The NCC bubble

In connection, I suppose, with the uncomfortable 'failure to get it together' of the intersection I just posted about, I was surprised to discover today, via a blog post by the Citizen's David Reevely, that it was the NCC that originally decided to build roads along all the city's waterways, which cut them off to non-motorized traffic. And here I've been singing their praises for the path network that runs along those same waterways... until you need to get off and get back onto the streets. (According to the history I can find on the NCC website, though, that was all back in the fifties and sixties. When cars really did rule the earth.)

But this explains so much! The NCC has control of all the waterways (which is where the recreational paths are.) This makes the parkways - all 90 kilometres of them - kind of like the skin around the outside of the NCC bubble. Their network, in itself, is great. Contained and maintained. And if you're driving to one of the parking lots off the parkways, with your inline skates or bike or running shoes, to spend your time within the bubble, that's one thing. If you're ducking into the bubble for a bit on your way from one end of town to the other, that's another entirely.

But it was, after all, the sixties. When the automobile ruled the earth.