Toronto Region Board of Trade reposted this
President and CEO, Toronto Region Board of Trade, Former Ontario Deputy Minister and Newspaper Editor
Toronto’s traffic is so bad that celebrities like Tom Cruise and Niall Horan are bringing international attention to it. We’re getting a global reputation as a place where you can’t get around. Bad for our reputation, yes, but it’s even worse for those of us who live here and speaks to the very real business and quality of life impacts. How did we get here? As I told Travis D., it’s a simple question of math. The population of Toronto and the GTA has grown by 2.5-million over the past 20 years and yet we’ve had very little new transit and other needed infrastructure and so, our roads are clogged. The good news is that infrastructure is now being built. But to get us from where we are today to a more transit-oriented future, we need some immediate fixes. Watch my interview with Travis as I share how our Congestion Task Force is working to address this issue. And stay tuned for more from the Toronto Region Board of Trade on this next week.
Are we blaming bike lanes again as the significant reason behind "clogging up roads"? If this is what's coming out of a task force looking at reducing congestion, I'm worried. That's a bit of a false and misleading narrative. What's the problem we're trying to solve here? Getting more cars and traffic downtown, or moving people in, out and around the city better? The former doesn't transform mobility, the latter does. The solution to all of this is minimising the amount of people driving into and around downtown. That is going to mean more transit lines, streetcar and bus priority, walking and yes, bike lanes.
there are billions in annual added costs related to the inability to transport goods in and out of the City, let alone the addition of GHG as every vehicle sits and runs for hours, inching around the City. I wonder each time I try to enter or leave Toronto, if the 1 bike to 200 cars is really the way to design an already packed roadway by making it a lane or lanes smaller? Always, there is NIMBY, as you try to solve transit problems, the perfect North American example is the Allen Expressway that goes to an abrupt unplanned end, which was a political ending decades back.
Gerry Lewis
2w
“The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”. Construction and Closures if managed from a GTA-wide perspective would immediately ease the traffic. All the other factors cited contribute but these two C’s are killing us. Now add to that one more C - Concerts (and major events), what does that spell? Chaos.
Thanks for sharing Giles. It also makes things very challenging from the standpoint of allocating capital to projects that require good flow of human capital as well as goods.
So glad I don't live in the GTA anymore.
Good to know!
Vice President, Research Services & Strategy at GWL Realty Advisors
2wIn addition to adding 2.5 million people, we’ve added Uber/Lyft and eCommerce with same day deliveries. This generates congestion and often isn’t moving anyone. More Vehicles driving around downtown waiting for a fare (and then they drive from University to Yonge pick someone up and then drive back.) Or a delivery van in the downtown dropping off a package of socks or a computer cord or lunch for one person. Congestion pricing might help. Can you walk to get lunch? Get That computer part? Get some exercise or pay the congestion charge for the delivery.