Highway 7 - Kitchener to Guelph

[SammyOES2]

How could we accept that cars are significantly more efficient in a lot of cases? We’re talking about populated areas here- cars are wildly less efficient in terms of space and energy and all-in costs than transit. And, of course, we know that creating more capacity is a mug’s game- the capacity will induce the extra demand needed to congest it. And we know that highway expansions like this one encourage sprawl, which is costly and inefficient in all kinds of ways.

We probably can’t have good transit between Guelph and KW with the predominant development patterns in both cities. It’ll take time to change that pattern, and maybe it won’t happen until it really has to. So it’s true that the highway is certainly needed given existing development patterns and the massive car dependency in both cities.

We're not just talking about densely populated areas here.  And that's the point.  We're talking about a link between a lot of areas that will not be served well by transit for the foreseeable future.  

And once again, there's no new sprawl being encouraged here.  The areas served by the new highway 7 will be developed almost exactly the same regardless of if the new highway 7 is built or not - because new growth has to happen and the area between KW/Guelph has long been identified as a place its going to happen.