Full Court Press Against New Urbanisms' Complete Streets Underway across North America

For example:

"Sick of congestion? Build roads, not transit"
The Globe and Mail - Dec. 26 2013 -
- by Brian Lee Crowley

As noted in a post here earlier, representatives of the dinosaur industrial economic sectors are gearing up to paint the Bicycle as the source of all evil in a campaign focused squarely at New Urbanisms' progress in City Planning via Complete Streets thinking that is slowly winning over voters with their proposed switch away from the inefficient car mode of transportation as we continue to renew the aging transportation infrastructure of our North American Cities.

Image (toronto traffic) via: TorontoToday | Traffic gridlock stymies growth | http://www.torontotoday.org/economy.php

Here's the fairly weak nut of the Globe story, written by the Managing Director of the "Macdonald-Laurier Institute" - as Wikipedia says - 'a right-leaning public policy think tank' out of Ottawa:

".. Phoenix, for example, had the 10th worse congestion among major urban areas in the U.S., despite being only 35th in population. It has more than doubled in size in the ensuing decades (it is now the 12th largest urban area in the U.S.), but its traffic congestion has fallen to 37th."

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The argument doesn't stand just a little reflection. Phoenix has just exploded in size and this expansion began to level out just as the Financial Collapse of 2008 hit. So yes --- their extensive road building program - plus the ensuing economic downturn - has not *yet* resulted in the congestion predicted by New Urbanisms' 'Build it and they will come' central plank.

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The Globe and Mail - Dec. 26 2013 - "Sick of congestion? Build roads, not transit" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/sick-of-congestion-build-roads-not-transit/article16107135/

Thread at Facebook Group, City of Toronto Cycling (noted in the first paragraph above) was a discussion about an approaching, 'War on the Bicycle' which began with a link to an article from the Boston Globe - December 15, 2013:  

"Conservatives’ new enemy: Bikes"
The bicycle is emerging as a new conservative front in the culture wars.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2013/12/15/conservatives-new-enemy-bikes/NoLMjnocHg28jZ4hw3F4oI/story.html



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(Originally posted at Facebook Group, City of Toronto Cycling: https://www.facebook.com/groups/140997182582942/permalink/795066257176028/)