GTA West study ‘short sighted’

January 20, 2016 · 0 Comments

The following letter, addressed to Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca, was submitted to the Citizen for publication.
Congratulations for showing vision for the future for the Peel Region area and beyond.
Vision for the future is vision for the next four generations, and not for the next 10 years or so.
Paving enormous areas to accommodate a super highway from Highway 410 to unload future Peel Region traffic onto the existing Highways 50, 427, 400 and 401 will clog them up even more. That is absolutely ridiculous and short sighted.
At rush hours, it takes 50 minutes (one way) to drive a car from Bolton to Highway 427. We are assuming that all roads must lead to Toronto, Oakville or Scarborough. That assumption should not be the case and should be changed. The new and very simple 4.2-kilometre long Emil Kolb Parkway in Bolton has cost the Province $120 million, a super highway of four or more lanes, as shown in the GTA West Highway study of about 18 kilometres long, with access to and from Goreway, The Gore Road and other roads, and probably with under passes, will cost, in my opinion, well over $3 billion.
Building a super highway costing billions of dollars for today’s vehicle technology alone may be an absolute waste of money, because future vehicle technology will for sure be completely different and may affect traffic patterns. For much less than $3 billion, we can have hundreds of fast, non-polluting mass transportation busses and trains using existing roads for in town as well as spanning all the way from Peel Region to a 50-kilometre radius beyond, to all the towns within the area. All those towns should be interconnected and have their own in-town public transportation in order to reduce the use of personal cars. Businesses offices, manufacturing, shopping malls and other high employment, non-polluting industries should be encouraged to expand to those cities or towns in order that one can find work and easy travel without being on the road for hours and polluting the environment.
Transferring from busses or GO trains to other busses and trains should be free. The frequency of busses and GO trains and street cars coming or going to any of the towns should be a maximum of five minutes.
Road widening should be minimal by constructing an additional bypass where bottle necking occurs. With mass and fast public transportation, thousands of cars will be off the roads and pollution will be minimized.
Personal cars using any highways during rush hours should pay a toll. Due to the easily accessible fast transportation to go in town and as well as to other towns, the multi-cars per household, as is now the case, will drastically be reduced. Therefore, the traffic in the future will be manageable.
John Van Eeden,
Bolton
-30-