idioms and idiots

Friday, October 27, 2006

City Coffers Depleted...Wait, WHAT?

Apparently, there are no more funds available for minor city projects like roadway facelifts to get rid of those Quebec-proportioned potholes and nasty broken sidewalks. Why? i don't know; could it maybe be that we are wasting taxpayer money on useless, frustrating and often retroactive projects? Traffic Calming? Yeah right! Driving through Mount Royal, Elbow Park and even just down Landsdown Ave, I am no more calm than i would be driving through city streets in Rome in a Hummer. And not the new I-wish-I-Could-Be-Environmentaly-Friendly H3 either. I might be mistaken but claustrophobia inducing roadspaces are stressfull to many Calgarians. The best part of this fandango we call city planning and traffic calming is that many of the projects being realised frustrate the drivers passing through those areas and consequentially encourage more traffic violations. Busses can't get through the so-called Traffic "circles" in the southwest causing even more discontentment and tardiness amongst the people on the busses. Don't even get me started on the pollutants excreted by our many sports cars, SUVs and trucks while they loiter in the permanent parking lots recently made of city streets. Lets try not Calming traffic, lets get the traffic flowing quickly and efficiently without bothering with projects that we're going to have to pay to reverse in four years anyway. Lets not narrow roadways now that there are 20 000 more people in this city than there were 10 years ago, lets not make traffic circles that no one knows how to use anyway, and lets not pour more funds into badly thought out roadway projects!