Once again, I'm scratching my head...

I came across an article on 2010 Ward 10 candidate Bernard Josipovic's 'Hamilton/Stoney Creek Community Blog', 'Residents still fuming over speeding on Fruitland Road'. (As it was written by Laura Lennie, I'm assuming that it was originally published in the Metroland family of community newspapers.)

I'm not going to wax either poetical, lyrical or accusational about the issue, but as I said, once again, I'm scratching my head. 

I've referenced this situation previously. Here...and here. 

I'm going to get right to the point: is the world we live in local governance-wise typified by the fact that even considering the notion of trying out a speed reduction on a road...something I point out would only add about twenty seconds to the average trucker's interlude...so arbitrary, so fixed, so recalcitrant that something as benign, something so simple as reducing speed from 50Km to 40Km (as on Lake Avenue in Stoney Creek)? Because if it is, then we're nowhere near the kind of city that should be boasting about much. 

Attracting investment isn't what makes a city great. And it's not the events its citizens put on, either. And even if I can concede that it helps when its officials are not only capable of executing good governance but do so with a competency that actually inspires residents, fills them with confidence and hope, it's not that either. 

To me what makes a great city is how it deals with what may seem to bureaucrats as insignificant issues, situations that often become annoyances, and therefore appear to get even less energies applied as time unfolds. 

To me it comes down to displaying and expressing humanity. 

A humane approach to governance. 

Aside from wondering why it is we're not trying a temporary speed reduction, I'm not here to lambaste anyone involved. I'm not here to harangue Ward 10 Councillor Pearson, nor the staff who have been addressing this situation from its hazy beginnings. 

I'm actually here to point how how vehicle-centric our mindset has become...and its impact on how we implement solutions...or don't implement them, as the case may be. 

There is a certain degree of the sacrosanct attached to being behind the wheel. I know, because I witness it every day, and because when I'm driving I accept that I'm subject to it as well. 

We get behind the wheel and we feel this stamp of approval from on-high, this invisible imprimatur that what's paramount is us getting to where we're going. 

And so we push the speed limit. 

And so we force our primacy as drivers, spreading our wings/marking our territory, affecting others who share the road: other drivers, cyclists, pedestrians. (Oh, the tales I could tell from years of being both on-foot and a superlative observer.)

And so we -unconsciously- believe that our mandate...to get to where we're going...makes other considerations null and void. (Yes, I'm pushing the envelope here.) 

To me, this is what 'the Fruitland Road issue' is all about. More than the exigencies of planning, of questionable assumptions on the parts of residents, more than even the obduracy of the often-referenced 'Culture of Obstructionism' within the bureaucracy of City Hall. 

To me, this is a fundamental quality of Life issue, but unfortunately, it's tied into our vehicular culture mindset, one whose default setting it 'protect the rights and needs of the driver'. 

The end solution for 'the Fruitland Road issue' isn't speed reduction. It's clearly tied into long-term development plans that go well beyond the comparatively small number (in relation to the general Fruitland Road-vicinity population, both current and certainly projected) of residents for whom this issue has generated such angst and frustration. 

A great city is capable of understanding its situations, especially the seemingly-insignificant ones, leaving its ego out of it, and remembering that a city is the sum-total of its communities, its neighbourhoods...its families. 

Or as my father has long reminded me, 'How can I trust you with the big tasks unless you can handle the tiny ones...?'