Field Theory: Fight Club
35 Responses
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Biobbs, in reply to
The key to the great hate of oneway is that they effectively bypass whatever they go through. Where as a normal two way street has a cross pollination and assists in the creation of a neighbourhood.
I never found that to be the case in Christchurch though. If I was needing to get through town quickly they were a godsend, but at the same time they were still comfortable and easy to negotiate and fed logically to most destinations if I was going somewhere in town. Maybe they start to be nasty and impersonal in bigger cities if you start getting four or five lanes wide, but ours were still only two lanes and most of the one-way streets were human-sized and human-scaled. Actually, they were often easier to cross as a pedestrian than the two-way streets, because the traffic was in waves and there were more gaps. Durham St especially was like that.
I cannot understand why they want to make this expensive decision now, when whatever money is available should be going to help people who've lost their homes. It seems totally premature when we haven't even finished the discussion about what the city centre should end up looking like.
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Sacha, in reply to
when we haven't even finished the discussion about what the city centre should end up looking like
Gerry will decide for you.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
I cannot understand why they want to make this expensive decision now, when whatever money is available should be going to help people who’ve lost their homes.
Yeah. I'm fairly agnostic on whether we end up with one-way or not (and I use it a LOT so I'll end up having a strong opinion) but as a priority, at that price, when we haven't really any idea what our inner city will look like- or indeed, if and when we'll have on at all? Gawd help us.
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
Gerry will decide for you.
Gerry-built...
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Sacha, in reply to
Gerry-built
Brilliant. You could build a good campaign around that. Tilt-slab wasteland, etc.
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Two-way streets are seen as so clearly a Good Idea it doesn't make sense for them not to start from that point. Hardly a Gerry-ism, it's being pushed from the urban planning side of the council.
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Sacha, in reply to
it's being pushed from the urban planning side of the council
that particular aspect seems professionally uncontroversial, yes.
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Biobbs, in reply to
Gerry will decide for you.
Gerry-built...
Gerry-mandered. Don't you worry about that, son.
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Lucy Stewart, in reply to
I never found that to be the case in Christchurch though. If I was needing to get through town quickly they were a godsend, but at the same time they were still comfortable and easy to negotiate and fed logically to most destinations if I was going somewhere in town.
There was a bit of a learning curve if you were new to town, though - I can understand that putting people off. Once you got down the pattern of north/south east/west direction, they were great. The only occasional hiccup was trying to get street parking - it wasn't always easy to go 'round the block.
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This is comment is a little late, but perhaps still an interesting tale. I had a very similar experience to the author's about 10 years ago. Except I was paying attention to the traffic and along with two other friends was crossing Taranaki St, on a green cross signal when a large European convertible ripped round the corner missing us by centimetres. The driver was talking on a mobile phone and I yelled at him something to the effect of "get off the effing phone and try driving". As I walked on with my companions the car screeched to a halt the driver jumped out and started after me hurling abuse and threatening violent retrobution. I pointed out that he had nearly run us over which seemed to antagonise him more and he instructed me to get back there so we could settle it in a physical fashion. I waved him off and left him going ape shit on the pavement. That's not to say I wasn't massively wound up, just uninterested in physical confrontation with someone because they nearly ran me over.
I discovered later that he was a quite well known property developer (and laterly TV 'personality' and football uberfan) who has since fallen on hard times. I figured at the time he'd probably done too much coke that day.
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