kamira51
Active Member
You can still build a four lane freeway without causing sprawl.
And a reminder that most of ontario has no transit, so what other options do they have?
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And a reminder that most of ontario has no transit, so what other options do they have?
Fritter
Active Member
I do take issue with certain people with attitudes like "driving a personal vehicle is evil" while also having opinions that there is not enough population to run rail or bus service to X.
That seems to suggest that if you live in small town/minor city Ontario, your only freedom to travel is to walk or use a bicycle.
Towered
Superstar
Building more transit, and transit-oriented developments?
DirectionNorth
Active Member
I'm not attacking people in low-population areas, I'm attacking sprawl and the freeway that will serve it. Very few rural communities in this area, and it's not like they can't drive.
ARG1
Senior Member
So is sprawl and developing our green land good or bad?
crs1026
Superstar
Highway 413: the anti-green, mean sprawl machine
Doug Ford's antiquated view of progress will destroy prime agricultural land and promote unbridled sprawl. Instead, Ford should re-direct the $10 billion going to Highway 413 to create well-paying green jobs that will create economic vitality while preserving land and lowering environmental and...rabble.ca
This is another perfect example of these environmentalists thinking that stopping the highway will stop sprawl in those regions.
They are so delusional, it makes my head hurt, like do they not understand that development will happen with or without the highway, and most of the land is already owned by developers or for sale.
Well, if we are willing to consider draconian solutions, how about….. as of this moment, anything that still has topsoil on it must remain farmland.
Now, let’s task the 905 with having to rezone to manage all growth through infill.
And let’s review how infrastructure and services can be relocated to minimise long trips. Why is the school on one side of a community and the rec center and library somewhere else? Why aren’t kids attending their local public school instead of being driven across town every day?
- Paul
- Paul
ARG1
Senior Member
May I ask which kids drive across town to go to school?
The only situations I can think of where this would happen are:
A) The child goes to a gifted program,
B) The child goes to a special school like French Immersion, or
C) The child goes is signed up to the Catholic School Board and somehow manages to live far from any Catholic Schools (which even then this isn't really that common, Catholic Schools are everywhere).
Granted, kids are generally allowed to apply for any school they wish within their region, but situations where a child lives far away from their school are extremely rare, and only really happens (apart from the above cases) is if the child used to live close to the school, moved, and didn't want to change schools and leave their friends behind.
P.S. I grew up in York Region, so this is coming from the perspective of someone who went through k-12 in Sprawl Central.
wopchop
Building Toronto
They are not rare. Drive to any area with lots of new developments, and you will see signs from TDSB, TCDSB, etc. saying that students will be bused to other districts. The Province continues to fail to provide adequate infrastructure to support new developments, except if they are subdivisions, which are almost always built with schools.
innsertnamehere
Superstar
It's only really Toronto that struggles with this because of how development charge by-laws have to be written. If a school board has excess student capacity anywhere in it's system, it's not allowed to collect development charges for new school construction. Toronto has lots of empty schools in Scarborough and Etobicoke, and thus cannot collect funds to build new ones in growth areas, so has to get creative to get funding. So the kids have to get bussed to Scarborough to fill those empty schools instead.
Meanwhile suburban municipalities do not have excess school capacity., and are allowed to collect development charges to build new ones. So every new subdivision gets a school.
wopchop
Building Toronto
This seems eminently unfair considering Peel and Halton have both closed and /or amalgamated many schools in the older neighborhoods south of the QEW. That would certainly skew "excess capacity"
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EnviroTO
Senior Member
It has been well proven that freeways move development from the core areas to the suburban fringes. If transportation to a site isn't good the property doesn't sell as easily. When commercial real estate people say "Location, Location, Location" they don't mean anywhere is good enough. The reason Pickering and points east haven't developed as quickly as points west is related to ease of access from downtown. If 404 had been built before the 400 and the Scarborough Freeway had been built the shape of the urban boundary would be totally different.
So yes, I disagree with the sentiment that it is happening anyways therefore we should support it argument. Doing so turns something happening slowly into a something happening fast. It is like saying people are stealing so we may as well make it easy. That turns something perhaps manageable into something unmanageable.
So yes, I disagree with the sentiment that it is happening anyways therefore we should support it argument. Doing so turns something happening slowly into a something happening fast. It is like saying people are stealing so we may as well make it easy. That turns something perhaps manageable into something unmanageable.
kamira51
Active Member
Until we start building new railroad corridors in car dependent regions, people will still continue to buy cars, and plug up local roads.
Here's a food for thought, how about the municipal governments ban farmers from selling land to developers or even selling the land at all, that's one way to stopping sprawl.
ARG1
Senior Member
You don't even have to do that. Zoning laws exist that can prevent developers from building subdivisions. People who are anti-highway are always barking up the wrong tree when it comes to this, because at the end of the day, every new development, either a subdivision or condo tower, has to be approved by the local government. You can build a massive network of highways, but if no subdivisions are approved, no suburbs are built. Saying that we should stop building highways to avoid sprawl is like saying we should get rid of the stove to avoid house fires. Its not really attacking the root of the problem.
DirectionNorth
Active Member
Again, highways are a significant factor in attracting sprawl. Certainly, a highway will not reduce sprawl in the area.
Unlike a stove, highways don't really have benefits for the province: more road congestion, pollution, and suburbanization is not really a benefit. Not even at the optimistic $4 billion estimate. Again, without sprawl, we wouldn't really need this highway - a cheaper (and well designed) arterial would do (and cost less). What's the Newmarket - Bolton and Brampton - Newmarket demand?
ARG1
Senior Member
Again, that doesn't matter if you know how to control it. As for the GTA, the biggest contributor to sprawl isn't highways, its the massive housing shortage we currently have. The reason why we're still constantly seeing new developments and sprawl in places like Caledon and Stouffville which aren't close to Highways at all is because municipalities are using the opportunity to sell off land and make housing money - capitalizing on the high demand, with the only housing method they know how.
More road congestion and pollution is only a result of induced demand, which occurs with suburbanization. If you cut out suburbanization, then traffic doesn't go up and you reduce congestion which reduces idling, which guess what? Reduces pollution. The real answer to the 413 is to heavily increase the greenbelt around the highway, or at least introduce a new railline like the Bolton Line that will allow for better uses of the highway rather than just commuting, and considering how the stated goal of the 413 is to be mainly used as a Truck Bypass, such policies will help reach that goal easily.