Street networks tend to be pretty sticky. Meaning, they tend not to change very much, or at all, over time. We have spoken about this before, over the years.

A good example of this is Broadway in Manhattan. Broadway is a world-famous street. And it's perhaps no coincidence that it's also the only street that runs the full length of Manhattan and breaks across the city's regular street grid.

The exact reasons for this are somewhat nuanced. And for a more fulsome backstory, I recommend you watch Daniel Steiner's recent video on the topic (embedded above).

It is alleged that Broadway started out as the Wickquasgeck trail. Meaning it pre-dates the arrival of Europeans to the island. But regardless, we know that it came before New York's famed Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which is the plan that gave the city its grid.

So it would appear that, sometimes, even the most rational of plans can be no match for something even stronger: a street that already exists.

This morning I stumbled upon an interesting Medium article talking about the need for an all-day two-way urban rail service between Toronto and Waterloo. 

The argument is that along this corridor sits a technology ecosystem that is second in size only to San Francisco-Silicon Valley and that current connectivity levels represent a missed opportunity of epic proportions. Presently this rail service will feed you into Toronto during the morning rush hour and take you back out in the evening rush hour. But that’s it.

According to this report prepared by the City of Kitchener (which is beside Waterloo), efficient train service would stitch together an ecosystem of approximately 12,800 technology companies, 2,800 startups, and 205,000 technology employees. It would also connect 6 universities and 4 colleges, many of which are ranked top in the world.

There’s an argument here that this is exactly the sort of thing that governments should be doing to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. Rather than trying to be heavily involved in actual startups, they should be creating an environment that maximizes output and then getting out of the way. 

I think this makes a lot of sense. Don’t you?

Image: The Innovation Express