Tuesday, June 7, 2011

LRT IS ALSO AN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE

Light rapid transit, light rail transit??? $800 million dollars??? I've been torn over this issue. My family and I spent five years in Toronto in the mid 1980's. We parked our car Sunday night in the underground parking at our apartment building and there it stayed until the following weekend. Public transit (subways & buses) are fabulous in Toronto. As an environmentalist, anything that keeps people out of cars and puts them into public transit is good news. But the cost!!! And for me the politicians involved. I've been around long enough to no longer be naive. There is a lawyer's joke which I'm going to adapt here to politicians. "Its not fair that 99% of politicians give all the rest a bad name." My dilemna was in wondering if LRT is merely the "Legacy" project that all politicians want their names associated with.

I have a Bachelor's degree in Economics from the University of Waterloo (1974). I've known for some time that our and the world's economic systems are not sustainable. Too many people (and growing) and too few resources (shrinking rapidly). This isn't rocket science. Well thank you Steve Kannon of the Woolwich Observer. Steve has nailed my economic and LRT concerns right on the head. Last Saturday's (June 4/11 pg.#14) Observer has the following story "LRT debate based on Ponzi-scheme economics." If you haven't already read this Editorial please do. If you have read it, please do so again. Simply put the Region of Waterloo are placing all their eggs in the unsustainable mantra that growth will solve everything. It doesn't! It causes huge and eventually overwhelming problems. People wake up and see what a mess we are leaving our children and grandchildren.
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2 comments:

  1. Michael DJune 7, 2011 at 12:05 PM

    Except that the Region is not suggesting that growth will solve anything. It's the reverse - they are saying that growth poses problems for infrastructure, for existing neighbourhoods, and for farmland. But that the growth is happening and we need to deal with it.

    This is the comment I left on that column:

    And there’s a very good reason such considerations won’t be on the table. The Regional Municipality of Waterloo has no legal ability to restrict growth. In fact, it is mandated to plan for growth by the Province of Ontario, which in turn is guided by Federal immigration targets. Not every community is slated to receive growth, but the ones that are should be making sure that they are not debilitated by it.

    It seems you would suggest that the Regional government should discourage growth, which it cannot do. The Regional government could avoid proactive planning for growth, but that would result in a far higher impact in terms of infrastructure and services, with poorly planned sprawl instead of more efficient urban growth.

    To quote one of the delegations at this week’s public meetings: it’s not “If you build it and they will come”, but rather “They are coming, so you had better build it”.

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  2. AlanJune 7, 2011 at 1:05 PM

    We might have to agree to disagree. For sure I didn't express myself well when I suggested that the Region believes that "growth will solve everything". In fact the Editorial by Steve Kannon suggests that the Region are planning on ongoing neverending growth and Steve says (and I agree) that this can not go on forever. Either as a Region, province or country or the world we are already straining the earth's abilities and resources.

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