Toronto Without a Rail or Subway Connection to International Airport, Not a World Class City.

April 24, 2010 - PRLog -- Unfortunately for the past 35 years incumbent politicians have mismanaged the city’s transportation system because they failed to hire top notch professional and qualified transportation experts at the helm.

But instead have relied on novice politicians with literally no expertise in the transportation industry whatsoever to take control of one of the city’s most important issues for the past 50 years.

It seems that for these past many years the left leaning ideologies of councillors with their draconian attempts to force the motoring public, be they tourists, commuters, or commercial vehicles from entering and getting around the city by car by attempts to make all travel by public transit, which is not ever going to happened in his city or any other one.

In 2006 for example a comprehensive study of balancing the demand for limited road space was available to the TTC and others pertaining to the efficiency and effect of public transport priority schemes on public roads.

This paper describes a methodology developed to assist the road management authority to evaluate trade-offs in the use of its limited road-space for new bus and street car priority projects.

The major finding was that despite a more comprehensive approach to measuring the benefits of bus and street car priority, road-space reallocation is difficult to economically justify in road networks where public transport usage is low and car usage high.

Guess they missed that one or just ignored it because politically they did not like the facts presented against such usage of our main street within the city or elsewhere.

In my limited knowledge of public transportation, the core of the issues as to move vast numbers of people within a city and around the city.

As such why anyone is even considering a northern expansion of the subway line when there exists a severe problem in the movement of inner city commuters is beyond transportation logic 101.

Back in the mid 1980s prior to amalgamation there was a plan referred to as the Down Town Relief Line or DRL which 30 years ago correctly foresaw the congestion problem that now exists within the down town core area for Torontonians.

But also in the later part of the 80s after the opening of the Kipling and Kennedy extensions to the Bloor-Danforth subway, for political reason our TTC reported that these would be the last subway extensions Toronto would see for some time.

The Downtown line DRL was criticized for "focusing development pressure on the core (which) would violate Metro's strategy of decentralizing office growth and throw a wrench into North York's plan for a satellite downtown of office towers and high-rise housing in the Yonge Street-Sheppard Avenue Area" which of course pitted the downtown area against the suburbs for purely political reasons again.

One can only surmise but perhaps if the then conservative government had remained in power for another year or so, the DRL plan might have become reality. Ever since the opening of the Yonge Subway in 1954, Conservative governments of the day had provided strong support to the TTC and its major capital projects. However, the release of Network 2011 coincided with the defeat of the Conservatives and the formation of the first Liberal government in 42 years.

The Liberals, wary of the $5 billion price tag attached to Network 2011, put the plan under review. Infuriatingly, it was at this time that Highway 407 received provincial funds and took the first steps towards construction, just to be sold years later, which has caused Toronto and GTA motorists nothing but financial grief ever since.

In my humble opinion, Toronto urgently needs as it did 35 years ago either a rail or subway link to the International airport, which would also help the residents in the Weston area along with the immediate construction of the down town relief line DRL yesterday.

PETERCLARKETORONTO.COM

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CLARKE an INDEPENDENT NOT a CAREER Politician or supporter of any political party, special interest group or lobbyists. PETER is your average citizen candidate and answerable only to the people NOT a political party, special interest group or lobbyist