Comment 108567

By John Neary (registered) | Posted January 30, 2015 at 09:11:14 in reply to Comment 108537

I respectfully believe that you're getting it backwards. GO Transit didn't increase the access of workers to jobs in Toronto and Hamilton; it enabled those workers to live in poorly planned sprawl developments in Mississauga/Burlington/Oakville rather than in the cities where they actually worked. It thereby encouraged terrible planning and development. It seemed like a good idea because the perceived alternative was inexorable widening of the QEW. (It was a good idea relative to that even worse idea, and there's certainly no argument for getting rid of GO Transit now that we've got the GTHA that we planned, or didn't plan, for.)

If our predecessors in the 1960s had decided to implement tolls on the 400-series highways in the GTHA rather than subsidizing trains to compete with subsidized roads, we'd have much more densely built cities in which transit would be self-sufficient. That's not going to change overnight, but in terms of the big picture I think the best solution to our transportation problems is to stop subsiding roads rather than subsidizing transit even more in order to compete with free roads.

I think Hamilton should start by putting tolls on the RHVP and Linc. It's a scandal that trucks driving from Brantford (or places west) to Niagara can drive down our municipal highways free of charge, contributing nothing to our economy but incurring expenses for the Hamilton taxpayer.

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