The Toronto Sun just doesn’t get it. Jenny Yuen probably had good intentions when she wrote her cover article entitled “Toronto’s war on cars”, but I suspect her article was edited by her superiors to put more emphasis on city hall’s “war on cars”. The first half of the article sounds drastically different than the last half; emphasizing on cars getting the short end of the stick in Toronto. The first half almost reads like the Joe Warmington’s “Pedal-pushers a problem” column from the other week.
“It's city policy to put pedestrians, cyclists and transit ahead of automobiles as part of its integrated transportation plan. But despite an additional 10 million cars bought by North Americans each year, Toronto has no plan to accommodate the extra vehicles, said the city's manager of transportation services.”
What Toronto Sun writers fail to acknowledge is that improving congestion by focusing on traffic flow IS NOT the solution. Congestion is one of the reasons over 1 million people a day take public transportation instead of driving in Toronto. If they add 4 more lanes to the Gardiner or the DVP to improve traffic flow, those lanes would fill up quickly by people who were previously taking transit. The outcome would be instead of having 3 lanes of gridlock at rush hour, we’d have 5-lane parking lots. If you’ve ever driven in Beijing or Los Angeles you’d know that adding more lanes is not the solution; there simply isn’t enough space. The focus needs to be on public transit and other methods of transportation to get people out of their cars.
Reality check for Toronto Sun columnists who are adamant about driving: Getting other people out of their cars will benefit you if you continue using your automobile as your primary means of transportation; and for that you should be grateful that the city is putting so much emphasis on it.
Cover Rating: NEGATIVE NEWS
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