Comment 41195

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted May 27, 2010 at 16:23:17

a) It is abundantly clear that we use much more in the way of trucks than we need. From "just-in-time delivery" to the absurd distance our food/goods travel and the excessive packaging on them. Even the Mike Harris Conservatives understood that a good chunk of this traffic could easily move onto rails with little or no effort (other than confronting trucking associations).

b) I have been all over this country, continent and the western world. Virtually everywhere I've been (except perhaps Buffalo and Sudbury) has far more vibrant pedestrian areas downtown and elsewhere than us, with much busier stores, all of which having far less truck access. I've worked delivery: I know what it looks like.

c) Trucks are, because of their sheer size, and absolute nightmare for traffic of all sorts, highway, rural and otherwise, and contribute heavily to our congestion problems.

d) All of this represents a massive net of externalized costs which subsidize some of the worst industries we have. We've made it so cheap to cart goods here across the continent (if not planet) that many local producers simply can't compete. Economic situations this ludicrous only turn up when you have a massively distorted financial system underlying it.

It's time to stop wasting all this public money putting highways through our parks and neighbourhoods.

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