LETTER

The City doesn’t care about Aylmerites

 

What is the number one complaint from people living in Aylmer? I bet "traffic" or “the commute" lands in your top 3. Friday, November 4th, was a perfect illustration of our city's complete disregard for our traffic problems and, subsequently, the affect it has on our quality of life. The entire city was clogged in traffic this morning because one set of lights was out, at the corner of Lucerne and Pont Champlain. How could these lights affect the entire city? How could cars and buses be stuck along Aylmer Road just outside of Dinty's because of flashing red lights so far away?  Well, we could launch a multi-year study into traffic patterns to get to the bottom of this, but I'll give you the answer for free: because everyone who lives in Aylmer travels east to go to school or work in the morning, and therefore passes through that intersection regardless of mode of transport.

We may wonder why and how a city could be structured in this way, and I have another insight to offer: it's due to the city's complete lack of planning and care for our infrastructure.

The city can promote biking and busing to solve our traffic problem, but they forget that biking is not feasible in the winter and we lack sidewalks along the bus corridor to bring people to and from their bus stops. And these arguments are no more than a distraction from the fact that the city continuously overburdens our neighbourhoods with high-density housing projects without adequate improvements to infrastructure.

Although we complain, our complaints never reach the ears of the decision-makers. So we’ll live out our lives in a poorly planned city until some miracle solves our problems because, and this is the cold hard truth, the city will continue to ignore our needs, since fixing the problem would cost them too dearly, and the housing brings in too much revenue for them to turn it down.

Nesma Etoubashi
Aylmer