unimaginative2
Senior Member
These fights between municipalities really are quite silly. We've developed a greenbelt, we've designated growth areas, and Markham is one of them. If we're going to build there, we have to build infrastructure, even roads, to serve it. It's silly to think that it's somehow righteous to maintain wildly undercapacity infrastructure just to make a moral point of opposition to suburban growth. Moreover, Markham's neighbourhoods certainly at least try a lot harder than most suburbs to be not-wholly car-dependent.
Markham needs to be bottled to save Scarborough
JOHN BARBER
October 5, 2007
God bless Raymond Cho, tribune of outermost Scarborough - a councillor whom, I blush to admit, I have never properly introduced you to before, despite having monitored his earnest participation in council debate for more years than either of us might care to admit. But God bless him anyway. He's all that's standing between us and Markham.
My personal view of Markham is corrupted by ancient but irrepressible memories of rolling farm fields, ample woodlots, split-rail fences and compact villages with long-settled charm. A walk in the country, kicking leaves, going to the fair. Today, quite literally, sprawled-out Markham is a bulging sewer.
I understand the urgent need for greater sewage capacity in Markham, from which our city and its poor lake are inarguably downhill, and I can follow the blinkered thinking of Markham officials who see built-up Scarborough as a "high-order" transportation corridor created by God to flush their commuters speedily down to the 401. I just can't stand it any more. It's stinking up the entire city.
So God bless Raymond Cho and the other Scarberians, most notably works committee chair Glenn De Baeremaeker, who are fighting back. They may not be able to stop the "Big Pipe" sewer from York Region, the construction of which is currently draining and despoiling the old trout streams, but they can plug the accompanying sewers of car traffic Markham officials intend to discharge into their neighbourhoods. They are NIMBY in a noble cause.
The immediate threat is a new highway intended to "bypass" Markham's latest unnecessary, totally car-dependent subdivision, flushing the polluting consequences of its unnecessary existence through a recently designated park and straight down the throat of Scarborough. The city is hoping to block the new expressway at Steeles Avenue, forcing its discharge west on Steeles and then down a new, northward extension of Morningside Avenue.
Hoping to win approval for the alternate alignment, Toronto officials sweetened the pot by recommending that the necessary stretch of Steeles be widened to accommodate "bypass" traffic. But the attraction of the new alignment, apart from the fact that it skirts parkland in both Markham and Toronto, is that Steeles still resembles a country road along this frontier, with one lane of traffic in either direction.
So let them build a new expressway into a dead end, the Scarberians urged. "The minute we approve a wider road is the minute 50 new development projects in York Region go through," said Mr. De Baeremaeker, a veteran of such battles. Markham must be bottled up, he declared, and now is the time.
"If you can't flush a toilet in Markham, you can't build a house," he said. "That's where they're at right now."
Six lanes bad, two lanes good. Mr. Cho, in so many words, concurred. Called to vote, however, the committee settled on four lanes.
To understand how necessary outright NIMBYism can be in such matters, consider that more than a few Toronto councillors voted happily to grant out-of-town developers the highly bankable gift of six lanes into Scarborough. Budget chief Shelley Carroll argued that it was the greenest option, on the theory that a wider roadway might one day accommodate transit - as if there were any actual plans for a rail line there, or any need to pave a right-of-way in order to preserve it for transit.
But that's the way they often think in the giant clam, until the obvious interests of their own constituents smack them sideways and bring them back to their senses. It can happen to anyone, even Mr. Cho - once an endearing nonentity, now a heroic defender of the realm.
jbarber@globeandmail.com
Markham needs to be bottled to save Scarborough
JOHN BARBER
October 5, 2007
God bless Raymond Cho, tribune of outermost Scarborough - a councillor whom, I blush to admit, I have never properly introduced you to before, despite having monitored his earnest participation in council debate for more years than either of us might care to admit. But God bless him anyway. He's all that's standing between us and Markham.
My personal view of Markham is corrupted by ancient but irrepressible memories of rolling farm fields, ample woodlots, split-rail fences and compact villages with long-settled charm. A walk in the country, kicking leaves, going to the fair. Today, quite literally, sprawled-out Markham is a bulging sewer.
I understand the urgent need for greater sewage capacity in Markham, from which our city and its poor lake are inarguably downhill, and I can follow the blinkered thinking of Markham officials who see built-up Scarborough as a "high-order" transportation corridor created by God to flush their commuters speedily down to the 401. I just can't stand it any more. It's stinking up the entire city.
So God bless Raymond Cho and the other Scarberians, most notably works committee chair Glenn De Baeremaeker, who are fighting back. They may not be able to stop the "Big Pipe" sewer from York Region, the construction of which is currently draining and despoiling the old trout streams, but they can plug the accompanying sewers of car traffic Markham officials intend to discharge into their neighbourhoods. They are NIMBY in a noble cause.
The immediate threat is a new highway intended to "bypass" Markham's latest unnecessary, totally car-dependent subdivision, flushing the polluting consequences of its unnecessary existence through a recently designated park and straight down the throat of Scarborough. The city is hoping to block the new expressway at Steeles Avenue, forcing its discharge west on Steeles and then down a new, northward extension of Morningside Avenue.
Hoping to win approval for the alternate alignment, Toronto officials sweetened the pot by recommending that the necessary stretch of Steeles be widened to accommodate "bypass" traffic. But the attraction of the new alignment, apart from the fact that it skirts parkland in both Markham and Toronto, is that Steeles still resembles a country road along this frontier, with one lane of traffic in either direction.
So let them build a new expressway into a dead end, the Scarberians urged. "The minute we approve a wider road is the minute 50 new development projects in York Region go through," said Mr. De Baeremaeker, a veteran of such battles. Markham must be bottled up, he declared, and now is the time.
"If you can't flush a toilet in Markham, you can't build a house," he said. "That's where they're at right now."
Six lanes bad, two lanes good. Mr. Cho, in so many words, concurred. Called to vote, however, the committee settled on four lanes.
To understand how necessary outright NIMBYism can be in such matters, consider that more than a few Toronto councillors voted happily to grant out-of-town developers the highly bankable gift of six lanes into Scarborough. Budget chief Shelley Carroll argued that it was the greenest option, on the theory that a wider roadway might one day accommodate transit - as if there were any actual plans for a rail line there, or any need to pave a right-of-way in order to preserve it for transit.
But that's the way they often think in the giant clam, until the obvious interests of their own constituents smack them sideways and bring them back to their senses. It can happen to anyone, even Mr. Cho - once an endearing nonentity, now a heroic defender of the realm.
jbarber@globeandmail.com
