This is really about making more room for cars

Subject: Let's all agree to the obvious: This is really about making more room for cars.
DR. GRIDLOCK
Road plan isn't about carpools or buses, it's just making room for more cars

JEFF GRAY jgray@globeandmail.com Globe and Mail Mar. 10/08

Sixteenth Avenue, as I remember it, was in the late 1980s a charming two-lane county road, with mostly farmland - and real live cows - on one side, and on the other, the rapidly expanding world of two-car garages and front lawns, where my family lived.

While at least one of those farms is still there, 16th is now a wide-feeling four lanes - an ample buffer zone graces its middle in stretches - and a busy commuter artery, funnelling traffic to Highway 404.

It is lined mostly with the backyards of houses that are hidden away in twisty-street subdivisions, and passes parking lots, plazas and gas stations. It is sprawl in a nutshell:

Great for cars, if you aren't expecting too many of them and don't mind mild ugliness, and lousy for pedestrians, cyclists and public transit.

Now, 16th Avenue is on a list of a staggering number of York Region's main roads that regional chairman Bill Fisch wants to widen, in this case, making my onetime sleepy country road six or seven lanes across.

Mr. Fisch says the plan is about creating high-occupancy vehicle lanes for carpoolers and buses. But let's not kid ourselves. Public transit up here is still a fringe affair, despite recent advances thanks to the region's shiny, new Viva bus system. And any HOV lanes along these roads are either going to be unenforceable or only meant to be enforced in rush hours.

Let's all agree to the obvious: This is really about making more room for cars.

Armed with his HOV-Iane fig leaf, Mr. Fisch even recently scolded Toronto Mayor David Miller for refusing to match York Region's road-widenings on Toronto's roads south of Steeles Avenue.

Mr. Miller and Toronto's traffic planners, however, have concluded that widening roads is a short-term fix, and so is no fix at all. In just a few years sometimes mere months - the new lanes simply clog with more cars.

Even York Regionites, mostly a car-loving people, are rising up against the widening plans. The resistance has admittedly been driven by people who live along 16th Avenue and are not keen to have what will amount to a highway right next to their back-yards. A petition has been circulating, crowds have been packing political meetings, and Markham town council voted recently to ask York Region to consider other options.

"It seems like it's time to draw a line in the sand with regard to urban sprawl," said local resident Peter Miasek, a semi-retired environmental adviser to Imperial Oil, who has been spearheading efforts to stop the widening.

He acknowledges that for an hour in the morning, traffic on 16th Avenue is quite busy, and that it maybe takes five more minutes than it once did to zip across. But four-lane main arteries, with better public transit in the mix, seem to serve big, busy Toronto well, he observes: "We know that four-lane roads plus transit works, because south of Steeles, that's pretty much all you've got down there."

Markham Mayor Frank Scarpitti said the town has asked York Region to look at whether the various planned future improvements to public transit the Yonge subway extension, improved GO service - will take the pressure off the need to widen roads as the area continues its massive population growth. But in an interview, he seemed unwilling to go to the barricades to fight a wider 16th Avenue: "At the end of the day, though, we do need to solve the traffic problem."

York Region has referred Markham's request to its transportation department for further study.

Stephen Collins, who manages the roads branch of York Region's engineering transportation services department, provided a chart that shows that if current trends continue, much of 16th would be at or above capacity by 2021.

He said the region's strategy, which used to call for nothing ,but road widenings, has matured into a plan to create a "transit priority network," with wider roads of HOV transit lanes to feed local bus passengers to its Viva bus rapid transit system.

Still, this is York Region. Many long-standing residents moved there years ago for the "open spaces," Mr. Collins says, and they are not going to give up their car keys.

"They are car users and they will always be car users, and despite our best efforts to encourage them to use transit, they never will. So we need to recognize that we have those people in our community, and we need to provide services for them."

Maybe there is no alternative.

Maybe there are so many cars, and so many malls. and so many low-rise office complexes dotting Markham and Richmond Hill that there is no use even bothering to fight against a wider 16th Avenue. Or maybe this considerable handicap means York Region needs to adopt a much more radical approach to transportation, well outside of its comfortable four-wheeled box.

Dr. Gridlock appears Mondays.

They are car users and they will always be car users, and despite our best efforts to encourage them to use transit, they never will.

Stephen Collins

Transportation key election issue in York Region

Metroland York Region newspapers

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
COLUMN

No one route to better commute
By: Sean Pearce

As anyone who wakes up impossibly early every weekday morning to make the trek to Toronto for work well knows, traffic congestion isn’t going away.
Far from it.

Every year, the number of cars on the road, often occupied by a single person, seems to multiply exponentially on hwys. 400 and 404 and any other route that leads into the big city.
The drive home isn’t much better.

So far, all four major party leaders have come out saying Ontarians deserve better than to become virtual prisoners in their automobiles for 10, 15 and, in some cases, 20 hours a week. And the economic implication of all this congestion is nearly as costly as the social one.
It is then safe to say, in terms of transportation issues, York Region faces a multitude of obstacles, but has a myriad of possible solutions at its disposal.

Transit
In terms of improving public transit in the region, each party presents a slightly different approach, but all agree more is needed.

The Liberals spent a number of months leading up to the election introducing a whole host of transit initiatives, each more ambitious than the last.

One of the more recent was MoveOntario 2020, a $17.5-billion plan that would see, among other things, construct a new subway into York Region under Yonge Street, up to Hwy. 7 in Richmond Hill. This, along with the subway to Vaughan, would give the region a subway in the east and west portions with the idea it would help more people to park their cars and choose transit instead.

Of course, the only problem is determining whether or not the cash-strapped TTC, who would have to pay the operating costs, will be able to foot the bill in the long run.

Is the subway even the best possible solution for York Region in the long haul? The Progressive Conservatives don’t seem to think so. The PCs, under John Tory, have vowed to create a new funding model for Ontario, one that sees all gas tax collected going back to municipalities.

That way, it is the municipal governments that can decide for themselves how they should spend the cash.

In a similar fashion, Mr. Tory has said it should be the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, the experts, recommending these major transit projects and not politicians.
More to the point, the much touted plan for the subway, seeing as how it may take at least four to five years to get things under way, might simply be too little too late.
The time for rapid transit and action is now, Mr. Tory said.

The NDP also has said it favours increasing public transit and, in some cases, freezing fares to keep from deterring would-be riders with increasing prices. That might be a valid point seeing as how the York Regional Transit committee is in the midst of implementing a possible fare increase at this precise moment.

The Greens are, naturally, also in favour of more public transit as the answer to congestion and, to that end, are advocating the diversion of 75 per cent of all funds currently budgeted for highway construction, up until 2012, toward transit.

The one thing all parties seem to support is the extension of GO Transit’s rail corridor through the region to Barrie and the implementation of all-day rail service in York.
Roads

Of course, improved and enhanced transit in York Region will not get everyone out of their cars and on to trains, buses or even subways.

The Liberals seem to have recognized this and have been working away building and expanding the province’s network of high occupancy vehicle lanes in the hope if people must drive, they will, at the very least, carpool.

Work on the long-discussed extension of Hwy. 404 to Georgina also seems to be under way.
The PCs, among them former minister of transportation Frank Klees, have come out saying York Region needs more than future subways and even enhanced transit.

The extension of Hwy. 404 to Georgina, Hwy. 427 to Orangeville and the construction of the Bradford Bypass are of vital importance, Mr. Klees said.

If these major arteries were built or extended, the logic goes, congestion would decrease dramatically as there would be less need for through traffic to clog up roads such as Davis Drive, Wellington Street or Woodbine Avenue on a daily basis.

The NDP and the Greens also seem to support ideas such as encouraging consumers to buy more eco-friendly vehicles and the creation of more HOV lanes in addition to new transit initiatives and simple ideas such as tele-commuting and people-powered solutions such as cycling and even good, old-fashioned walking.

Reality
The fact remains voters are looking for action on the congestion issue and it is likely whichever proposal is most sound, the real answer will likely be a multi-pronged approach. Is more and improved public transit needed? Yes, absolutely. Too many people complain schedules are inconvenient for their lives or routes don’t go where they need them to go, so, instead, they drive.

Does York Region need a faster network of highways? The answer, again, is yes. The fact is, no matter how good transit is, it will not entice everyone out of their cars.

Hopefully, as the HOV network continues its expansion, more people will be encouraged to travel with others, but the fact remains many people in this region still continue their age-old love affair with the automobile.

Creating a longer and more efficient network of highways will undoubtedly remove much of the unnecessary through traffic in the region and, in the end, allow everyone to get where they are going more quickly and efficiently.

Finally, sprawl must be reigned in. Construction continues often without the benefit of infrastructure such as adequate roads and transit. All four parties are agreeing this cannot continue.

The fact remains whoever the voters choose, there must be action and it must come soon. York Region and Ontario, on the whole, cannot afford to wait.