rbt
Senior Member
Don't you love it when some earnest young fellow, maybe not even old enough to vote, takes time out of his busy day to explain the ways of the world as he knows them to be. I am patient and grateful for his efforts but unlike him I have been here before, several times.
My two oldest children are now in their fifties and do you know what, they knew everything you know 30 years before you were born and were not the least bit shy about sharing their prescient insights with their good old Dad in a gentle but condescending manner.
Right, individuals change as they age. That doesn't mean they made the wrong choice when they were younger; they simply made different choices. The preaching probably wasn't necessary though.
That said, you must also be aware that there are and will always be others who are younger than their fifties who replaced your former 30 year old kids and may want to have that lifestyle for a decade or two; and when those people hit their fifties they too will be replaced by others who are younger who may want that lifestyle.
Infrastructure should cater to everybody using it, and that includes considering today's 10 to 15 year olds who will be 20 to 25 by the time Eglinton is done. Given the trends for downtown, there ought to be a very large number of 20 to 35 year olds living in the area at that time.
From a selfish point of view (and I don't ride a bike), I like cyclists because they keep the tax bills low. Moving a cyclist takes 1/10th the resources of a car driver and those are taxes I don't need to pay for roadway/parking/transit expansion. Really, cyclists are incredibly cheap to the city. Pedestrians are much the same.
Anything the city can do to move that modal split even 5% toward cycling and walking will save me thousands of dollars over my lifetime.
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