There are 4 problems here that I identify, and possibly some sub categories.
1. Doug Ford. Why can we not attract some talent and innovation to such an important position as Premier of this Province?
2. The North American infatuation with the car and seeing beyond that.
3. Moving people a) into and out of Toronto (and to a lesser extent neighbouring municipalities) and b) through Toronto (GTA) to outlying destinations.
4. Moving goods and services a) into and out of Toronto (and certainly neighbouring municipalities such as Vaughn. Caledon, Brampton etc) and b) through Toronto and the GTA to other destinations.
The answer to 1 is not obvious. But for whatever reason (remuneration, party politics, the parliamentary system), we do not seem to attract leaders that can ignore the political hacks and lobby groups (read the developer infrastructure for instance) to chart new courses in areas as diverse as education, medicine, transportation, housing etc. When presenting such a proposal as Ford has now done has a higher priority then retaining nurses with adequate wages (as opposed to paying ransom amounts for agency nurses to fill holes in your local hospital staffing schedules), or vastly improving emergency room services, or presenting workable solutions that equate to shovels in the ground affordable housing in quantities needed........then i believe your Number 1 is completely inadequate to the task at hand.
2. requires a better number 1. The NAM infatuation with 1 person, 1 car, unlimited speed, more HP, easy access every wherre needs to be broken. Pedestrian first (and I include bicycles with this). Neighbourhood first. Transit first (in its many modes and iterations). Commercial and supply services a strong second. And cars are third. Still an important transit option, but one with a lesser priority and importance in many non-rural areas, and certainly in designated congestion areas (such as anything east of the Humber, west of the Don, south of the 401...) or on routes better services by higher capacity, higher speed, higher frequency forms of transit.
3 requires and needs the potential expenditure of billions in tunnel building to be redirected into maintaining and improving what transit options exists, and then adding more capacities, more routes, more connections. And doing so with a development speed exceeding what we are experiencing today Certainly within Toronto and then the GTA. But also the traditional 'corridor' areas from east to west. And we need to break the habit of building transit after we reach certain population densities. We need to build transit at the same time as densities are building (as in why is the Dundas BRT waiting for 'optimum' densities to be achieved - start building it now and attract density to the served communities that want to take advantage of the service in use, not the one that will show up in 20 years).
And then 4. And I think 4 is one of the harder nuts to crack. How do we more effectively move goods and services throughout Toronto and the GTA? This is almost all surface truck based transit currently. And how do we move goods and services through Toronto and the GTA to other destinations? Although the railways play a part (and you could wish and wonder why they seem incapable of innovating and capturing more of that market share), once again trucks play a huge role. Perhaps "The Coming Disruption of Transport' will give us some clues. but I believe this is also a very important and tough question to deal with, and one that's adding expense to every local shopping trip you make for consumables, entertainment etc, etc etc in the GTA.
Building a 100 km tunnel, 8 lanes wide is not going to fix this. But having better Number 1's would be a start. Doug Fords announcement should not be a surprise and plays to type certainly. Or an election is coming (Is he worried about Crombie, and is she a better choice?). Still, disappointing and shows the hill still to be climbed to change this political thinking.
Over coffee this morning (I am here in Montreal again)the Ford announcement was a topic of discussion, with some merriment, and a warning....wait until you have to repair it! Transit times through the tunnel here, across the river (under long term repair) have easily doubled. A trip we once took from shore to shore by car, which was about 30-40 minutes, was now easily double that. So we went by boat.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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