Highway 401 Widening - Highway 8 to Townline Road

[ijmorlan]

1) On Sunday I take my mother to her covid-19 shot, finally. She herself is 80, and can't do a lot of walking. Either way, her vaccination will be at The Boardwalk in Waterloo. Problem 1 - we have no local Sunday service in the area, it was cancelled to help pay for the Ion. Problem 2, even if we could get transit (such as taken a later vaccination date), it would be 2 transfers (3 busses), 20 minutes of walking, about about 4 hours of bus travel time. With a car, it's 12 minutes there and 12 minutes back. At the very least, we're saving 4 hours. And likely she couldn't do all the required walking anyway.

The required mobility here isn’t to get to the Boardwalk; it’s to get a Covid-19 shot. If the city were designed for walking and transit, the Covid-19 shots would be available in locations more convenient to be reached by transit.

2) Say my buddy in Cambridge invites me over to his place after work, in order to go over to a close restaurant from his place. In this case, I can only do this when I have a day shift: Done work at 4:00 -- quickest method of transit gets me home by 4:45. I quickly shower and I am ready to leave by 5. Quickest route to his place gets me there at 7:21. Now, quickest route to the restaurant gets us there at 8:30. Stay for a couple hours, and head back to my place, and I arrive home at 12:20. With a car, I get home a 4:08, leave my place by 4:25, at his place by 4:45, at restaurant by 4:55, leave after two hours, drive him back to his place, 7:05, drive back home, 7:25. That's a 5 hour difference. (For those scenarios, I used the GRT trip planner).

Similarly, there is at least a chance your buddy and/or you would live in a more transit-convenient location. Or maybe work is equipped with showers (originally intended for cyclists), so you shower there and proceed directly on the Ion to the restaurant.

3) Invited to a relatives or friends that are out of town. It's not happening without a car.

Car share; need I say more?

Now, if you have suggestions how one can do those above things without a car, I'll listen. But the only thing I can imagine is using a driverless car, and I think that would get expensive quick once it is available.

Cars give a quality of life and options and flexibility and time. Just like in the old times where a horse and buggy would do the same. Hell, with the above cases, a horse and buggy would be quicker every time.

Back to this discussion: do I think we need to widen the road RIGHT NOW? Not really. Between Highway 8 and Hespeler was fine. Between Hespeler and Townline? Probably not. But it's part of their master plan and has been on the books for a long time.

It’s not really about making all current car trips feasible by transit. It’s about designing the city so that transit works for more trips. And it’s not about a sudden revolution where we demolish the entire city (or at least, all the post-1960 suburbs) and rebuild. Rather, we start by doing several things, at a minimum: widen roads only grudgingly and sparingly, rather than enthusiastically, often when the traffic numbers don’t justify it even under the assumption that driving demand must be catered to; eliminate parking minima and allow people to choose how they want to live; dramatically loosen zoning restrictions that arbitrarily and capriciously restrict property use; implement a large carbon fee and dividend, so that costs are internalized to the person making the decision and benefitting from it; and so on.