Roads: GTA West Corridor—Highway 413

[ARG1]

I'm all for pragmatism.

In this case, a step towards defeating this highway is but one in a process.

I agree completely that Places to Grow, amongst other things would need to change too. I've repeatedly spoken of the need for downzoning and Greenbelt expansion. The highway would conflict w/these other goals.

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I also believe, indeed, I'm utterly convinced that is not only possible but infinitely preferable to accommodate population growth within the already urbanized region. Of course there is a limit to that......but I feel comfortable in saying we're at least 20 years from that limit.

If we can't find room for 2,400,000 people (to use your number x 20) in a whopping 2,500km2 ++ then shame on us.

That's only 1,000 /km2 more than what's there now.

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Finally, if I absolutely had to concede development of these lands, which I would do w/the greatest reluctance; I still would not want to see them highway/car-oriented.

I still want a transit-first, pedestrian-centric, 15-minute city model.

If all of the above fails..........its surely not my pragmatism that's the problem

If Jane Jacobs had taught us anything, Perfection and Idealism is the enemy of the good. If Step 1 is get rid of the highway, and you succeed? Great. Step 2 fails? Well then things would've been better if Step 1 failed as well. What we should be fighting for is tighter development control first, and highway 2nd. Honestly If the highway gets built, I wouldn't care that much. The impacts of urban sprawl being contained is far more valuable than a highway not being built. A highway that doesn't serve anyone or doesn't get properly used can easily be demolished, and the ROW can easily be reused for a bypass rail line, or some service corridor. This is ignoring the fact that I believe Highway 413 will offer benefits even if sprawl is contained.

 

[Northern Light]

If Jane Jacobs had taught us anything, Perfection and Idealism is the enemy of the good. If Step 1 is get rid of the highway, and you succeed? Great. Step 2 fails? Well then things would've been better if Step 1 failed as well. What we should be fighting for is tighter development control first, and highway 2nd. Honestly If the highway gets built, I wouldn't care that much. The impacts of urban sprawl being contained is far more valuable than a highway not being built. A highway that doesn't serve anyone or doesn't get properly used can easily be demolished, and the ROW can easily be reused for a bypass rail line, or some service corridor. This is ignoring the fact that I believe Highway 413 will offer benefits even if sprawl is contained.

You seem to pre-suppose that I have not been fighting on the Planning side ( I have); or that I have control of the timing of the different levels of gov't decision processes. (I wish it were so, but tis not)

I didn't determine when this decision would be made on this highway; nor do I know when/if any changes I hope to see happen in the planning process may come forward.

All I can do is lobby for them.

I am not the government.

Only a concerned citizen.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

Honestly If the highway gets built, I wouldn't care that much. The impacts of urban sprawl being contained is far more valuable than a highway not being built. A highway that doesn't serve anyone or doesn't get properly used can easily be demolished, and the ROW can easily be reused for a bypass rail line, or some service corridor. This is ignoring the fact that I believe Highway 413 will offer benefits even if sprawl is contained.

This is amazingly naive and 180-degrees wrong. Once the highway is built, you've permanently affected the environment and there is no going back. "Can easily be demolished?" You must be kidding. But if you have some free time, check out the wikipedia for a little road called "The Gardiner Expressway," and see what you find.

You can believe that 413 will offer benefits, but that's not a "fact" anyone is "ignoring."

I also don't believe you get "the same amount of sprawl," given what we know, and have long known, about the fundamental connections between urban growth and transportation infrastructure. The lack of highway makes these places less accessible, less attractive to purchasers (certainly those for whom it would have been a relatively easy commute to the City) and therefore less profitable for the developers to build on.

This is the Growth Plan map, with the highway corridor shown as a pinkish arrow...

...certainly at the eastern end, it turns through a big purple area that will grow but then it goes through the greenbelt and a big chunk of nothing. So, aside from that Vaughan/Brampton area, I don't see where you're getting lots of sprawl without the highway.

Developers buy land and hope. Sometimes it gets put in a greenbelt or otherwise taken out of their hands. That's life in a capitalist society. Just think back a few years to the Vaughan developers who got DelDuca to advance the Kirby GO plans; they KNOW they need that connection to make their development work. The fact that it's owned, does not mean it's developable.

And I understand the pragmatic argument that we're growing and people have to go somewhere etc.; there's always a push and pull. But the denial of this corridor reinforces pushing intensification growth. There's still lots of room in the urban area, particularly around all the transit infrastructure being built. Time will tell how it all shakes out and perhaps it's simple to assume the death of the 413 means there's no growth "out there" but I also don't buy you're just going to get a lot of sprawl that's super inefficient because there's no highway.

 

[ConformistsWake]

This is amazingly naive and 180-degrees wrong. Once the highway is built, you've permanently affected the environment and there is no going back. "Can easily be demolished?" You must be kidding. But if you have some free time, check out the wikipedia for a little road called "The Gardiner Expressway," and see what you find.

You can believe that 413 will offer benefits, but that's not a "fact" anyone is "ignoring."

I also don't believe you get "the same amount of sprawl," given what we know, and have long known, about the fundamental connections between urban growth and transportation infrastructure. The lack of highway makes these places less accessible, less attractive to purchasers (certainly those for whom it would have been a relatively easy commute to the City) and therefore less profitable for the developers to build on.

This is the Growth Plan map, with the highway corridor shown as a pinkish arrow...
View attachment 317173

...certainly at the eastern end, it turns through a big purple area that will grow but then it goes through the greenbelt and a big chunk of nothing. So, aside from that Vaughan/Brampton area, I don't see where you're getting lots of sprawl without the highway.

Developers buy land and hope. Sometimes it gets put in a greenbelt or otherwise taken out of their hands. That's life in a capitalist society. Just think back a few years to the Vaughan developers who got DelDuca to advance the Kirby GO plans; they KNOW they need that connection to make their development work. The fact that it's owned, does not mean it's developable.

And I understand the pragmatic argument that we're growing and people have to go somewhere etc.; there's always a push and pull. But the denial of this corridor reinforces pushing intensification growth. There's still lots of room in the urban area, particularly around all the transit infrastructure being built. Time will tell how it all shakes out and perhaps it's simple to assume the death of the 413 means there's no growth "out there" but I also don't buy you're just going to get a lot of sprawl that's super inefficient because there's no highway.

That pink arrow doesn't reflect the current proposed corridor route, the discussion about the highway going to Guelph has been dead for nearly 10 years. Its a high level map, even the Brampton/Vaughan portion would actually run north of the purple through the white/green.

 

[Student99]

I also don't buy you're just going to get a lot of sprawl that's super inefficient because there's no highway.

You don't live in Peel or travel there regularly, do you?

 

[Student99]

The most exciting thing in Canadian politics is one level of government having to step in to clean up another's mess (see also: Spadina Expressway).

To be honest IMO we would have been better off in terms of GTA traffic flow if this was completed. Perhaps not the route they planned that would have destroyed some nice heritage, but something alongside it. For a major world city, our road connections and expressways are laughable

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

To be honest IMO we would have been better off in terms of GTA traffic flow if this was completed. Perhaps not the route they planned that would have destroyed some nice heritage, but something alongside it. For a major world city, our road connections and expressways are laughable

I'm not the sort to opine that all highways are bad but I do think we were "saved" in some respects by not building freeways everywhere.

That said, I think what you're talking about says more about a lack of integrated regional planning than road-building, per se. I could just as easily say that our lack of transit connections is what's laughable.

Buuut I'd also say some of this is hindsight and the truth is that the GTA (and Toronto and Peel etc.) grew the way it did is because of when it grew and there's not much you can do about that. But what you can do is learn from your mistakes, not repeat them and do better in the next generation. At least on paper, that's what we're trying to do now. That's why this particular highway is a dumb idea that would be a waste of money, destructive of the environment and undermine the larger policy goals that have been put in place.

 

[afransen]

To be honest IMO we would have been better off in terms of GTA traffic flow if this was completed. Perhaps not the route they planned that would have destroyed some nice heritage, but something alongside it. For a major world city, our road connections and expressways are laughable

I think what could have been done instead, is allow arterials to be arterials. Many of the supposed arterials in Toronto have far too much access and were foci of development. Arterials aren't and will never be 'places'. They are just conveyances between places.

 

[ARG1]

I'm not the sort to opine that all highways are bad but I do think we were "saved" in some respects by not building freeways everywhere.

That said, I think what you're talking about says more about a lack of integrated regional planning than road-building, per se. I could just as easily say that our lack of transit connections is what's laughable.

Buuut I'd also say some of this is hindsight and the truth is that the GTA (and Toronto and Peel etc.) grew the way it did is because of when it grew and there's not much you can do about that. But what you can do is learn from your mistakes, not repeat them and do better in the next generation. At least on paper, that's what we're trying to do now. That's why this particular highway is a dumb idea that would be a waste of money, destructive of the environment and undermine the larger policy goals that have been put in place.

That's kind of the issue isn't it? Toronto doesn't have good public transit or a good highway network. Earlier I brought up Jane Jacobs as a "lesson to learn from" and this is the reason why. In the 70s we had a big plan to build a ton of highways around the city, and she led a massive protest to cancel all of them. Problem is that we didn't get anything to compensate other than the Spadina Subway which, great there is a replacement for the Spadina Expressway, but that's it. Nothing was ever done to replace the Scarborough, Richview, or Bayview Expressways and now we're stuck in a position where our transit has been laughable for the past 50 years, and we didn't get our promised highways either. I'd rather have a decent freeway network than absolutely nothing at all.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

That's kind of the issue isn't it? Toronto doesn't have good public transit or a good highway network. Earlier I brought up Jane Jacobs as a "lesson to learn from" and this is the reason why. In the 70s we had a big plan to build a ton of highways around the city, and she led a massive protest to cancel all of them. Problem is that we didn't get anything to compensate other than the Spadina Subway which, great there is a replacement for the Spadina Expressway, but that's it. Nothing was ever done to replace the Scarborough, Richview, or Bayview Expressways and now we're stuck in a position where our transit has been laughable for the past 50 years, and we didn't get our promised highways either. I'd rather have a decent freeway network than absolutely nothing at all.

Interesting, isn't it, then that it seems so much easier to build/expand highways in the GTA than it is to build transit. It's not like there has been a drought of transit plans but the funding seems to favour roadways over transit despite the fact that fewer motorists on the regions roads does improve the capacity of the roadways to move goods through the region.

Alas...

 

[kamira51]

Interesting, isn't it, then that it seems so much easier to build/expand highways in the GTA than it is to build transit. It's not like there has been a drought of transit plans but the funding seems to favour roadways over transit despite the fact that fewer motorists on the regions roads does improve the capacity of the roadways to move goods through the region.

Alas...

Gee it's not like I haven't been advocating for the construction of new rail corridors in car dominated areas, but it seems like all the governments care about is upgrading existing corridors. When the liberals caned this project the first time, they had two years to develop a better alternative, and they presented nothing and still present nothing.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

That's kind of the issue isn't it? Toronto doesn't have good public transit or a good highway network. Earlier I brought up Jane Jacobs as a "lesson to learn from" and this is the reason why. In the 70s we had a big plan to build a ton of highways around the city, and she led a massive protest to cancel all of them. Problem is that we didn't get anything to compensate other than the Spadina Subway which, great there is a replacement for the Spadina Expressway, but that's it. Nothing was ever done to replace the Scarborough, Richview, or Bayview Expressways and now we're stuck in a position where our transit has been laughable for the past 50 years, and we didn't get our promised highways either. I'd rather have a decent freeway network than absolutely nothing at all.

Ultimately, we are talking about systemic issues.
The City was pushing for those expressways and Jane et al got a grass roots movement going on and the Province had to step in and slap them down.
Similarly, the Province has been pushing 413 and the now the Feds have to step in.

Yes, it's a shame that by the 70s, we really stopped building transit. If the City (and Province, of course) had kept building as growth spiked in the 80s and 90s and 00s, we'd be in better shape and instead we got kind of the worst of both worlds. I mean, it's not that bad but I agree we boldly decided to stop the expressway building and failed to correspondingly say, "BECAUSE we're building transit instead!"

Now we're trying to catch up and lord knows it's uphill, rejigging every line 3 times before putting shovels in the ground etc. I know there are some urbanists who pull their hair out any time they hear about a new road and ESPECIALLY a new highway, and I don't think that's right; we do still need certain roads and I'm kind of 50/50 on the Bradford Bypass, for example. I just looked at this particular one and decided it was mostly to help truckers and lead to new neighbourhoods where we don't need to build them right now, and that too much environment would be trashed to make it happen...and that was my personal conclusion. I think it's also become clear that there's just an icky, too-close relationship between this government and developers and while that's not unique, it really feels like there are a few big donors pushing for this highway more than anyone else. There are also some perfectly fine developers pushing for transit-oriented development but no one has to do investigative news stories about them.

We just need to do better and while it's easy to make excuses about the housing crisis and whatnot, I don't think this highway would be a solution.

 

[Fritter]

I just wanted to say that I am really enjoying the debate recently in this thread. I find the debate very constructive. Points and positions on both sides are reasonably being understood and thoughtfully considered and it seems like an old school professional debate as opposed to a more modern online bash fest.

 

[Allandale25]

A thorn in the Ford government’s side: How these three women helped galvanize the fight against the controversial Highway 413

A music teacher, a former research analyst and a retired air force officer orchestrated a series of pitched battles with municipal, regional, and provincial governments.

www.thestar.com

 

[Scotian]

To be honest IMO we would have been better off in terms of GTA traffic flow if this was completed. Perhaps not the route they planned that would have destroyed some nice heritage, but something alongside it. For a major world city, our road connections and expressways are laughable

Even strictly speaking in regards to roadways the problem wasn't cancelling Spadina, the problem was not having any additional capacity north-south through the city wider than two lanes each direction between the 427 and the DVP. Ditto for crosstown after they turned St. Clair into the streetcar ROW.

Combine that with incredible growth and lack of transit building and you have the commuting nightmare we see today.