say thats disturbing.
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