The next Tea Party-cum-neoconservative target? Sustainable development, of course.
Or, if you’re in New York, maybe bike lanes.
Or in Vancouver, Tides.
In Toronto, it’s all about the “War on the Car.” Here’s a debate between the Ontario Environment Commissioner, Gord Miller, and journalist / auto enthusiast, David Menzies. Ostensible subject: road tolls. But it’s really about culture.
Menzies thinks it was lamentable that the Spadina Freeway (the equivalent of the proposed Chinatown Freeway in Vancouver) was stopped in the late 1960s.
It’s also perversely amusing that Gord looks dreamily at those cities that have curtailed car usage. To quote the Environmental Commissioner: “The Achilles’ heel of expanding road capacity is that it makes driving more attractive and encourages more of it. David, if you build it, they will come . . . and drive on it!”
Imagine that! People like driving cars!
And if that gets you down (plus trolling through the trolls on the various blogs), there’s this:
I personally loved how Gord Miller is citing all these studies (and why not its an internet debate, hail hyperlinks!) and David Menzies is spouting off taking good points and taking them to their illogical conclusions.
David Menzies: “Wow. Only in the Bizarro World in which Gord Miller resides would the cancellation of a major highway (Spadina Expressway) be hailed as a ‘win’.”
Considering that the Vancouverites seem to be quite happy that the Chinatown / waterfront freeways were never built, I guess we live in Bizarro World. I rather like it…