Last night marked the third and final MTO Hanlon workshop studying the proposed improvements to provincial Highway 6 through Guelph. I am a bit disappointed with the results, but happy that changes are likely to be made to the official plan. My position on the upgrades remains that if we had adequate investment in non-road infrastructure, road infrastructure wouldn't be in such dire need of upgrades, but I'll get to that.
The evening started at 6pm with the usual collection of sandwiches, drinks, and cookies piled up on a table at the end of the rather small room. In the initial and final socialising time I was playfully chastised by my several of my elders for my comment last week about being "far and away" the youngest person present. I welcome the news that so many of my peers are reading these entries, but I digress.
During the session, each of the four tables was provided with the plans that each of the four groups came up with last week and given some time to look over and comment on each of the other's proposals.
All four tables' proposals had two basic features in common: Stone Rd interchange was substantially reduced and turned into a single loop on the west side, and a diamond interchange on the east side of the Hanlon, and a service road of some form was present to Kortright/Downey. College Ave was not provided with an exit or service road on any of the proposals. My table's proposal of a roundabout under the Hanlon at Kortright was coolly received by our peers though I believe it is the best approach, eliminating one set of traffic lights completely, and smoothening traffic flow at that interchange. Traffic there is mostly limited to local traffic, so getting used to a roundabout is not a significant problem, as some people believed, though it is more expensive than some other approaches as it requires a significant span over the interchange.
Ultimately a consensus formed between the tables and I predict that the resulting "preferred plan" will contain a two-way service road tacked onto the 90-degree curve on Woodland Glenn from Downey to a reduced interchange at Stone Rd. I am not sure whether we accomplished this as a workshop, or if MTO was planning this scale-back regardless. I don't expect ever to know the answer to that. At the start of workshops two weeks ago, we learned that the Stone Rd extension to Highway 24 has been nixed by the city, negating the need for a huge 6-lane overpass at Stone and full interchange. That change allows for Stone to not be diverted southward, and the interchange ramps to be fewer in number and smaller in scale. That in turn allows for the service road that was nearly universally desired.
I am not really satisfied with the results of the workshops, though I accept them as legitimate. Not everyone is going to be happy with such a process, but MTO can say, accurately, that the community was consulted and this is the result that they were given. I note that repeated questions throughout the workshops about air quality were never satisfactorily answered by the MTO. I am told that the city's air quality monitor is in Exhibition Park, a large park set well back from the Hanlon in a relatively low density part of the city, and that air quality baseline studies for the Hanlon have not been done to ascertain what effect the Hanlon changes will have on the air we breathe.
The biggest question for me remains: when is a highway finished? At what point will we look at this highway and say: it doesn't need any further work. One of the gentleman from the MTO at my table was politely annoyed by comments at another table that we needn't save room to eventually expand the Hanlon to 8 lanes, which would force MTO to look for a new corridor sooner. I challenged him on this point, saying more capacity would be necessary, but more highway capacity was not. Once we are done this upgrade, we are going to upgrade Clair to the 401, 401 to Freelton, Wellington to Woodlawn, and Woodlawn to highway 6 well north of town. 2 of those sections require entirely new rights of way to construct. When will we call it finished?
We are going to have to change our approach to highway construction to divert more travellers to mass transit sooner or later. To do that, we have to start somewhere, and the collective resistance to starting that process is troubling to me. We will never accomplish it by injecting millions of dollars into highways when the alternative solutions are a small fraction of the cost. GO Transit's recent announcement to work toward all-day service in Guelph is refreshing and definitely the right track, but the level of investment of that compared to the GTA West highway corridor proposal, Hanlon upgrades, new highway 7 and so forth is essentially insignificant.
My challenge, for the moment, to us is this: let's call transit "infrastructure" instead of a "service", and let's put one tax-dollar into transit for every tax-dollar we put into our roads, parking, and highway systems. In Guelph, from our city budget -- excluding these upgrades -- that looks something like this...
The 2008 operating budget of the City of Guelph is $143,454,237 net.
The 2008 capital budget of the City of Guelph is $32,464,901 net.
Of that $175,919,138, $7,840,051, or about 4.5%, is our net expenditure on transit in the city's budget.
Our net expenditure on roads and parking is more difficult to ascertain.
A chart in the city's capital budget suggests that we are spending $117,718,000 over 10 years on new road construction, mostly funded by developer charges, and $128,720,000 over ten years, entirely funded by the taxpayer on capital investment in current roads, for a total of $246,438,000 on capital road investments in that time period, of which $155,537,000 is directly funded by tax-dollars. The 2008 specific numbers with development charges removed show $8,680,000 tax-dollars for expansion and $12,870,000 for non-growth capital investment in Guelph roads. The parking budget shows a capital expenditure of $16,910,000 on parking in 2008. Together, our capital investment on roads and parking is $38,460,000 in 2008. The keen eye will note that that number exceeds 100% of the capital budget for the year. That is because the parking investment of $16,910,000 shows up as a capital expenditure in a separate document called the "user-pay" budget as opposed to the "capital" budget. I am no accountant so how all these things glue together is not entirely clear to me.
Our operating budget for roads consists of $3,740,800 in roadway maintenance, $1,621,300 in boulevard maintenance, $748,200 in roadway drainage, $2,010,000 of traffic signal maintenance, and $113,100 in traffic investigations which mostly consists of adult crossing guards and traffic counters. Our operating budget for roads and directly related expenses is thus $8,233,400 for 2008.
Therefore the total cost to the City of Guelph taxpayer for roads in 2008 is $46,693,400. The total cost to the City of Guelph taxpayer for transit in 2008 is $7,840,051. That doesn't count provincial road investment in Guelph, namely highways 6 and 7.
My bet is that road costs will drop faster than transit costs rise, if we start shifting where we spend our money. As such, aside from the environmental benefits, it should be possible to lower our taxes by raising our investment in public transit. By calling transit "infrastructure" rather than "service", new developments can and should be responsible for paying for the extension of transit systems into their development areas as part of the development charges. Having development charges provide for transit would also encourage transit-friendly development as that would be a way of minimising that cost for a developer.
So there you have it. I am happy that the community was able to come together on some kind of agreement for the Hanlon improvements at Kortright, Stone, and College, but I am disappointed that we are not, collectively, looking at the bigger picture and looking for ways to get us out of our cars rather than facilitating this addiction we nearly all have.
This morning's Guelph Transportation forum put on by the city and Guelph Chamber of Commerce was quite interesting. A number of topics I have mentioned here and in my articles and presentations in the past seem to have worked their way to the front burner and that is really good to see. Mayor Farbridge kicked it off with a reference to this morning's article in the Mercury about GO Transit's plans for Guelph, setting the tone.
As an aside, I hope that the city and GO transit seriously consider this proposal before it is too late, given this news. The pittance of parking that will not even remain downtown after the construction of the transit hub will never satisfy GO riders' needs.
The boiled down version of the presentation by four members of Guelph's city staff to a business audience of about 100 with reporters from CKCO, the Tribune, and the Mercury, is this:
- Car usage in Guelph is rising faster than the population.
- Truck usage in Guelph is rising faster than car usage, at a rate of increase of 2% per year.
- Approximately 50% of municipal budgets are allocated to road maintenance and construction.
- Highway infrastructure improvements in Ontario are focused on trucks, not cars.
- A new highway corridor is being considered along the south side of the Niagara peninsula to connect up to the Hanlon.
- A new highway corridor is being considered off the new 6/7 interchange at the top end of Guelph through Toronto and east past Oshawa.
- At least three new highway corridors connecting that one to the 401 are being considered, one east of Guelph, and one on either side of Oshawa.
- No new railway lines are being considered for construction.
- City staff are looking at the North Mainline Municipal Alliance business case study of 2006 seriously.
- The Fergus subdivision, the rail line connecting Guelph directly to Cambridge, has entered the city's radar scope as a transit opportunity.
- Guelph Transit is moving from 3 hubs (St George's Square, the University Centre, and Stone Rd Mall) to 7 (adding Wal-Mart, West End Rec Centre, a facility on Clair Rd., and a facility in the east end of the city.).
- Guelph Transit is moving to 20 minute bus service on July 6th, has purchased 4 new Nova busses to achieve this, and is hiring 20 more full time drivers to join the existing 115 full time drivers.
- Guelph Transit is raising bus fares from $2 to $2.25, and increasing the rates of most passes, at the same time.
- At the same time, Guelph Transit wants to work with businesses to offer reduced-rate bus passes to their employees to discourage automobile use.
- Guelph is not a bedroom community, with 15,000 commuters exiting the city and 25,000 commuters entering the city on a daily basis.
- Guelph Transit Commission has a federal charter as a result of having once operated over the border... yes, the Canada/US border. That'd be a fascinating bit of history to dig into. There are no known restrictions on Guelph Transit's busses operating outside of city limits.
- Transportation Demand Management (TDM) is an important buzzword that we will be hearing more about, encompassing all modes of transportation and really meaning finding ways to get people out of their cars.
Among the interesting slides was this rather startling bit of information about Guelph's distribution of commuting practices, entitled "Businesses, Employees, Travel Choices:
While Guelph does not appear in a copy of GO Transit's 10 year plan that I acquired last year, it seems the loud calls of Guelphites demanding their attention and arrival have not gone completely unheard. Magda of the Merc's blog says their goal is no longer to ignore Guelph, but to provide us with all-day service. Now that's a transportation improvement I can endorse.
While we're on the topic of transportation, of course, I have to note several things.
Tomorrow morning is the Guelph Transportation Forum at the Italian Canadian Club starting at 9:30. If you can go, you should. Tomorrow evening is also the final of the MTO Hanlon workshops, which is the one place I hope not to be railroaded. I will no doubt have more to say about that later this week both here and on Royal City Rag Wednesday evening.
Then there's the Windsor-Detroit bridge crossing. $5 billion, a mere $400 million of it Canadian taxpayer money from first looks, is expected to be announced in a couple of months to build a second bridge from Windsor to Detroit. This will no doubt attach to the $1.6 billion freeway through town, for $2 billion of taxpayer dollars.
Finally, we're spending $26 million to turn highway 402 into a parking lot near the Sarnia-Port Huron border crossing.
Coupled with the $400 million for the new highway 7, minimum $200 million for Hanlon upgrades -- that is: $50 million for the previously and frequently discussed south Guelph stretch, plus the section from Wellington to Woodlawn, Woodlawn to north of town, and 401 to Freelton, the latter three projects of which have received very little public attention -- one has to wonder what it would actually take for that all-day GO service GO transit wants to give us. If we put as much into that as into the highways, I mean.
Last weekend, Charles Caccia, a 36-year veteran of the House of Commons and a strong advocate of environmentalism ahead of his time, passed away. Here is a collection of the tributes to him, in chronological order, from Hansard from this week.
I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to a colleague who passed away over the weekend, the former member for Davenport,
Charles Caccia. He was the environment minister a few years ago. He first came to the House in 1968 and, as an environmental warrior, he spent
36 years in this House trying to convince as many voters as possible that we need to protect the environment. A real fighter, in 2001, he introduced a
bill for mandatory labelling. We must not forget that Charles Caccia, who died this past weekend, had been trying since 2001 to convince
parliamentarians here to bring in this mandatory system. Unfortunately, the House rejected his bill, 126 votes to 91. This bill thus has a history.
Mr. Speaker, it is with great sadness that I rise today to acknowledge the passing of a dear friend and former Liberal member of Parliament, the
Hon. Charles Caccia.
Mr. Caccia was first elected to the House of Commons in 1968 to represent the riding of Davenport and was subsequently re-elected nine times,
where he served as minister of labour, minister of the environment and Liberal opposition critic on environmental issues.
After leaving Parliament, he went on to serve as Senior Fellow at the Institute of the Environment at the University of Ottawa.
Mr. Caccia was more than a respected member of Parliament. He co-founded COSTI, Canada's largest immigrant service agency and was cherished and
respected by his community. He was a great Liberal who dedicated his life to building a better Canada. His many accomplishments and his longstanding
commitment to the people he served as an MP will not be forgotten. His passion for environmental and social justice issues was a great inspiration to
all.
On behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada and our caucus, I wish to extend my sincerest sympathies to Mr. Caccia's family and friends. He will be
missed.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the Hon. Charles Caccia, who passed away this weekend.
In 1993, as a veteran parliamentarian, Charles must have been bemused when 201 rookies, myself included, came to this place. I clearly recall
turning up at Charles' environment committee without a starting point of a clue what committee was about.
Charles took me through the steps, always exhibiting the highest sense of respect and patience. He encouraged my participation in parliamentary
associations. He emphasized the importance and the significance of members of Parliament attending on the world stage.
Charles Caccia was a man who proudly marched to his own drummer frequently leading the way where others had not gone. Although he and I had little
in common politically or philosophically, it is an honour for me to have this opportunity to pay him tribute.
Charles Caccia was a man who made this Chamber a better place in his 36 years and into the future through those of us who remain. In that respect,
Charles Caccia lives on in our Parliament today.
Mr. Speaker, I, too, would like to honour Charles Caccia.
[Member spoke in Italian and provided the following translation:]
He was an accomplished Parliamentarian and former Minister of Labour and the Environment. My heartfelt condolences are extended to his family, his
friends, but above all to the community.
As a student, I involved myself in his first federal campaigns. At the time, he, like no other, succeeded in personally expressing the collective
character and personality of the people he represented, people from other countries, with abundant energy and resources adaptable to the creation of a
new and "just society"; as it was defined by the new Prime Minister of the period.
We, Italian Canadians, saw him as a vehicle for change, and integration into a society that emphasized civic responsibility and concerns for
one's neighbours.
In Davenport, his dedication became iconic and for new arrivals, a role model. Thanks Charles.
Mr. Speaker, today I rise to pay tribute to the life of the Hon. Charles Caccia, a distinguished former colleague and my predecessor as Dean of
the House of Commons.
Charles was the member for Toronto--Davenport for 36 years and, while he was here, he established a reputation as one who practised politics with
dignity, with principle, with civility, with independence of mind and with a deep, abiding and well-informed concern for the environment.
It is not an exaggeration to say that had Charles Caccia been listened to more often over the years by both Liberal and Conservative governments,
many of our ecological problems would be far less difficult than they are today. Unfortunately, he was the minister of the environment for only a very
short time.
His concern for the environment was part of a larger ethic of care that made him an advocate for peace and social justice in general and a mentor
to many in this place. I worked with him in the mid-eighties when we were our party's respective environment critics, on the environment committee, on
the special committee on acid rain and on many issues of mutual concern over the years.
Many others will also gratefully remember the excellent work he did more recently as chair of the environment committee for over a decade,
producing critical reports that challenged his own party and government.
Parliament could have used a lot more Charles Caccias. May his memory be instructive now and in Parliaments to come.
According to Stephen Harper, his mentor, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, was the leader of a Liberal government. Mulroney's Liberal government created the Co-ordination of Access to Information Requests System in 1989, and therefore our current, first-ever Conservative government had to kill it for the good of government transparency. Transparency in government is, evidently, only useful through two offset polarised lenses.
Here it is: CAIRS has to be killed because it is a Mulroney-Liberal program. From yesterday's Hansard, relevant bits underlined:
Hon. Stéphane Dion (Leader of the Opposition, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, the government took another step to limit transparency and accountability. It quietly killed the CAIRS, which allowed everyone to know what information Canadians had requested about their government through access to information.
Why did the government shut down the registry? What does it have to hide?
Right Hon. Stephen Harper (Prime Minister, CPC):
In fact, Mr. Speaker, this is a government that has actually widened access to information. The database in question was created by the previous Liberal government. It was called the product of a political system in which centralized control was an obsession. That is why the government got rid of it.
Yesterday's MTO Hanlon workshop lasted around 7 and a half hours, which is a long time for any citizen to be locked up with any government ministry other than perhaps Correctional Services.
We started off by individually organising flash-cards into our orders of priority. They were, in no particular order: Applied Environment, Social Environment, Cultural Environment, Access, Traffic Flow, Cost, Constructibility, and Natural Environment. After extensive discussion and game-like activities, the whole room came to a sort of consensus that Social Environment, Natural Environment, Access, and Traffic Flow were the priorities, with Constructibility, Cost, Cultural Environment, and Applied Environment not being major considerations.
The sharpest division at my table in the early going was between making Natural Environment or Traffic Flow the highest priority. My preference was for the environment for the simple reason that roads are kind of irrelevant without a functional environment, and any changes to the MTO's plan has to take the environment as a key consideration. To that end, of course, I registered my objection to upgrading the Hanlon at all, when we have far more cost-effective alternatives. For the cost of these few interchanges, for example, we could more than double passenger rail service through Guelph, or make Guelph Transit free for half a decade, without counting the three other sections of the Hanlon that are being upgraded as part of this plan but not yet on the table for community feedback.
The current "preferred plan". Red = new construction.
A gentleman at my table told me that he commuted to Waterloo for work for 20 years. If he had to take transit, he said, it would take 3 hours each way, while a car takes only about a half-hour. I told him that we have to build up the transit infrastructure so that businesses move closer to transit because that will be the best thing to do for their business. He replied that we have been doing it this way for fifty years and it will take a long time to undo the car culture we have. I agreed with him, and said to the effect: so let's get going! We have 50 years of car culture damage to undo, but we have to get started. My objection to these upgrades is that we are continuing this 50-year old way of thinking rather than even beginning to fix or undo it.
There seemed to me to be a lot of denial about the declining usefulness of the automobile at the workshop. There is a widespread belief that oil will be replaced by some sustainable alternative fuel and our car culture will be saved. While I think it is possible, if unlikely, I think it entirely misses the point. Even the cleanest cars will have serious emissions in their construction and initial transport. Importing a hybrid from Japan, for example, generates significant emissions from the bunker oil trans-oceanic ships use. The particulate from brake-shoes, tires, windshield washer fluid, and other components of vehicles will still be causing pollution as well.
Far more of a concern to me is the land use demands of a car-based culture. As our population continues to explode, we are eating up some of the best farmland around with the world's most profitable cash crop - single, detached houses, serviced by paved roads and accompanied by chemically dependent lawns. While single detached houses are very attractive to people, including myself, they are in no way sustainable with a growing population. The flip side to that is that if our population stopped growing completely, our existing way of life would probably be completely and permanently sustainable and at that point I would be perfectly willing to support highway improvements because they would not lend to increased traffic, only increased efficiency for the existing traffic.
Each new development brings with it more cars. More cars bring more demand to the highways. More demand to the highways bring us to more congestion. More congestion brings us to improved highway design. Improved highway design without any foresight brings us to these workshops. The Hanlon was built with 4 lanes and intersections at grade, with plans to build full interchanges and upgrade the highway to at least 6 lanes. The right of way itself is wide enough for quite a few more lanes than even that.
For myself and the few other members of the workshop who would actually admit it, how to go about suggesting highway improvements is a difficult balance. The balance is between being a driver, a local resident, and a thinker. As I have said in the past, as a driver, paving over the entire province to allow me to drive anywhere in a straight line has its appeal. As a resident, gut-reaction NIMBYism strikes where there is a desire to have fewer cars go through my backyard, as opposed to the thinking side of the balance, where there is an implicit understanding that highway construction as we currently do it must end. There must be fewer cars in all our back yards -- not just mine.
So as a participant in the workshops, what does one do to balance this?
For me it was fairly simple. I made it clear to the participants at my table, at least, that improving our highway will only serve to give us more cars. The improved highway will facilitate more transient traffic, obstructing Guelph residents' own ability to travel within the city. I noted, as I have many a time before, that the MTO, city staff, and other such planners do an excellent job within the parameters they are given by our political leadership, who in turn are given direction by you and me, the voter. Change away from these highway improvements and toward real improvements has to start with us telling our politicians to direct our planners accordingly. But I also conceded that this highway is likely to be upgraded and, with my objections on the record, I would do what I could to propose an alternative design for the highway beneficial to the goal of improving the highway.
In my view, if the highway is going to be improved anyway, the best thing we can do is:
1) Keep its speed down -- although as a driver that irks me. As another participant noted: how fast do you drive through other peoples' communities? Having an 80 km/h limit instead of a 100 km/h limit on our city's internal highway shortens exit ramps, and allows us the possibility of not cutting off as many parts of our community. It also allows improved fuel efficiency, something that is going to become a very serious issue in the short term, as it was shortly after this highway was originally built in the first Energy Crisis
2) Ensure access to all roads that currently connect to the Hanlon. The MTO's plans call for creating a commuter-only interchange at Kortright, that is, an interchange that only points away from the city, and cutting off College Avenue completely. While the right of way is large enough for a service road that would rectify this, there are no such plans to do so. The workshops gave us the opportunity to put those back on the table.
3) Minimise land use and the expropriation of peoples' homes. One resident of Old Hanlon Rd. whose house is scheduled to be expropriated and demolished to make way for an exit ramp was in attendance largely to get a sense of when his period of limbo would end, a position I cannot even begin to imagine myself in.
As each group presented draft plans, I was given a chance to present my idea, which differed, as it always seems to do, with that of everyone else present. But unlike the consensus plans reached in the room by day's end, which essentially looked like the MTO's preferred plan with two exit ramps removed and a service road added between Stone and Kortright, completely eliminated the Stone Parclo ("partial cloverleaf interchange") without endangering pedestrian crossings or cutting off any roads.
My approximate proposed alternative plan. Green = new construction. Red = existing Hanlon. Blue = existing relevant roads.
My plan, seen here (click on the image to show the enlarged version), is to have an exit ramp between College and Stone heading southbound that either climbs over or dives under the Hanlon to cross over to the east side of the highway to meet up with the northbound on-ramp in a 4-way intersection on Stone. The ramp would continue as an entrance ramp onto the Hanlon by crossing back over the Hanlon south of Stone and re-merging on the west side, with the lane forking and connecting up to a grade-separated roundabout under the Hanlon at Kortright. This construction would allow north-side access to and from Kortright, which would be eliminated under current MTO plans diverting a good deal of traffic over roads that can't handle it, have a traffic-light free flow allowing reduced sight lines and a smaller land use footprint at Kortright, and more importantly, would allow Old Hanlon Rd. to not only be not expropriated and overrun with a cloverleaf, but to be reopened at the Stone Rd. end to act as a service road to connect College Ave to the Stone Rd exit and take traffic off all the curvy residential streets in the area that would otherwise be getting the College Ave and Kortright local traffic. Stone Rd interchange would function essentially as it does today, without backing up the highway. As the Stone Rd extension to highway 24 has been nixed, there was general agreement at the workshops that the Stone Rd interchange could be simplified dramatically from the substantial Parclo A4 that had been planned.
The over/under concept for a service road exit ramp to the opposite side is not without precedent. The idea comes from the document "Protecting The Option For Future Interchanges And Grade Separation In The Hanlon Corridor City Of Guelph", Report #10 of the Guelph Transportation Plan of 1974. According to Plate 2 of this document, this exact setup was originally intended to create a service road between Speedvale and Woodlawn along Lewis Rd.
The only drawback to this plan is the construction of two additional single-lane overpasses or underpasses, which is expensive, but the reduced land use, improved pedestrian safety from altogether avoiding a Parclo, and the elimination of all residential expropriation, as well as allowing essentially full access to all three roads instead of only one, makes it an attractive solution to me, as both a driver and as a resident. If the highway remains the same and the minimum $50 million is put directly into undoing 50 years of damage from this type of construction in the first place, I will be just as happy. As far and away the youngest resident present, I suppose, I am concerned about a longer-range future.
My conclusion from this exercise is that the MTO and the city are concerned about the views of the residents along this corridor. These workshops must have cost the project, and by extension you and me, in the area of $150,000 between the staff time, document preparation, food and facilities, and other expenses. That they would spend that much time and money and not have some intention of listening is somewhat unlikely. Whether they will listen to the proposals, all of which scaled down their plans, demanded a lower speed limit on the highway, and opened access to Kortright, or they react by poking holes in all the proposals, will be clear on the 13th, when the third and final workshop session will take place.
The organisers have promised to take all of our proposals back to their offices and return them to us at that time, drawn to scale, with their assessments as to their feasibility. It took 34 years to get to this point, so I am not entirely sure how they can get that done in just 10 days, but I will be sure to let you know if and when I find out. Meanwhile, I hope the MTO staffers who told me yesterday that they read this blog "to see what the other side is saying" continue to enjoy the dialogue.
Last night, I attended the first of three workshop sessions put on by MTO, Guelph city staff, and their design consultants on the topic of the building of interchanges on the Hanlon expressway.
The night was long but is nothing compared to how long tomorrow will be, when the two dozen residents and the planning staff spend the day locked in a room together to allow residents to propose alternatives to their plans for 7 hours. Whether we will be listened to or humoured through this process, only time will tell, but one attendee last night cautioned the organisers that he was not interested in participating in a "dog and pony show". While organisers emphatically denied that this is what it was, the "8 assumptions" put up on the screen at the end of the night seemed to suggest otherwise.
The Hanlon upgrades are most controversial because of the effect they will have of changing the Hanlon from an intra-Guelph highway to an inter-city highway. Of the three interchanges that we are being talked to about, only one and a half will remain under what the designers call their "preferred plan". Kortright Rd will have a commuter-only exit and entrance, facing south. College Ave will have no exit whatsoever and be converted into an underpass. The adjacent roads to the Hanlon expressway that are unable to handle significant traffic and were not designed for the purpose will have to handle the domestic Guelph traffic between the remaining interchange and the city streets that will be cut off.
The general consensus among the residents is that this is not necessary, that interchanges can be built without cutting off all the roads, and that noise levels and particulate levels can be reduced, if the speed limit on the highway remains 80km/h as it is today. There is also a feeling that as gas heads for $2 a litre, the highway upgrades should not be the priority so much as alternate modes of transportation.
In their three hour presentation, the staff told us that the province has put $3.4 billion into transit solutions in the province over the last few years, although they didn't mention how much is going into highways. $1.6 billion had been announced earlier in the day to build a 12 km stretch of highway in Windsor, half a billion dollars are about to be spent on highways in Guelph, and there are a lot more cities with a lot more highway projects throughout the province. Another staff member showed an (incomplete and not completely accurate) rail map of the region with GO lines depicted saying that we are investing in transit, which is true, but that it was a subject for another day, which is not.
A representative from the MTO asserted that there has been no modal shift away from the automobile, and none is projected. Therefore, he said, this highway is necessary. While I will concede that if there are more cars, there will be more roads to accommodate them, I will also note that as we have more roads to accommodate them, there will be more cars. The logic that because there will be more cars there needs to be more highways is both shortsighted and self-fulfilling.
The plans for the highway are not only about upgrading the section near where I live to remove my neighbours' access to it, but it is about extending the highway across the 401 to connect up to Highway 6 south of the 401, to connect it north of Woodlawn to highway 6 north of Guelph, and to connect it to a new divided Highway 7 and GTA West highway corridor at the top of the city. This will turn the expressway from a short highway that helps Guelph citizens get around and in and out of Guelph into a freeway designed to bypass the city. There is a growing sense in the community that the MTO and the province see Guelph as little more than a speed bump on the way to Waterloo region.
I have it on some authority that the organisers of these sessions did not want the press in attendance at this event. Naturally there is nothing more attractive to members of the press, and Magda Konieczna, the Mercury's intrepid city hall reporter, attended the event. At the start of the session, the organiser went around the room getting everyone to introduce themselves. At the end of the introductions, she announced rather unhappily that there was a reporter from the Guelph Mercury in the room. It sounded to me more like a warning to staff than any kind of introduction. About half of Guelph City Council were in attendance as well.
Over the course of the evening, questions were occasionally taken from the floor. The most critical question was about speed limits. There is a near-universal desire to keep the highway to 80 km/h (100 km/h design speeds) through Guelph as I mentioned a moment ago, to allow for more useful interchanges and less noise and air pollution. The question was asked: is lowering the speed limit on the table? Yes of course it is, assured the moderator, while being countermanded by the 5-pound briefing package we had been given and by MTO representatives who seemed to suggest that it was only on the table insofar as we would be told why it was not possible.
Why is it not possible? Well, according to one of the last presenters, it is not possible because drivers are too stupid to handle an 80 km/h speed limit. That's not how he phrased it, but that's essentially what he said. Drivers see a freeway, they expect a 100 km/h speed limit, and therefore that's what we will give them. And so they will continue to expect it. When I asked if the MTO would consider left-hand exits, the reaction was swift and decisive: it's too dangerous to have a left-hand exit. Drivers, I assume, are too stupid to handle those, too, notwithstanding the 403 eastbound to 6 northbound exit or the 40 eastbound to 15 northbound exits in Montreal, or any of the dozens of forks in highways all over the place, all of which are perfectly usable left-hand exits. If he is right and drivers are too stupid to handle our roads, why are we encouraging more of us to drive, anyway?
I also had the opportunity to ask last night when the Hanlon would be finished. That is, at what point will everyone be satisfied that the highway is big enough, long enough, fast enough, and sufficiently inaccessible that we can call it completely and totally done? My question was met with a blank stare. Indeed.
PMO to Auditor General and officers of Parliament: your message passes through us
Does Prime Minister's Harper's disrespect for democracy and its institutions have no limits, no bounds, no end? New rules being proposed by the same government that fired our nuclear safety officer and voted non-confidence in Elections Canada would require all officers of Parliament to filter their public statements through, you guessed it, the Prime Minister's Office before being released to the public. Auditor General Sheila Fraser is fighting back. There really are no words to express my shock at this proposal.
It's got to make you wonder. The Conservative's finance minister is the same one that managed to hide a deficit over $5 billion in Ontario under Mike Harris. I've argued for months that we are already in deficit. Is the purpose of suppressing the Auditor General to ensure that his deficit is hidden yet again?
Just 5 years after it was first announced, architectural drawings for Guelph's new south end emergency services building were unveiled at a public meeting last night, but it's still some years away.
It will include an apparently bookable "community room", a safe haven -- a room anyone can walk into and lock with a direct line to 911 operators, a collision reporting centre, which I'd never heard of before but is apparently a place to go to report minor collisions rather than waiting for police to show up on the scene, a firehall, and an ambulance bay, along with some police offices, but it will not be a police precinct. That's the basics. It's worth noting that of the 22 people who attended the event at the Salvation Army building on Gordon, only 7 were residents, including 2 couples, and 15 were city, EMS, fire, police, and architectural staff. No city councillors or media were present.
The highlights of the new firehall for me are threefold:
1) The whole southern portion of Guelph will enter a 4-minute response time window for fire services. This is currently not the case with the southernmost firehall being on Stone Rd near the mall. 6 firetrucks will live at this firehall, to be situated next to Bishop Mac on Clair Rd, along with up to 7 ambulances.
2) I inquired as to the future extendability of the facility and it turns out that the groundwork for extensions is being built right into this emergency services centre. The centre section of the building can have another floor added in the future, and the "community room" is being built with a ceiling over 2 storeys high that can eventually be retrofitted to include several more offices. There are also plans in the works to build a windmill on the property to power the building and achieve LEEDS Silver certification. While I suspect that half a century from now, when Kitchener-Waterloo, Cambridge, and Guelph are essentially one city at current growth rates, this emergency facility will need quite a bit of extending, the fact that they're planning for any at all is a good sign.
3) The whole facility is expected to cost just $9.6 million, less than 2/3 what we plan to spend on each of the two parking garages downtown. That I find particularly interesting.
The downside of this, of course, is that it will take another 2-4 years before the south end gets this facility. For a rather needed firehall and EMS centre first announced in 2003 to take longer than the duration of the entire Second World War to be planned and built is somewhat perplexing to me. Downtown's Wilson St lot, after all, was announced in March, will cost significantly more, is taller, in a built up area rather than a greenfield, houses cars rather than services or people, and should be done in a year. And it won't put out any fires.
This time it's in presumed lost revenue from parking tickets for parking overnight on city streets, if that's any comfort. A rough tally of what we're planning to spend on driving in and around Guelph over the next few years is now at a minimum of $481,312,500.00 of announced programs.
For reference, Guelph Transit has a budget of $18,155,960.00 this year, of which $10,315,909 is projected to come from fare and other revenue (such as on-bus advertising), for a net expense of $7,840,051 taxdollars this year (according to page 24 of the City's budget). All things being equal, our general subsidies into cars in Guelph and area (not counting things like existing road maintenance) over the next couple of years would allow the various levels of government that are currently preoccupied paving over the region to make riding the bus free by paying all of Guelph Transit's revenue -- for approximately 46 years. Incidentally, that's only slightly more than the number of years of monthly bus passes each parking space in the new parking lots will cost.
So effective is our road investment in Guelph that to attend the council meeting last night, in which Council agreed to give up our dependency on $126,000 of revenue from violating our parking laws, that I needed to drive the 6 km from my home to City Hall. I could have taken the bus, of course, but with Guelph's ingenious 40-minute peak-hour service, I'd have had to leave over an hour earlier than I did to arrive on time for council's sitting.
Guelph to rail using industry in 1974: can you move to trucks?
In 1974, the Guelph Junction Railway, Guelph's city-owned railway that contracts out its operations, was bringing in $54,000 per year, $30,000 per year of which was profit. The city had a population of 65,000 and was projecting to hit 120,000 by the year 2000. We are hitting that level about now, not too far off the mark. As the city planned for its transportation future, it foresaw the role of railways diminishing and sought ways to reduce the railway tracks in the city obstructing the roads. In spite of the GJR's stellar operating ratio, the City surveyed all the rail-using industries in the city to find out how many railway cars they moved each year, what they carried, and whether they could move to trucks.
I came across this rather interesting piece of information last night while reviewing Guelph's 1974 transportation studies relating to the then under-construction Hanlon Expressway, and our rails, transit, and parking situations.
The section of the report entitled "Rail Service in Guelph, Report 14" dated October, 1974, discusses the consolidation of the Guelph Junction Railway through the city, then operated by Canadian Pacific, onto Canadian National tracks through town, noting that one drawback is that the GJR's revenue would be lost. This is an excerpt from page 17 of the report: "As stated earlier, the C.N.R. (sic - this should read "C.P.R") lease some rail line within the City. The C.P.R. pay the City 40% of the gross profits derived from this line. This amounts to about $56,000.00 per year and results in a net profit of $30,000 per year for the Guelph Junction Railway. This revenue would be lost with the rail consolidation proposal."
In the pursuit of this peculiar goal, table 4.1 of the report reads as follows:
SURVEY OF INDUSTRIES AFFECTED BY RAIL CONSOLIDATION
COMPANY
DO YOU RELY ON RAIL SERVICE?
WHAT IS THE FREQUENCY OF SHIPMENTS?
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE SHIPMENTS?
ARE TRUCKS USED FOR DELIVERY?
COULD RAIL SERVICE BE REPLACED BY TRUCK?
United Co-Op of Ontario
totally
5 cars/week
Incoming - 1/2 bag, 1/2 bulk
Yes
Impossible
Gay Lea Foods
very much
almost daily
Outgoing - 50 lb. bags of powder
Extensively
Difficult
Armco Canada Ltd.
absolutely
7-10/wk outgoing - 5/wk incoming
Structural plate culverts
Extensively
Impossible
W. C. Woods
totally
500 cars per year
Crated appliances
Within 300 mile radius
Impossible
Oaks Precast Ind. Ltd.
very little
less than 1/year
--
Almost totally
Easy
Intnl. Malable Iron Ltd.
no
--
--
--
--
Resco Refrig. Supplies Co.
moderately
2-4 cars/month
Appliances incoming only
Extensively
Easy
Texaco Canada Ltd.
No
--
--
--
--
Hart Chemical Ltd. Witco Chemical Ltd.
totally
6-10/wk incoming 2/wk. outgoing
Liquid chemicals
Extensively
Impossible
Hogg Fuel & Supply Ltd.
no
--
--
--
--
Guelph Paper Box Co. Ltd.
very little
--
Incoming paper box board
Extensively
Easy
Uniroyal Ltd.
extensively
1 car/w incoming 2 cars/wk outgoing
Bales of fibre, rubber carpet underlay
Extensively
Difficult
Fiberglass Canada Ltd.
extensively
1 or more/day
Powder raw materials (special cars)
Extensively
Difficult
Kaufman Lumber Ltd.
largely
2 cars/month
Lumber from B.C.
Extensively
Difficult
Jay Gor Ltd.
no
--
--
--
--
Several things strike me about this chart.
Chief among them, a profitable, government-owned railway, where more than 50% of its revenue is net profit, the Guelph Junction Railway, is here asking its customers if it could possibly ditch them. The final recommendations of this report say that "all existing rail lines appear to be serving a useful purpose" however "it would appear, based on this brief investigation, that there is merit in the City working towards ultimate consolidation of this service on the C.N.R. lines and partial or total elimination of the Guelph Junction Railway trackage within the City of Guelph."
Another is that all of the industries, regardless of their use of rail, rely on trucks, with none using rail exclusively. At least one that described its ability to switch entirely to truck as "Impossible", WC Woods, did exactly that some time between when this report was published and when I moved to Guelph, and has since not only moved away from its 500 freight cars per year of rail entirely to trucks, but has recently moved some manufacturing to Mexico.
The rail-related surprises for Guelph don't end there in this pile of reports. In 1974, it described the two C.N.R. lines through Guelph as "considered essential". The secondary track, going through Guelph along the north-south axis, was rated according to this report at 40 mph -- generally the highest speed (and therefore best condition of track) secondary lines achieve. A few years after this report was released, that line was included in Guelph's official parks plan as a walking trail. It was abandoned and ripped up north of Guelph all the way to the coast of Lake Huron, but remains intact and serviced a couple of times a week between Guelph and Cambridge, and is the track I have repeatedly advocated be used for a Light Rail Transit connection between Guelph and Cambridge. It connects to Waterloo region's proposed LRT alignment in Hespeler.
The last surprise that I have found in this relating to rail service in Guelph is in the report entitled "Protecting the Option For Future Interchanges And Grade Separation In The Hanlon Corridor City Of Guelph, Report 10" dated June, 1974. This report describes advance planning for all the interchanges and railway crossings on the Hanlon expressway that would eventually be needed, and are only now being prepared for implementation. Why it was not all done when they had the chance in 1974 I am not sure, but that's another topic. As this entry only relates to rail surprises I'll stick to that.
Guelph has two industrial tracks that cross the Hanlon between Speedvale and Woodlawn. Ontario Southland Railway and Goderich-Exeter Railway, the two shortline operators that have taken over from CP and CN respectively in Guelph, each cross each of these two crossings on the Hanlon once each way per day, adding up to 8 trains crossing the Hanlon each day. Not surprisingly, having two busy crossings on a divided highway within about a half mile of each-other is not something highway planners are thrilled about. Their preferred plan, in 1974, was to close both railway crossings and build a new connection off the main east-west line through Guelph west of Elmira Rd, then in farmland, now becoming built up, to connect to the west end of the industrial tracks, as shown in Figure 7 of the report. Figure 3.1 of the previously discussed Report 14 pertaining only to rail service in Guelph shows a map in which the two industrial tracks are already connected to each-other at the west end, east of Elmira road, which Report 10 does not show. That track would have allowed a single overpass and the closing of the other crossings with substantially less work, I suspect, but that connecting track is now gone, and the proposed connection in this report was never built, leaving those two grade crossings in place 34 years on.
If it all seems rather confusing, it is. The conclusion of all this is that, in 1974, Guelph was looking for ways to de-emphasise rail, while it was making a profit for the city and encourage the freer flow of trucks and more industrial usage of trucks away from rail. Opportunities Guelph and the province had to close railway crossings over the highway relatively simply are no longer as viable. We are entering a time as gas is projected to exceed $2/litre in the next few years where trucks are going to have to be de-emphasised in favour of rail, and truck-encouraging policies and infrastructure changes that have been discussed for some 34 years are now coming to the front burner.
At the south end of town, in the industrial park where the large Tim Hortons distribution facility and Sleemans brewery, among others exist, the City is allocating hundreds of hectares of land to expand. The industrial park will span both sides of the Hanlon expressway and a $16 million interchange is to be built to help trucks get in and out. There are several railway lines within a few miles of this land, and as the earlier chart shows, rail using industry also need access to roads for their trucks. Why we are not building, planning to build, or even setting aside an easement to eventually plan to build a railway line out to this rapidly growing industrial park is, to say the least, not entirely clear to me.
We have a lot of work to do, it seems, to try and break this 1974 way of thinking about rail and trucks.
I have to ask my fellow Canadian bloggers: if American bloggers had taken as keen and active a partisan interest in the Liberal leadership race two years ago, spinning and defending, insulting and chastising our candidates, how would you react?
Tory spokesman: In-and-out is like AdScam, a scheme to keep money off the books
The spokesman is no less than Peter Van Loan... take a look at this interview with the CBC's David Gray this afternoon, a bit over 5 minutes into it.
Here's a transcription of the relevant section done by yours truly:
04:38 David Gray: ... do you think there is any political motive behind what elections Canada is doing?
04:46 Peter Van Loan: Well, I would hope that it would stand up in court, that we would be held to the same standard as other political parties and all political parties in Canada should be treated equally and that is the core of our court case and we think it would be very alarming if there was a different set of rules for each political party so that's why we brought the dispute to the courts.
05:04 Gray: Again though, can I ask you, do you think there is any political motive behind what Elections Canada is doing?
05:08 Van Loan: Well, I don't, I'm not going to ascribe motive to them. I do find the unequal treatment unusual and I do observe that when the Liberals engaged in that sponsorship scandal where millions of dollars of taxpayer's money was stolen where it was spent for political purposes to help them campaigning where people have actually been prosecuted. The RCMP has been involved, we saw another arrest last week, (interrupted) they actually gave back some money...
05:29 Gray: Alright, but that's (interrupted) that's (interrupted) that's a different issue but I appreciate what you're saying...
05:33 Van Loan: But it is the same issue in that money was spent off the books in election campaigns. ...
