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Toronto is about to make life a lot more difficult for motorists... on purpose!
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| Jayx1 |
Isnt the role of government supposed to be to make life BETTER for people?
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Council causing more car-nage on our roads
By KAREN STINTZ, GUEST COLUMNIST
Getting around Toronto is going to get considerably more difficult over the next few months and years.
Next week, city council will consider the closure of the fifth lane on Jarvis, a recommendation about preventing cars from turning right on a red light at a number of intersections, and discuss changing the flow of traffic on portions of Richmond and Adelaide from one-way to two-way streets.
This week, a proposal emerged that may reduce parking spaces and auto laneways on Bloor and Danforth to better accommodate cyclists.
Of course, there is the ever looming issue of what to do with the Gardiner Expressway.
This debate has pitted certain road users against others, picked winners and losers and ultimately forgets that the transportation network needs to accommodate the people who live and work in this city, irrespective of whether they take the bus, ride a bike, or drive a car.
The emerging reality is various city committees are making decisions about people's mobility on an ad hoc basis. Not well planned. Not well coordinated.
If we continue in this fashion, we will frustrate and anger residents. Worse, we will contribute to problem that we should in fact, be trying to alleviate: Congestion.
Congestion has significant economic and social costs. The Conference Board of Canada notes the impact is in the billions of dollars. Costs include delays in moving goods and services, the costs of commuting, and the costs to local business when parking is limited or non-existent.
The social costs are harder to put a number on but no less significant -- the cost of sitting in traffic, missed appointments, being late to pick up children from daycare or children's activities.
And of course, delayed and idling cars and public transit vehicles add to greenhouse gas emissions.
Experts from major cities around the world tell us if we want to reduce congestion and have a sustainable urban transportation system, we need to achieve certain "travel behaviour" from citizens.
That is, we need to provide the right incentive to reasonably reduce car dependence (such as an attractive, high-quality public transit system) and series of disincentives so they don't return to car use (commonly referred to as "travel demand management tools").
If we don't, we'll experience the same result as Dublin, for example, where they achieved a 40% increase in transit use but the lack of car restraint measures resulted in a 28% increase in car use at the same time.
A study of best practices in large and medium-sized European cities, titled World Cities Research, March 2005 concluded policies to reduce congestion work best when they are integrated together and any restraints to car movement should be implemented alongside improvements to alternatives to the car. These have allowed people to continue to make journeys so there is no adverse effect on personal freedom or city economies.
This is in contrast to Toronto's approach, which is to make driving so difficult that people will use other modes of transportation out of frustration. If we continue in this way, we risk losing people and business from the city.
METROLINX NOT READY
Considering that the Metrolinx plan -- the primary alternative to a car -- is years away from being a reality, it doesn't make sense to aggressively implement a bike plan and car restraints that are not integrated with the transit timelines.
Reducing congestion in Toronto is a goal we all can benefit from and is worthy of our collective efforts. Let's make sure we are having the right discussion and productively debating the right issues.
Let's achieve what matters to us all -- the ability to move around Toronto, safely and efficiently, whether by foot, car, bus or bike.
-- Stintz is councillor for Ward 16 Eglinton-Lawrence |
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| dEsidEL |
can you post the URL for this article? Thanks
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| Jayx1 |
"disincentives" only cause me to do less business in toronto. Already i commute to etobicoke from parkdale (10 min drive) to do all my shopping since parking in my part of town is nearly non existent. And walking would add an extra 45 mins to my day everytime i needed something.
We need MORE one way streets, not LESS. Look at every major city and they have some sort of a one way street grid unless its like beijing where they have super wide boulevards. |
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| Tordan |
| Why would they close the 5th lane on Jarvis? I live right on Jarvis and I see how useful it actually is. What a buncha idiots! |
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| English Rachel |
| moan, moan, moan, moan, moan and moan some more |
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| mute79 |
| quote: | In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars
VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.
As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.
Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”
Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where middle-class families from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes. And that, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming. Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.
While there have been efforts in the past two decades to make cities denser, and better for walking, planners are now taking the concept to the suburbs and focusing specifically on environmental benefits like reducing emissions. Vauban, home to 5,500 residents within a rectangular square mile, may be the most advanced experiment in low-car suburban life. But its basic precepts are being adopted around the world in attempts to make suburbs more compact and more accessible to public transportation, with less space for parking. In this new approach, stores are placed a walk away, on a main street, rather than in malls along some distant highway.
“All of our development since World War II has been centered on the car, and that will have to change,” said David Goldberg, an official of Transportation for America, a fast-growing coalition of hundreds of groups in the United States — including environmental groups, mayors’ offices and the American Association of Retired People — who are promoting new communities that are less dependent on cars. Mr. Goldberg added: “How much you drive is as important as whether you have a hybrid.”
Levittown and Scarsdale, New York suburbs with spread-out homes and private garages, were the dream towns of the 1950s and still exert a strong appeal. But some new suburbs may well look more Vauban-like, not only in developed countries but also in the developing world, where emissions from an increasing number of private cars owned by the burgeoning middle class are choking cities.
In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting “car reduced” communities, and legislators are starting to act, if cautiously. Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much larger role in a new six-year federal transportation bill to be approved this year, Mr. Goldberg said. In previous bills, 80 percent of appropriations have by law gone to highways and only 20 percent to other transport.
In California, the Hayward Area Planning Association is developing a Vauban-like community called Quarry Village on the outskirts of Oakland, accessible without a car to the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and to the California State University’s campus in Hayward.
Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus at Cal State and a leader of the association, says he “can’t wait to move in” and hopes that Quarry Village will allow his family to reduce its car ownership from two to one, and potentially to zero. But the current system is still stacked against the project, he said, noting that mortgage lenders worry about resale value of half-million-dollar homes that have no place for cars, and most zoning laws in the United States still require two parking spaces per residential unit. Quarry Village has obtained an exception from Hayward.
Besides, convincing people to give up their cars is often an uphill run. “People in the U.S. are incredibly suspicious of any idea where people are not going to own cars, or are going to own fewer,” said David Ceaser, co-founder of CarFree City USA, who said no car-free suburban project the size of Vauban had been successful in the United States.
In Europe, some governments are thinking on a national scale. In 2000, Britain began a comprehensive effort to reform planning, to discourage car use by requiring that new development be accessible by public transit.
“Development comprising jobs, shopping, leisure and services should not be designed and located on the assumption that the car will represent the only realistic means of access for the vast majority of people,” said PPG 13, the British government’s revolutionary 2001 planning document. Dozens of shopping malls, fast-food restaurants and housing compounds have been refused planning permits based on the new British regulations.
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Source: NY Times |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by English Rachel
moan, moan, moan, moan, moan and moan some more |
So we should all be quiet and be complacent? If only i wasnt the only one who brought up these things! |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by mute79
Source: NY Times |
In a country with cheap reliable and extensive transit this is doable. Here we are decades away from this even if we were to start today. Id love to be able to live car free but its not practical in toronto unless you have extra time to kill and/or u live work and play along a few major corridors |
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| Intangible |
| quote: | Originally posted by Tordan
Why would they close the 5th lane on Jarvis? I live right on Jarvis and I see how useful it actually is. What a buncha idiots! |
+1!
(except I live next to Jarvis)
And I like one way streets...
But honestly they wouldnt be doing this for no reason, I'd be interested in reading more, and something not by the Sun. |
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| Jayx1 |
| quote: | Originally posted by Intangible
+1!
(except I live next to Jarvis)
And I like one way streets...
But honestly they wouldnt be doing this for no reason, I'd be interested in reading more, and something not by the Sun. |
The "something by the sun" was written by a city councillor. They are doing this for a reason. Its because they dont like cars and think that by making life hell for drivers, they can force people into public transit. |
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