To the editor,
Re: Let’s try to make downtown car-free more often, Opinion, March 6.
The guest columnist is an idealist.
Yes, in my dreams it would be nice to have downtown just for citizens to walk – and not trip over garbage or those doing drugs or begging for money. But that is the case.
Nanaimo does not have the population to head downtown or the tourists to flush out the bad daily, especially not after night-time sets in. There will be tarps and tents and sleeping bags – and fires. The columnist has obviously not seen the unsavoury behaviour or he would not suggest such utopia. Closing Commercial Street works for a day, maybe two during the summer and the night market but not every day, not 24 hours a day and definitely not all the time.
It’s good to wake up from an ambitious, happy, conceptualized vision – leave the confines and safe environment of a highly taxpayer-funded university classroom and really look and see what a mess our downtowns are in courtesy of failed government experiments. Victoria also needs to come to terms and realize utopia does not come from tapping your heels together.
Ben Vries, Nanaimo
OPINION: Downtown Nanaimo could be car-free more often
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