Last year the Then, with the ink is hardly dry on the new HST legislation and Dalton McGuinty tried to zap us with a new Eco Tax no one ever heard about introduced by McGuinty’s Stewardship Ontario, that was to come into effect July 1, 2010 and already our politicians were enlisting a non-profit organization to sell the concept of road tolls and even more taxes! It feels like Dalton McGuinty has his hands permanently in our pockets and David Miller thankfully no longer in line behind him. Soon we will pay 65% of our income in taxes! They were advocating road tolls as a way to reduce gridlock. They know they have a huge problem with gridlock. But Road Tolls would be unable cure gridlock while David Miller created more of it every day! Thankfully he’s gone now. Here is my letter to the Toronto City Summit Alliance: Ladies and Gentlemen, With great respect to the dignity and great works of your many wonderful members, let me tell you what I think about road tolls. They are a poor solution for a government which has neglected roads for many years. The solution to gridlock is a balanced transportation policy not determined by politicians unskilled in that department. We must hire competent people to develop transportation plans and competent people to run the TTC. Our transportation policy should include off-main road bike trails, better roads than can be built without breaking the budget, and subways where warranted. But the City must stop building streetcars that everyone knows have been creating more gridlock and the resulting pollution. Not good for a city that claims to be green when it fails the test in many ways. This City has been waging a vicious war on cars and on businesses. Howard Moscoe’s plan to fill in the Allen Expressway and turning it into a boulevard and the City’s plan to get rid of the Gardiner contributes to this war on cars. This the same as their latest idea to abolish all on and off ramps on the Allen Expressway north of the 401. We need a City council where the Mayor doesn’t say how concerned he is about small businesses losing money during the G20, while he doesn’t care if 200 businesses go bankrupt and another 200 are starving because of the City’s incompetence during the St. Clair streetcar construction. And a City which doesn’t impose the same fate on other parts of the City. Why doesn’t the Toronto City Summit Alliance take a look at a transportation policy that was developed by experts over a 20 year period. Check out www.gettorontomoving.ca. Five of the six major candidates for Mayor have already admitted that subways are much preferable to streetcars. So why do two of them still want to build the Sheppard and Eglinton streetcars when it would be only marginally more expensive in the short term to build a subway and certainly much cheaper and more efficient in the long term? And it’s the only plan that would get people out of cars! And you know it’s funny that at least two of the Mayor candidates including Joe Pantalone, have started to use the slogan ‘Get Toronto Moving’ but without the ideas associated with it. And while you are at it. Have the road repair department work a bit smarter. Don’t start in 50 locations and put three workers on each location when you can do 10 projects with 30 people each and in two shifts and weekends so the roads don’t need to be tied up forever when the job can be done in a few days; and then go on to the next projects. Fire all the morons in the works department and City planners who advocate the war on cars. This war must end now. In Toronto, we have gridlock by design – purposely created by bad policies since 1971 to make driving a car miserable in order to force drivers out of their cars and on to transit with unsynchronized traffic signals, streetcars, traffic lanes converted to bike lanes, refusal to build or improve any highways and increased parking fines and a new car registration tax. This has failed because it has not taken one car off the road. Driving remains the choice of at least 70% of Road tolls are unpopular – in a poll taken in the Toronto Star of well over 1000 respondents, tolls are opposed by 68% of the respondents. Imposition of road tolls on major highways will in fact cause more gridlock as many drivers will use local streets to avoid paying the tolls. In London, UK, where congestion charging has been introduced, there has been a significant drop in retail business within the zone because people shop outside the toll zone to avoid paying it. Tolls in Toronto will hurt business as well by driving up the cost of deliveries. We need to get traffic off local streets and on to highways, not the other way around. After consulting with transportation experts, I must tell you that the answer to our gridlock is synchronized traffic signals, more subways and some new highways and the abolition of our outdated congestion-causing streetcars. New subways and highways can be built by issuing infrastructure bonds and using private funding. Developers should also be allowed to build above and around subway stations and help to pay for the subways. Tolls on existing highways to pay for transit is greatly unfair to drivers as they are getting nothing in return. Tolls on new highways to pay for their construction is acceptable. Toronto needs a subway grid including completed lines along Sheppard, Eglinton and Queen, plus extensions of the Bloor-Danforth line both west and east. More frequent bus service (running every 5 minutes) and more frequent GO train service (running every 15 minutes) need to be introduced. They City also needs an underground extension of Highway 400 to the Gardiner Expressway and an underground eastern extension of the Gardiner Expressway east to Highway 401. Intensification of development without new subway expansion must also be halted. Development needs to concentrate around subway hubs such as Sherway Gardens, Yorkdale and the Scarborough Town Centre. Yours sincerely, New Conservatory of Music Ltd. (www.newconservatoryofmusic.ca) Scarborough M1S 1V2
Telephone 416-292-5959
e-mail khaab@on.aibn.com