Thursday, July 15, 2010

Time for real transit

In the next 25 years the GTHA will grow by the size of the population of Montreal.

About 1,500,000 more cars will go on the roads in that time.

Congestion is already bad -- and what is being done?

Bike lanes on Jarvis. That's meaningless PR -- nothing more.

We need to have a proper integrated transit plan that will grow the TTC, integrate it with GO, VIVI and VIA. Bicycle routes are good but not where they will increase congestion; and they need to be properly separated from auto roads so that bicyclists are safe.

The transit must be accessible and reliable. To have viable public transit available within half a kilometre of the entire GTHA is possible, and necessary, but it will be costly. But little have been done for 20 years.

It's time to start digging.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You want to go digging at the end of cheap oil? Just what kind of spliff, MJ or whatever you call it are they giving to you people in "generation La-La-La land"?

Besides no worries, accelerating decay of the economy, anti-immigration politics (coming soon from the "far" right) and continued deindustrialization of Ontario will "solve" our problems for us.

No pain and no gain (for you), just the way you boomers like it.

A Laughing liberal

Anonymous said...

Strangely I have to agree with "A Laughing Liberal", Boomers have had their day and look at the mess we have. Unsustainable healthcare due to constant tax giveaways for boomer votes to the point that boomers are taking and not paying anymore for the services they are going to be increasingly relying on. They keep downloading future costs onto the next generation. Already the jobs my parents enjoy pay crap compared to what they did at the same time we now have to pay the true cost of higher education which no one before us did. But hey we have cheap prices for the boomers though, thanks to exporting all our jobs. The works should be put on an ice floe.

Anonymous said...

Health care may be unsustainable at the moment, because of greed of the providers (doctors, Big Pharma, etc), and greatly on the selfishness of the boomers, but increasing lifespan is also contributing to the situation we now find ourselves in.

I agree with anon, should be hilarious (and possibly dangerous) when the boomers start trying to access the healthcare they "paid for" (roflmao) when everyone else is making minimum wage. Add in the costs of trying to mitigate and repair damage to the environment from a fossil-fueled global, neo-liberal economic system and toss in sociopolitical instability (just for fun) and the idea that there will be anything left for anyone else is laughable at best.

In conoclusion, it appears likely that many of the people who got us into this mess will be around to even longer, and even more dependent on welfare at the expense of successive generations.

Is the term irony even appropriate on this scale?

A Laughing liberal

Anonymous said...

Just remembered Jared Diamond's books, "Guns, Germs and Steel:The Fates of Human Societies" and "Collapse", haven't read them in years, but I sure do remember the part about cultures "choosing" to fail, now that seems like an idea worth revisiting at this time.

Good books, for anyone interested in why/how cultures evolved, developed (or not) technology and infrastructure. Not textbooks per se, sort of enjoyable in between "heavy" and light reading.

A Laughing liberal