James Pyo

Sure I acknowledge the Ford administration is currently leading the largest transit expansion in Canadian history but the latest MTO news release bluntly titled, Ontario Fighting Gridlock and Making Life Easier for Drivers, shows not much has changed since the Premier’s days as a Toronto City Councilor, when he fought tooth and nail against any project that would re-allocate road space to non-auto mode users. There was little or no regard for broader City issues like climate change, road safety, or equity and inclusion. Whether it be dedicated transit lanes or bike lanes, he opposed it.

The Province now has proposed new legislation that would require municipalities to get MTO approval to build new bike lanes if a lane of general traffic is to be removed. Not only is it contrary to their stated objective of streamlining government processes and “cutting red tape”, no details on evaluation criteria or performance indicators were disclosed. So, municipalities with Council-endorsed cycling network plans are left in the dark on how to even work with the MTO.

Even worse is the recent out-of-nowhere idea to build a tunnel beneath the 401, again without any dialogue with the local municipalities that would deal with all the induced traffic dumped onto their roads. That’s without even mentioning the cost of such a colossal undertaking, which experts estimate to be as much as $60 million. For your reference, the cost to build the Ontario Line subway is costing less than $30 billion, so that works out to two major transit projects at roughly the same cost.

It’s quite ironic that this same Premier once accused the federal government of encroaching provincial jurisdiction. Yet encroaching on municipal jurisdiction is okay.

The failure to engage local authorities on such important matters is anti-democratic.