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- Thread starter innsertnamehere
- Start date
zang
Senior Member
A wonderful piece of reactive tripe that has zero basis in reality.
"Taxpayers never asked for high-speed rail service between Toronto and Quebec City, but the government is determined to impose it on the population anyway."
Sure, buddy. No one ever asked for this.
Adjei
Senior Member
What a bunch of nonsense. You could say that about any infrastructure project in this country if you wanted to.
Jonathan's Junction
New Member
Uhhhhh, they have for many decades! Almost anyone you ask in Toronto would think it's a great idea to be able to get to Ottawa or Montreal that fast.
Urban Sky
Senior Member
It is a poor attempt to phrase a very valid concern: that local folks are expected by (overwhelmingly) metropolitan folks to sacrifize some of their lands for a project which is deliberately designed to provide close to zero benefits for their communities. If my job was to stir up local opposition, I would struggle to come up with a more effective strategy than ALTO’s threats that they will expropriate all required properties within months of revealing which ones they want to take, while doubling down on insisting that there absolutely won’t be any rural (or even semi-rural) stops along the route. The rural folks are just mirroring the utter contempt they receive from ALTO so far. If this project dies in local opposition, ALTO won’t have anyone else than their own arrogance to blame…
McGillicuddy
Active Member
It's the BC ostriches all over again. Gonna have American podcasters flying north to record special episodes live on the scene.
facepalming_brooklynite
Active Member
It does bring benefits by reducing carbon emissions from trips that would otherwise be done by car or by air
crs1026
Superstar
The point of the exercise, which I think Alto is handling moderately well, is to draw out that opposition and measure its strength. Sometimes small groups can leverage and generate general public resistance, but sometimes they burn their powder and the resistance generated doesn't sway the result.
A major objective is to prevent the kind of lengthy, deep pocketed opposition in the courts - by demonstrating a detailed and comprehensive consultation. I do believe this part of the equation is being handled well. I don't hear major resistance from Indigenous officials, either - which would be a major derailer.
At a distance, the local resistance seems to come from the southern route and far less from the northern route. The resistance from the route is mostly from those who think their land will be expropriated. One might wonder why Alto is studying both routes..... the answer is, to generate real data and move the debate from a bunch of non-experts dialoging on social media (some of us may resemble that remark) to an empirical study with actual facts and professional analysis. Again, the point being to disarm and disprove anyone claiming that a fix is in and the route was chosen already without appropriate consultations.
(Would I personally bet money on the northern route being selected? Yup. But I am interested in seeing just how close the cost-benefit of the southern route comes when real data is used to make the differentiation.... it's certainly plausible from this bleacher and so it's important to dispell any what-if debate afterwards and minimise buyer's remorse)
I don't detect a major grassroots opposition to trains that use someone else's land. If one route is chosen, I do not expect a deeply funded, sustained group of activists lobbying to drop the whole project on grounds that trains are bad. There will certainly continue to be opposition from those actually affected. Even there, a certain number will pocket the generous land settlement and drop their opposition. The opposition parties will try to discredit the government in every way possible but I doubt they will stand up and declare that the project should be killed.
So far, I would not say the local opposition is winning the day. They are using their opportunity to advocate. That opportunity is legitimate and part of our process. But, on merit, they may not carry the day.
- Paul
A major objective is to prevent the kind of lengthy, deep pocketed opposition in the courts - by demonstrating a detailed and comprehensive consultation. I do believe this part of the equation is being handled well. I don't hear major resistance from Indigenous officials, either - which would be a major derailer.
At a distance, the local resistance seems to come from the southern route and far less from the northern route. The resistance from the route is mostly from those who think their land will be expropriated. One might wonder why Alto is studying both routes..... the answer is, to generate real data and move the debate from a bunch of non-experts dialoging on social media (some of us may resemble that remark) to an empirical study with actual facts and professional analysis. Again, the point being to disarm and disprove anyone claiming that a fix is in and the route was chosen already without appropriate consultations.
(Would I personally bet money on the northern route being selected? Yup. But I am interested in seeing just how close the cost-benefit of the southern route comes when real data is used to make the differentiation.... it's certainly plausible from this bleacher and so it's important to dispell any what-if debate afterwards and minimise buyer's remorse)
I don't detect a major grassroots opposition to trains that use someone else's land. If one route is chosen, I do not expect a deeply funded, sustained group of activists lobbying to drop the whole project on grounds that trains are bad. There will certainly continue to be opposition from those actually affected. Even there, a certain number will pocket the generous land settlement and drop their opposition. The opposition parties will try to discredit the government in every way possible but I doubt they will stand up and declare that the project should be killed.
So far, I would not say the local opposition is winning the day. They are using their opportunity to advocate. That opportunity is legitimate and part of our process. But, on merit, they may not carry the day.
- Paul
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micheal_can
Senior Member
I believe that had ALTO released better map of the options that had shown the line they were looking into, instead of the wide swath of land they were looking at, much of this protesting would not be happening. It would still be happening, but much less, and much more direct. The sentiment is something most that live in Northern ON have been experiencing their whole existence. Whether it is real or not,the perception is we work and pay our taxes and our resource royalties go to Toronto. A better thing to be doing is to show those areas things that they will get to compensate them.Are they getting a stop for a slower train? Are they going to get a new community center? Are they going to see their highways repaved sooner? Are any of the local highways going to get twinned? Are they going to see their taxes lowered? This is a lesson on better communication.
reaperexpress
Senior Member
Even the people being expropriated are not necessarily opponents. My grandfather had a strip of his land acquired by the State of Texas to widen the adjacent Interstate and he was happy about the whole affair because they gave him better than market rate for the land. Which makes sense, because it's much cheaper for the government to come to a sale agreement directly with the property owner rather than going through the long and expensive legal expropriation process, even if that sale is higher than market rate.
I would assume Alto is similar, where people who are nominally being "expropriated" are actually given a very generous offer, so it never actually comes down to the legal powers of expropriation for most properties.
My guess is the main opponents would be those who are near the alignment but not directly on it. Those people will have to endure the construction but aren't getting financially compensated for it.
micheal_can
Senior Member
The issue is, with the map ALTO released, those opponents are being unnecessarily triggered.
generalcanada
Senior Member
Every time this comes up, like with the ontario line, I feel like people dont understand expropriation. Even expropriation itself will always give more than fair compensation.
Its as if peoples default assumption is they take it without compensation.
Like if they knew they would be getting more than market compensation for even severed land, would they be as angry?
micheal_can
Senior Member
It depends. Let's say it is a farm. How do they access the other part of their land? What about forest tract? How does it affect the wildlife and aquatic life?
Let's flip this to a city focused thing - Let's say they were going to build the freeways through Toronto as planned on the surface. Now, think of all those cross streets no one thinks about. How would you get to the other side? How would you feel living a block from a freeway? It is not whether it should be done or not, but how it is communicated.
McGillicuddy
Active Member
If we're being kind, we have to acknowledge that people often experience emotional attachments to land that go way beyond its monetary value. In eastern Ontario, you'll find many cases where a plot of land has been in someone's family for six generations or even longer. But even when they've come by it more recently, when someone works a plot of land for 20 years, carving off a piece of it also means carving off a piece of their memories: it changes how they have to conceive of what remains, and it affects both their routine and their future possibilities. Then there are the people who, quite reasonably, may not want a noisy, dangerous eyesore right at their property line.
If we're being less kind, we can, of course, acknowledge that many people will play these concerns up for the specific purpose of extracting maximum value from the buyer. (Someone who has never lived on the property, hasn't visited it in 17 years, and didn't really have a relationship with their grandparents: "This land has been in my family for six generations! And when I think of my grandmother on that porch, her gingham dress flapping in the breeze, calling the cows in for supper...")
zang
Senior Member
I think some seem to have missed the sarcasm in my reaction to the opinion piece. It was full of exaggerations and bias. One of which I quoted.