The people who show up at these public consultations are not the same people who live in this area. I think that the bike/anti-car nuts are severely overrepresented at these meetings. Hardly anyone rides bikes around Yonge/Eglinton, even in the summer. Pretty much everyone who lives in this area either takes TTC or drives. Traffic on Eglinton is horrible and we don't want to make it even worse.
There is a lot of condo development in this area which means that the light rail and the roads will be getting a lot busier. I have a strong suspicion that the LRT will be much busier than expected, because of all the new condo development. There are a whole bunch of buildings going up at Yonge/Eglinton right now. Also Don Mills/Eglinton has a lot of development potential, probably the most of any area along the line other than near Yonge - the Celestica site (if Celestica moves its headquarters somewhere else like Markham), the Real Canadian Superstore, the Ontario Science Centre parking lot and the parking lot in front of the Mormon church could all be replaced with dozens of tall condo buildings. Keeping Eglinton 4 lanes does not mean that Yonge/Eglinton "caters to the car", it just means that people have a choice between taking the LRT and driving.
Please show me any kind of data that shows hardly anyone around Yonge and Eglinton bike, because that is surely not what I have observed living there, both for leisure and for commuting, in every season. As well, you think because someone prefers to excercise, and save time by biking to commute, rather than sitting in a private auto, wasting gas and money, and getting to the office later, that the bike folk are "nuts"? Odd logic but whatever.
Secondly, if you take a look at land economics 101, you will know that by adding lanes, or having many lanes on roads and highways always results in increasing the incentive to drive for those who would normally be inticed to try alternative methods of commuting. In the end, this results in the same or a worse level of congestion on the roads that you mentioned above. Alternatively, if we removed one lane from certain roads, the opposite would occur and people would be incentivised to use other forms of transport. Of course we would have to have those options available, like oh myyy, bike lanes, and strong mass transit options with their own right of ways.
The reason why most of these people at the meetings are advocating bike and transit options might possibly be because they are concerned that the current "car only" model might actually not be sustainable given Toronto's growth projections. It's not a war on the car, as some absolutly moronic and combative people might suggest, its a war on congestion, which just happens to be caused primarily by the car. War is a bad term, its actually recognization, from those with the foresight, of the enevitable changes that need to take place, because (as you mentioned,) with higher densities we will need to move more and more people on the same arterials. Europe has been dealing with this for a lot longer than us, and they also love their cars for the record. Ford and his ilk are ignorant to the extreme when it comes to recognizing reality and are motivated stricktly by their own selfish personal desires.
For the record, I drive all the time for work, working in Mississauga and living in Midtown TO. I wish wish wish I could take transit. I could read or work on things on the way, and be more relaxed than I am commuting by car. However, getting to Mississauga Road and the 401 is simply not a viable option by transit right now, thats why the regional transit projects truly are mandatory if we are going to have a functioning region.
