The bigger, the not so better.

75% of Ontarians is too heavy. Yet $220 mln is set aside for more lanes on the Queensway in Ottawa, while bike paths should be financed by 'sponsors' and health care cost is ballooning.

We are slowly gearing up for the provincial elections in Ontario. It is the time that you’ll find party leaders cuddling babies in daycares, helping old ladies crossing streets and serving food in soup kitchens. It is also the time that money is promised to a plethora of projects. On June 7, the Liberal government annouced to improve ‘the split’, an area of highway 417 between Nicolas (a downtown street) and a place where the highway splits into a part going East-ish toward Orleans and a part going South East towards Montreal. This whole thing is going to cost $220 mln dollars (that is Ottawa’s bicycle budget for 100 years).

Does it make sense?

No it doesn’t. It will certainly give a temporary reprieve of congestion, but as every city planner in the world knows, adding car lanes has never solved a traffic jam problem.

Not too long ago, I was talking to Bob Chiarelli about bike infrastructure on a provincial level. Mr. Chiarelli thought it was a great idea if we could find sponsors to pay for bike paths. That surprised me and it shows how little this cabinet understands the traffic issues of today. Rather than downloading money to municipalities to improve cycling infrastructure, to build proper networks and maintain them, the Liberal Party doles out even more money so that suburban commuters can sit in a traffic jam a few kilometers further instead, as all that traffic has to go somewhere eventually. And what are we talking about, an hour and half in the afternoon per day of clogged traffic at the most, for 5 days a week?

Pulling 220 million dollars out of a hat for a highway that will be too small within a few years just before an election, smells very much like using tax payers money for an election campaign. The goverment should instead have come up with ideas to spread traffic more over the day, by offering incentives to stay out of traffic, promote working from home, give incentives for companies to improve shower facilities, connect transit and cycling facilities further out in the country. Dare I say, that even giving bikes away is much cheaper….

At least the NDP is promising to cap gas taxes (now that is a brilliant plan to get your CO2 emissions under control) and Tory Tim Hudak is fighting for a buck a beer (Tim understands the big picture). It is going to be an interesting election.

Meanwhile healthcare cost is happily chipping away at our provincial budgets: 75% of the Ontarians is overweight or obese. But let’s build bigger highways or make the beer cheaper or cap the gas prices.

Keep an eye on your granny, she might be hijacked by a party leader soon.

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