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The Toronto Sun once again has proven its ignorance toward gridlock issues in Toronto. Mike Strobel’s column this morning argues that we should be timing our traffic lights to improve traffic flow but not for TTC vehicles or bicycles.
What Mr. Strobel fails to comprehend is that any modest improvement in traffic flow on Toronto’s streets will be met by an equal amount of new cars on the road. This is the same reason that adding more lanes to Toronto highways will only make gridlock worse.
It’s simple: the demand for roads will always exceed the capacity (in Toronto) - that is a reality.
Strobel refers to Hamilton’s timed lights working well to keep traffic flowing. Of course it works well in Hamilton because there are less cars. In Toronto there are millions of people who take the GO train, TTC or bike to work. At any given moment any of these people could easily jump in their car and take it to work – if traffic flow was improved.
This is simply not the case in Hamilton. Some day in the future Hamilton demand will exceed the capacity of road space, but until then timed lights will work well.
Furthermore, Strobel also fails to understand that timed traffic lights can only work on one-way streets. Toronto has very few one-way streets, so converting the two-way streets would be necessary to even make his suggestion possible. The last thing I’d want to see is King street or Queen street turn into a Richmond or Adelaide. It would remove all liveability from these streets.
This is the problem with simpleton media like the Toronto Sun. You can’t expect any kind of analysis from some of the writers – only emotional drivel. That’s why the Sun thinks there is a war on cars, but the truth is that investment in bicycle infrastructure and public transit is the only way to reduce gridlock.
You need to provide people an alternative to driving, otherwise our roads will always be over-capacity.
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