Delivery delays
Posted by Dalton48 on 23 May 2007 at 07:54 am | Tagged as: Current Events, Toronto
The general idea here seems worth considering, but the hours strike me as very impractical. Fresh food gets delivered in the morning, and is it reasonable or desirable to expect everyone to be there to receive it before 7 am? The idea that 7-8 am is actually rush hour *downtown* also strikes me as hyperbolic. Major Mac might be filling up, but the streets and the subway are lightly occupied.
I’m entertained by this quote from Glen Stone of the Toronto Board of Trade:
“There already are many traffic restrictions on downtown streets and the police do a pretty thorough enforcement job,” he told the Star.
Where is this fantasy world where traffic laws are actually enforced?
I’m sure the delivery drivers and receiving clerks who would be affected by this will all be ecstatic about the prospect of moving from days to midnights on a permanent basis.
I worked midnights for a total of about four weeks while working for Revenue Canada. Yech.
The other thing that occurred to me after I’d had more coffee is — why free up the streets for rush hour commuters, again? Why would anyone change their choice of transportation if it becomes *easier* to enter the city core during peak times?
I don’t know… I think Manhattan may actually be *more* navigable by car than Toronto’s downtown core, yet that doesn’t seem to discourage people from using transit.
I think I’ve probably gone into this before, but I’m somewhat suspicious of the view that degrading automobile performance is good way of attracting people to transit, especially in the case of Toronto’s pre-WW2 core where (1) our public transit infrastructure is inadequate and (2) there are lots of car-friendly alternatives outside the pre-WW2 core.