http://www.thestar.com/business/eco...ly_congestion_is_a_solvable_crisis_olive.html
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Metrolinx, the umbrella group for confronting GTA traffic congestion, estimates the cost of gridlock at a staggering $6 billion in lost productivity alone. Queen’s Park collects close to $1 billion in fuel taxes, vehicle license fees and other levies — funds not available to the municipalities that actually maintain our roads, bridges and public transit.
- These costs are a misallocation of our limited social resources that should be spent on more and better health care, education, affordable housing and daycare spaces, culture and recreation facilities and other contributors to higher quality of life.
- How did we get here? Our complacent city and Queen’s Park have chronically underinvested in transportation for generations. We stopped adding to our network of 400 superhighways, the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway so long ago that perhaps one-third of GTA residents weren’t alive when those now congested arteries were built. And on rapid transit, which we expanded by 135 kilometres a decade in the 1960s to the 1980s, we’ve added nothing consequential in recent decades.
Fortunately, congestion is a solvable crisis.
• “The Big Move,†a $50-billion megaproject overseen by Metrolinx, and the most ambitious urban transportation upgrading of its kind on the continent, is underway. If properly funded beyond the $16 billion allocated so far, The Big Move promises to cut commuting times by one-third; accommodate 50 per cent more people in the GTA with less gridlock than we currently endure by The Big Move’s targeted 2031 completion, despite a projected 56 per cent increase in the GTA’s population over that period; increase rush-hour service by an upgraded GO Rail; provide six times the GTA’s current number of bike lanes and walking and cycling trails; and cut greenhouse gas emissions by a stunning 50 per cent, reducing both “smog days†and the GTA’s complicity in global warming.
• Our social customs are changing. Young people, especially, have for several years been opting for alternatives to motorized vehicles, which, if you fall into the highest-risk category of males aged 16 to 34, can mean an annual $4,000 annual insurance bill. And the rise of social networking, by means of text messaging, Skype and so on, makes motorized-vehicle operation even more of a false luxury.
• We are also making liberal use of best practices worldwide. Cities similarly afflicted with gridlock are innovating with everything from a hefty tax to buy a car (hyper-congested Singapore); reduction of inner-city parking space (Hamburg, Copenhagen and elsewhere); and restricted hours for vehicle use in selected districts (Bogota, Rome). There are even more futurist notions afoot, such as the European Union’s call for vehicle-free inner cities by mid-century, and the ambition of some governments to design and build car-free cities from scratch.
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