07-06-2023, 07:50 AM
(07-06-2023, 07:07 AM)nms Wrote:(07-05-2023, 07:30 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: The problem with "slow but incremental progress" is that it doesn't occur in a vacuum. If we very gradually add train service, but rapidly expand roads and develop more sprawl we are actually losing ground, not gaining it.I'm not sure how quickly major road expansion actually occurs. For instance, the Highway 8/401 interchange expansion plus the widening of the 401 east of Waterloo Region felt like it took the best part of 15 years without including the planning work that happened before the first shovel hit the ground. Highway 7 between Kitchener and Guelph has been on the books for the best part of 40 years but it hasn't exactly roared out of the gate.
For better or for worse, gone are the days when a railway (or anything else that large) can be built halfway across the country in a decade. (Excluding the the existing railways that it absorbed, the CPR was built from 1875 to 1885 between southern Ontario and BC).
Yes, Ontario is doing major highway expansions and new construction, much faster than we are with trains.
But I wasn't even talking about that, just look at the road construction Waterloo Region is doing. It's great we built the LRT, but in the time we built the LRT we are building MULTIPLE new stroad/highways and expanding others...before the next phase of the LRT is built, we'll have build more roads.
Tom Galloway said to me one time, that staff claimed that building the LRT would eliminate the need to build 500 lane-km of roadway in the city, but he hasn't seen any reduction in the capital expansion plan.
And we're probably one of the most progressive cities when it comes to sprawl that isn't geographically constrained, I don't even want to know how many miles of roadway Brampton is building in the time it will take them to build the LRT (half of which was cancelled).
Someone had an amazing stat about how much farm land we lose everyday. Every inch of that land is sprawl. We do not build sustainable places anymore. Every inch of that land is us literally losing ground.
This is why I'm so cynical on fixing cities. Even if we make progress, we're losing the war.