Road tolls the only way to rescue the Gardiner
For some time now, I have been writing about automobile debuts and road tests. It’s time for a few good rants. Here goes.
First, we’re going to talk about the Gardiner.
Toronto mayoral candidate Jennifer Keesmaat said that, if elected, she would tear down the eastern end of the expressway at Jarvis St. and create something called a Grand Boulevard. Mayor John Tory said council had already debated and voted and they would keep the expressway above ground but take it down, straighten it, and rebuild it.
It is going to cost a lot of money. The question becomes: where will the money come from?
In a matter of days, the latest price tag for the Scarborough subway is going to come in and it will knock everybody’s socks off. Tory, re-elected earlier this week, made affordable housing promises, transit promises and now says a priority is going to be something called the Rail Deck Park. We’re talking, when you add everything up, about billions and billions of dollars.
Something has got to give. My hunch — and it’s just that, a hunch — is that the Gardiner plan will be sacrificed. Tory’s excuse will be that it will be far cheaper to tear it down and leave it down than to redesign and reconstruct it. Sure, it will be a broken promise but when it comes to politics and politicians, what else is new?
Oh, and if the eastern portion comes down, it’s only a matter of time before maintenance costs become so prohibitive that the rest of the expressway will have to be demolished too.
I happen to think it’s critical for the Gardiner to remain. Some people might not like the car, but tens of thousands of people are moving into the GTA each and every year, and half of them have — or will have — cars and there have to be roads where those cars can go.
And as a letter-writer to the Star said a few weeks ago, the DVP, Gardiner, 427 and 401 connect with each other to make a Beltway around the city. If you take out a portion of that Beltway, the flow will be interrupted and chaos will ensue.
Montreal, as it is with bicycles and their subway, is eons ahead of Toronto and the GTA when it comes to highway planning, design and construction. They made a plan and they stuck with it. In retrospect, the decision to kill the Spadina Expressway in the early 1970s (which resulted in the death knell for the Scarborough Expressway, among others) was misguided.
It stopped, in its tracks, a grand transportation plan that would have done nothing but benefit the city and suburbs. Instead, it’s gummed up the works totally.
So the Gardiner has to continue operating or a critically bad situation now will only become worse and worse. How to pay for it, then?
Tory has to go back to the premier of Ontario — there’s a new one, you know — and make the case for tolls. But he has to do it in a way that the new guy, Doug Ford, will accept.
Tory has to convince Ford that money from the tolls will be used for one thing and one thing only — maintenance and the redesign/reconstruction of the Gardiner. The money will not go into transit, or general revenues; the money will only go toward saving the Gardiner, period.
And there will be none of this taking advantage of vehicles coming in from the 905, either. The westbound Gardiner is as jammed in the morning as the eastbound because people living in the city and working in Mississauga and Hamilton are using it too. So the tolls have to be paid by every vehicle using that road.
The 407 system of collection can easily be installed at every entrance and exit and they could start doing this almost immediately.
I know Ford doesn’t like taxes. Neither do I. But there’s something else: I don’t want to pay to fix Toronto’s transit mess.
Where I live, I pay more in municipal taxes than do homeowners who live in Toronto. You can look it up. Until something happens to correct that, I am not particularly interested in helping out.
That’s why I say that in order to save the Gardiner, those of us who don’t live in the city but who use it will have to pitch in. A designated tax might do the trick. Otherwise, it will come down and be gone forever and the people who drive cars will really be up the creek.
Don’t believe me? Drive over to Lawrence Ave. and Allen Road on a Saturday afternoon and try to go south. It’s impossible. That’s what happened as the result of the Spadina cancellation and the same fate awaits motorists if the Gardiner should ever disappear.
During the recent elections, we heard plenty from one mayoral candidate, Jennifer Keesmaat, about road safety in general and safe intersections in particular. She said she would bring design elements into play that would do the trick at the intersections and the number of injuries and deaths would soon be down to zero.
I have a better idea. It will be cheaper — “design elements” always cost money — and be just as effective.
In short, only one thing should be happening at intersections at any one time. Right now, it’s the wild west.
Cars are going through the intersection when the light is green, there are cars waiting to make left turns, some cars are trying to turn right on a red (unless specifically prohibited) and pedestrians are trying to go from one side of the street to the other.
That scenario is playing out all the time these days and it’s a disaster waiting to happen.
So put a stop to it. Start by prohibiting all right turns on red. For traffic going north and south, have advance greens for 30 seconds and the only traffic moving should be cars turning left. Have greens on for through traffic for 45 seconds or even up to a minute and allow right turns but no left turns. Pedestrian walk signals would then be on for a minute and only pedestrians would be allowed on the road. No traffic would move. Repeat for traffic going east-west.
I should be an urban planner.
A year ago July, I was in Europe with Mercedes-Benz. I was covering the debut of the Mercedes E-Class Cabriolet and during the drive (you always get to drive brand new cars on trips like those) we passed through the nearly 19-kilometre-long Mont Blanc Tunnel that connects France and Italy. The tunnel goes under the highest mountain in the Alps and chops off anywhere from 30 to 60 kilometres from the distance required to move goods between Italy and the rest of Europe.
The speed limit is between 50 and 70 km/h and vehicles must remain 50 metres apart. That relatively slow speed and the distance apart allows maintenance personnel to move back and forth from one side of the tunnel to the other. Although you can’t see them all that well, there’s no mistaking that they’re crossing the road in front of you because they all have reflective tape on their boots and the bottoms of their trousers below the knee and the beam from a car’s headlights makes that tape shine brightly. As a result, there is no doubt there is a person on the road.
I was reminded of Mont Blanc and the reflective tape the other morning when I pulled up at a major intersection near where I live. It was early — just after 6 a.m. — and it was dark. I was waiting to turn left and I noticed a person — a young woman, I believe — waiting to walk across the same intersection. She was dressed all in black — or what seemed to be black. She could have been wearing a red coat, or one coloured navy blue. But it looked black. When the light changed, she started to walk and I drove halfway across and waited for her to clear before I completed my turn.
Although that intersection is lit up, it is not lit up that well. I had seen the person leave the curb but then she just seemed to disappear.
Suddenly, she reappeared in my vision as she dashed across the road in front of me. My wife, who was in our vehicle with me, said the person had dropped something and went back a few steps to retrieve it and then ran the rest of the way across.
I would not have moved until I made sure I knew where she was but, boy, when it’s pitch dark (or almost) at six in the morning and someone is dressed all in black, THEY ARE HARD TO SEE.
Most police and other first responders, tow-truck operators, construction workers — in fact, just about anybody required to be out on the road these days, particularly when it’s dark — are required to wear outer clothing called High Visibility Safety Apparel that sticks out like a sore thumb. But that outer clothing makes people visible. You know they are there. There is no doubt.
I urge anybody walking their dog, or walking to work, or to the TTC or the GO train early in the morning or late in the afternoon when it’s dark or nearly dark to put something reflective either on or over their outer clothing. It might not be fashionable but who cares at those hours? Once you’re safely back home, or in the office, or on the train platform — wherever there aren’t cars — you can take whateverit-is off, fold it up and put it in your knapsack, purse or pocket.
Daylight Saving Time is just around the corner — the clocks will go back an hour, making it dark even earlier in the morning and dark again by five or so in the afternoon — and statistics show the days around the time change can be particularly dangerous.
You can purchase a reflective vest for as low as $13, which is peanuts. But regardless of the cost, reflective clothing could save your life.
Isn’t your life worth it?