No sense in walking anywhere
We found ourselves off for one of those last minute madcap runs to pick up balloons. A fine exercise for a Sunday afternoon, despite certain doubts about the location of the “party store” amidst the chaos of road construction we live with.
Quebec City has decided to replace large sections of the infrastructure during this decade. After expanding in all directions, the time has come to repair the concrete and asphalt arteries, and for those that use cars to get around (almost everyone), delay is the rule. Still, on a Sunday… even when you are parked behind the idiot that insists on turning left (despite MANY indications that this move is prohibited, and a cacaphony of car horns), it’s evident that infrastructure is only part of the equation.
We made our run, before the city shut down for supper. And I had to accept that, in this city, you can’t walk from here to there for many things.
A bit of comparative geography. You could drop the island of Manhatten along the east-west axis of Quebec City. The river and the mountains wouldn’t crowd the edges at all. We have no real skyline (no real skyscrapers), and we have no real public transit. I accept, we don’t have a fraction of the population of the Apple either, but a subway would be fun.
We are the result of recent amalgamation, so this fails the test of one city, one sense of direction. Road names change, willy-nilly. And above all else, the car is king. I can’t picture walking from one end of town to the other, even though it’s not that long a trek. It’s just that the only way accepted to get from here to there involves a motorized exoskeleton.
