50 min

Scott Radley on Hamilton's Looming Gridlock The 905er Podcast

    • Politics

A few weeks ago, Hamilton City Council voted to redesign its major street running into its downtown core.
The new plan is to essentially divide Main St, a one-way six-lane wide boulevard running through the middle of its downtown into a two-way street, despite concerns from city staff that this would create a problem with traffic, leading to congestion. Their concern is that this move will limit the ability to travel down and through the downtown. Is this a pointless and ultimately futile move on the part of Hamilton City Council? Or is this a brave decision to take steps to transform a decaying downtown into a vibrant pedestrian and people-friendly place to live, work and play?
One person who is highly critical of Hamilton City Council's decision is Hamilton Spectator columnist Scott Radley. His opinion piece criticizing the council's decision caught our eye and so we invited him to share his opinion in-depth and see if we were wrong in our approval of the city council's decision. What happened was a great conversation with two sides of the topic on how best to revitalize and improve one of Canada's most important cities. Did either side win? Not sure, but some great ideas hopefully popped out for you to listen to. This is how these debates are supposed to go, isn't it?
Scott's Column in The Spec
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A few weeks ago, Hamilton City Council voted to redesign its major street running into its downtown core.
The new plan is to essentially divide Main St, a one-way six-lane wide boulevard running through the middle of its downtown into a two-way street, despite concerns from city staff that this would create a problem with traffic, leading to congestion. Their concern is that this move will limit the ability to travel down and through the downtown. Is this a pointless and ultimately futile move on the part of Hamilton City Council? Or is this a brave decision to take steps to transform a decaying downtown into a vibrant pedestrian and people-friendly place to live, work and play?
One person who is highly critical of Hamilton City Council's decision is Hamilton Spectator columnist Scott Radley. His opinion piece criticizing the council's decision caught our eye and so we invited him to share his opinion in-depth and see if we were wrong in our approval of the city council's decision. What happened was a great conversation with two sides of the topic on how best to revitalize and improve one of Canada's most important cities. Did either side win? Not sure, but some great ideas hopefully popped out for you to listen to. This is how these debates are supposed to go, isn't it?
Scott's Column in The Spec
It takes money and time to do this podcast. We love doing what we do, but please consider supporting us if you can so we can keep improving, and keep paying the bills.
You can become a monthly or yearly patron on our website at 905er.ca. We didn’t like sharing your generosity with that other ‘patron’ website, so we created our patron system. Become a patron, get member benefits and our eternal gratitude, and know that you’re not mainly funding some crummy web company in the US. Win-win!
Or, why not buy us a coffee?
Nicholas Paul: sound editing.
The Quadrafonics: fantastic opening and closing tunes!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

50 min