Glebe Hipsters Want Their LRT Tunnel, Too
You know you can’t have an alt neighbourhood without your own subway. Cars and buses are so 10 minutes ago.
Westboro is getting its LRT. Now the Glebinstas want to know why they can’t have one, too. Yes, Generation Entitlement must keep up with the trendoids in Westboro.
Tweep in trauma.
Hate to break this to you but the only people talking about a Bank Street subway are the denizens of Glebetopia. But if you think the whole world is the Glebe, well, then everyone is talking about it. Cool.
Have we not spent $6.4 billion on light rail already? And it doesn’t work. You really want to be part of that Ford Pinto?
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And isn’t the City of Ottawa about to or has poured in, ridiculously, about a half-billion into Lansdowne which, if memory serves correctly, is in the Glebe? OK, its patios don’t have the same chi-chi as Bank Street but sometimes you just have to make do. You remember … make do is when you had to settle for the BMW rather than the Mercedes. Traumatic but you lived.
The city can’t afford to get the current line, if it worked, to Barrhaven and Kanata to serve the great unwashed out there and you want more money spent on the Glebe?
And traffic? You say there’s traffic on Bank Street? Who knew? That must be something new. Bank Street couldn’t have been a snarl when you moved in.
Furthermore, you’re a 15-minute neighbourhood … maybe a five-minute neighbourhood (though there are places in the rugged outback of the Glebe where it takes 20-minutes to get a latte. The humanity. But city planning will fix that).
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No, sorry, your agent will not be supporting a subway down Bank Street anytime soon. And after anytime soon, I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter. Do what you want.
We’ve spent quite enough, thank you, on light rail and made fools of ourselves in the process. It’s not that light rail is not a good idea, but our city tall foreheads got the Vimy Memorial Bridge wrong, the Hurdman Bridge wrong and the Airport Parkway pedestrian bridge wrong. How pedestrian. Bridges are known technology. So is it a surprise that the light rail didn’t work? Nah.
When your agent heard that the city would be responsible for building LRT, all I could say was “uh-oh.”
Imagine what the staffers could do with the Bank Street subway? And if the Glebinistas really want a subway, perhaps they could cut back on the leather, designer denim, $500 boots and get rid of the BMW and slum it in a Corolla. People do that … really. Save the cash from those great sacrifices and you’ve got the tunnel dug. Dig it?
Tweepsanity sort of in the same thread as the first tweet.
Next tweet.
No, you can’t be saying that. You can’t throw a brick in this town without hitting the federal government.
How federal government is Ottawa? Take the Rideau Canal. There’s a government project (the British government but that’s ok) that predates Ottawa. Talk about civic public works before there was even a city.
Go to Winnipeg sometime … in comparison. You won’t find the federal government handing out money for the National Arts Centre Orchestra or the National Gallery of Canada. But you’ll find the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. How did that happen?
Sorry Ottawa’s plenty nice for a quiet, often-civilized country.
Why waste more money?
Ken Gray
Digital image on front created by AI generator Craiyon.
Imagine the Hooterville Cannonball underground and you’ve got the Bank Street Subway.
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Dear Ken,
My goodness, what DID you have for breakfast that makes you so curmudgeonly this morning? In my memory, it was Glebe activists who saved the Aberdeen Pavilion from developer bulldozers, who fought long and hard AGAINST the failing Lansdowne 1.0 and now are rallying strongly once more against 2.0. You are witty as well as acerbic, but really . . . sounds a little like Glebe Envy to me. (No I don’t live in the Glebe, but did decades ago.)
Val:
No Glebe envy here. I had an option to live there or Westboro and chose Westboro 22 years ago.
Westboro was a good choice then but a terrible option now.
What was once a wonderful old neighbourhood has been destroyed by jackhammers and posers.
cheers
kgray
The story goes that when Marie Antoinette was told the peasants had no bread to eat she responded by saying “let them eat cake”. I believe this scenario can be applied to those in the Glebe who feel they need a subway. “Let them move to Toronto”.
Val, I think it is fair to question the true motivations of the Glebe activists re Lansdowne. Was their primary goal to get a city building opportunity “right” or to influence what was about to happen to their “backyard”?
Which segues into their current demand. Is the primary reason for their wanting a subway under Bank Street to allow them to drive into and out of the Glebe without having to stare at an endless line of tail lights in front of them. Drive, as in use one of the multiple personal use vehicles parked in their driveways. Drive, as in what many of the central neighbourhood activists criticize those who live in the outer ‘burbs of doing.
No right answer to these questions, as every answer is but an opinion.
Like most cynics, I prefer the term realist.