A streetcar names annoyance

They're a relic of the past. Those bright red behemoths rolling noisily down Toronto's streets. Councillor Rob Ford says we shouldn't expand their service. A lot of Torontonians agree with him. It's time to end the reign of the TTC's streetcars.

They've been a land mark of Toronto since the beginnings of the city as a major metropolitan area. Today's Red Rockets exist for nostalgia more than anything else. They worked when they were first installed in the 1920s. Then again, downtown Toronto had a fraction of traffic it does today. Skip ahead 90 years and the trams are little more than a nuisance.

A debate came up in the office yesterday about just how noisy they are. A lot of residents complain about being woken up by them. They're also a menace to traffic. They're limited to moving along the centre lanes of roads, often blocking traffic if cars are parked along the street. Passengers have to step into a live traffic lane to get on and off. Sure, the cars are supposed to stop but we all know the don't. In response to the safety issues, the city has built dedicated streetcar only lanes on some streets such as Spadina and St. Clair. The latter caused an uproar by local businesses due to the reduced parking and traffic flow issues it caused.

The city is actually planning on expanding this already antiquated system. They want to install multi-car light rail trams like the ones used in many European Cities as part of the Transit City project. This includes expanding streetcar service to the airport. It makes little sense to do this. All it does is add more traffic to already congested roads.

Rob Ford says he would scrap Transit City all together. What the usually frugal councillor is proposing would cost a bundle. Get rid of the streetcars and replace them with subways. As much as the city badly needs some fiscal restraint right now, he's right. Subways are a more permanent solution to the transit problem. Since they run underground, they're not affected by traffic and weather. Therefore, they can run faster and carry more people. They also don't block car traffic or generate noise pollution. For all the time and money they spent digging up St. Clair Ave., they could have built another line connecting it with the existing Young line. There are plenty of areas that would benefit from additional north/south and east/west routes.

Toronto residents have been screaming for better subway service for years but nobody wants to pay for it. The two subway lines have four times the daily ridership than all the streetcar lines combined. If you want to improve Toronto's traffic, just spend the money instead of wasting it. The TTC doesn't need more relics of the past. With most of their vehicles dating from the 70s, it has enough of those already.

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War on Terror Ends: Bin Laden Victorious

I'm declaring the War on Terror over today and it looks like underdog Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda are victorious. I'd send him a poisoned cake to congratulate him but it seems the US doesn't know where he is.

The Western world has finally reached the point where protection against terrorism has broken constitutional law for the average citizen. Airport security will now be allowed to break Section 8 of the constitution by conducting body scans and pat downs without probable cause to make sure you're not going to blow up a plane. This truly sickens me. It is placing a major limits on our rights to be secure from unreasonable search and freedom of movement. Perhaps what sickens me even more is how apathetic the Canadian and American public feel towards their constitutional rights being violated. If there's any questions about how dictators rise to power with wide public support, this answers it. People won't resist as long as the changes happen slowly enough.

I have decided that I will not fly period if I am to be subjected to this kind of treatment. I'd rather take a train or a ship. Sure it takes longer but consider the advantages of sailing to Europe on a luxury liner. It costs the same but you get world class food and entertainment, and the ability to stretch your legs. Plus, you're only subject to your bags being scanned by an x-ray when you board. The trip is a vacation in itself, compared to flying which is more often than not a nightmare. Believe me, I went through my own airport hell just days before this "attempted attack" happened, though it had nothing to do with security. Still, the way things are being dealt with bothers me a lot.

Airport security has been largely a joke in the years following 9/11. Statistics show that you are no more or less likely to be in a terror attack today than you were 20 years ago. The folks at technology site Gizmodo estimate the odds of being a victim in an airborne terror attack are 1 in 10.4 million. You are 20 times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning. Not including the people in the WTC, only 647 people have died worldwide in such incidents from 1999 to 2009. The airline industry averages 7 billion passengers a year. They colourfully state that the you could flytwo round trips from Earth to Neptune before being in an attack. Wikipedia (not a reliable source but good enough for quick info) states that there were 13 major hijackings in the 1990s compared to 12 in the 2000s.

So with these statistics, it would seem that terrorism is not a major issue at all. We have poured billions of dollars into security and we are now forfeiting basic human rights and dignity to secure our airliners. It has gotten increasingly difficult to support anti-terror measures when all the hard facts are considered.

It leads one to question whether the measures put in place since 9/11 are doing anything at all. We are no longer allowed to bring bottled water, we must walk through security barefoot, we used to joke about being susceptible to patdowns. Yet somehow, someone managed to elude dutch security and smuggle a firecracker onto an airplane. Yes, the "bomb" was probably no more than an M-80 or something similar. Unless he was lucky enough to get this thing near a fuel line, it probably wouldn't have brought down a plane, or killed anyone but himself. No one has ever heard of these measures stopping an attack. It would seem like that would be something the government would brag about.

One security expert cited in a recent news article noted that the only realistic improvements to security in the last eight years have been reinforced cockpit doors and passengers knowledge that they must resist attackers. Reading between the lines, this translates to the other stuff just being fluff. It's designed to make civil servants look like they're actually doing something when they're not doing anything. Indeed, the only reason this man, a known threat, got on the plane with the firecracker is because some Dutch civil servant failed to do their job. I could go further and say 9/11 was caused by the exact same thing. How on earth could a group of men get on a plane with box cutters? It's not like they didn't use metal detectors or x-ray bags at the time. It's not exactly an object anyone would conceivably need on a plane.

Obviously the problem doesn't lie in more stringent security measures but rather better training for security guards. There was nothing wrong with the measures in place before 9/11, just in how they were being executed. It is well known that Canada Customs uses students during the summer to man land border crossings. With such little training, how can these people be effective or trusted? I believe that to be an airport security guard, or any border agent, one should have the exact same training that a police officer does. They should be subjected to the same privileges and legal limitations that they are as well. Further intensive training should be given to teach guards how to spot suspicious behaviour. Beyond the baggage x-rays and metal detectors, they should have no right to search you without reasonable cause. You should also have the right to refuse if they don't give cause. If explosives are an issue, begin using trained dogs. Finally, get rid of those full body scanners. I don't want some stranger looking at my private areas. I don't care what the privacy commissioner says, these are illegal.

These changes I'm recommending would relax security to the point where it doesn't affect law abiding passengers, and only singles out those who may be up to something. Airports would be more efficient, we'd still be secure if not more so, and we wouldn't be subjected to the violation of our rights and dignity.

I don't blame the Harper government for enacting these ineffective and undignified measures. They were forced into it. I do blame them for folding so easily to pressure from Homeland Security and the Obama administration instead of resisting it. The US cannot be allowed to dictate to us like this. 9/11 was terrible but not terrible enough for us to abandon the principles that our two great nations were built on. For any doubts, I leave you with a quotation from one of America's own founding fathers. Written in 1775, Benjamin Franklin said this. "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety".

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Loving to Hate the Bike

I think it's fair to say that Canadians have a love-hate relationship with the bicycle and those who ride them. Especially now that cycling has become a "green" alternative to driving. I'm sure everyone who drives has been tempted to throw a milkshake at those spandex clad idiots who run stop signs and insist on riding down busy roads barely wide enough for car traffic. Cyclist see car drivers as a threat to their safety as many don't pay attention to small vehicles. The debate rages over who should get priority on our streets. Now that Saint Al of Gore has put the fear of anthropogenic global warming into the minds of the public, certain politicians have shown increasing hostility toward the car. Cyclists shut down Bloor St in Toronto yesterday during the rush after former Ontario Attorney-General Michal Bryant ran one over in an alleged road rage incident. It is increasingly becoming apparent that bicycles and cars cannot coexist on city streets.

Generally speaking, cyclists are the problem. As I said, they have a complete disregard for the rules of the road. They run stop signs & red lights, they do not yield to motor vehicle traffic, they ride on roads that are unsuitable for cycling, they don't signal their intent, they cut drivers off, they ride on busy sidewalks. Most cyclists don't like to admit it but few will outright deny it, opting instead to just avoid the question. I swear they must have a death wish. Who do you honestly think is going to win a battle between a car weighing in at a metric ton versus a bike that weighs 180lbs including rider?! The end result is slow downs in traffic flow and higher risk of injury and death than there needs to be. Of course drivers cannot be totally excused as many react with aggression to people on bicycles, or simply do not make themselves aware of their presence. To the first one, I think the cause of it can be blamed on cyclists no obeying the rules. The problem is that there is no clear route to punish cyclists who do break the rules. Drivers can be fined, given demerit points, have their vehicle impounded, or have their license taken away. Most of these options don't exist for people on bikes. There seems to be little will to even run safety blitzes for them as is frequently done with cars and trucks.

So what's the solution here. For many politicians, bike lanes seem to be the obvious one. What is a bike lane though? In most cases it's just a line paved down an already existing street, making it increasingly narrow for motor-vehicle traffic. It's just too expensive to widen existing roads to add them. In Toronto, which has bike lanes aplenty, most are considerably underused. You can drive down a busy street during the rush and maybe see one or two cyclists in them. The rest are weaving in and out of traffic or are riding on the sidewalk. The lanes are uneconomical for another reason, that being they can only be used six months out of the year. Vary few are loony enough to ride in the dead of winter when it's twenty below outside. So why waste that money when the road could be widened for more car traffic, or to expand transit which solves pollution issues and can be used all year round.

I think the best solution is to make cyclists pay for the roads in the same way drivers do. Currently, drivers must pay $70 annually for plate renewal, double that if you live in Toronto, to maintain roads. That means filling potholes, resurfacing, expanding the system, repairing bridges, ploughing snow, salting & sanding, and sweeping debris. Should cyclists not also be made to contribute considering that they too are using the roads? The solution would be to require bikes to be plated in the same way cars are. So if the rider is over 16 years of age, their bike would require a small, mandatory annual renewal fee of say $10 to $20, which would go directly toward road maintenance and the construction of bike lanes. For the fee they get a license plate that is attached to the back of their bike. This serves a number of uses. We generate additional revenue of course. It also allows us to track cyclists who aren't abiding by the rules of the road. See one doing something dangerous? Call the cops and given them his plate number. Enough serious infractions and they would not be able to renew their plates, thus be unable to ride their bike, just as we do with car drivers. Cyclists would benefit from this program as well, as plates would serve to curtail the serious problem of of bike theft, or at vary least increase the odds of recovery. When the cyclist takes their new bike to be plated, the make, model, colour, and serial number would be kept on file. If the bike were stolen, police could use it to easily track stolen bikes back to their proper owner. In essence, this would not punish cyclists but rather force them to be treated like any other vehicle on the road, which is what the Highway Traffic Act already stipulates. It might put the breaks on their holier than thou attitudes as well.

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The Case for High Speed Trains

Imagine zipping from Toronto to Montreal in less than an hour and a half in smooth, quite comfort for a ticked price at half of what it would cost to fly there. This is a reality in many countries around the world, such as in France, Japan, the UK, and even the United States. It's an alluring prospect that has met with mixed opinions on the subject. Of course I'm talking about high speed trains such as Japan's legendary bullet trains, France's record setting TGV, and the Amtrak's Baltimore-New York Accela Express. The trains run on electricity from overhead wires or a third rail just like a subway does and are propelled at speeds up to 300km/h. They can also be adapted to most current rail lines. By contrast, modern diesel trains used for VIA rail are no faster than your typical car trip.

The debate is currently raging in Alberta over whether to build a high speed rail link between Calgary and Edmonton. The Calgary Herald editorial board argues against building such a link as it would likely run far over budget and end up costing tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars more than expected. In my opinion, building such a train between those two cities probably isn't practical. However, a link between Toronto and Montreal would be highly feasible and indeed beneficial. The highway between the two cities is frequently jammed and flights are expensive. A low cost alternative would likely attract millions of business travellers and create thousands of new jobs. It only makes sense to expand the transportation corridor between Canada's two largest cities in terms of population and economics. The current rail system is based on archaic technology and we are lagging far behind other countries. Bombardier Transportation is a major manufacturer of high speed trains, including the Accela and TVG. It's almost an embarrassment that we refuse to invest in our own Canadian technology. The big concern though is still tax costs. The government really needs to encourage private industry to take a role in it in order to reduce the taxpayer burden. Government owned rail lines simply don't work as there is no incentive to innovate or attract passengers away from other modes such as the airlines. This is why they become huge money pits. If done properly, it could be made a reality. We just need to get over the hurdle that is our fear to invest in badly needed infrastructure.

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Noise Pollution

With all the talk about global warming and such, one form of pollution which can be just as harmful to one's health seems to get ignored. That is noise pollution. My current living situation went from a quiet neighbourhood to the equivalent of living next to the 401 in three year's time. I have found myself living in my guest bedroom just to be able to sleep at night, as it is on the opposite end of the house facing away from the road. Studies have shown that too much exposure to high levels of loud, unwanted noise over a long period can have serious long and short term health consequences. These range from elevated stress and irritability to high blood pressure and hearing loss. There has been a lot of debate on the subject and what frequently comes under attack are things such as leaf blowers, lawn mowers, and fuel powered radio controlled model cars and planes. However, what people forget is these objects are not run continuously. Your neighbour might run a leaf blower for a couple of days a year, for maybe one hour tops. The sort of 24/7 noise is rarely if ever dealt with in Canada. I've had a lot of time to consider the issue and have tracked down some common sources of this form of irritation.

The Backup Alarm
You know this one well if you've worked or live near a construction site. Beep, beep, beep. It goes for hours on end. These alarms are installed into commercial vehicles supposedly as a safety feature to let people know when you're backing up. Implemented by law, they were originally supposed to alert people from being run over. I have never heard of a single case of this happening though. The high pitched, constant beep serves more to irritate people than prevent them from being run over. People should try paying attention instead. I personally think these should be banned all together as they are a major source of noise pollution, especially if you live near new developments like I do. These do nothing to enhance safety.

The Engine Break
A feature on diesel engines, it uses engine compression to slow down the vehicle rather than using a traditional fiction break. They work especially well for large vehicles such as tractor trailers and dump trucks. However, they are considerably noises, especially on trucks that have poor exhaust mufflers. This is especially a problem in older vehicles. They make that burrr, bum bum bum, which is said to sound similar to a jackhammer but is 10-20 times louder. Laws against these are varied. Many municipalities forbid the use of them near residential areas though these laws are rarely if ever enforced. Truck drivers are a slimy bunch and often disregard these so called "insignificant" laws restricting where they can go. Tougher fines and better enforcement would nip this problem in the bud. The cops could make a mint.

The Motorcycle
My model aircraft are limited to 90dB at three meters. That's why I find it ironic that they hammer us so hard on noise limits but motorcycle engines are often significantly louder. Now, I can understand why motorcycle drivers have tuned their bikes to be loud, because not all of them are. Bikers want cars to be able to hear them coming since bikes are frequently overlooked by drivers. However, some are so loud that they go beyond reason. Stricter noise limits should be placed on bikes for them to be street legal.

The Thrush Muffler
The teenagers seem to love these. You put them on your exhaust and it's supposed to turn a 1990 Honda Civic hatchback into a 1969 Dodge Charger. Unlike what many stupid kids think, these don't improve the car's performance one bit. They also make it sound more like a bus or a tractor that a supercharged muscle car. The solution here is the same for motorcycles, stricter exhaust noise limits for cars.

The Sound Barrier, or Lack There Of
Many roads within municipalities have suddenly become main thoroughfares when they were not before. New houses also seem to be cropping up that are adjacent to main roads. The problem is that municipalities are refusing to build sound barriers to reduce the noise level for these people. In new developments, the developers usually put them up but for the older residents who suddenly find themselves living next to a main road are often crap out of luck. This has been my fight with the Town of Milton. Spend $74,000 for a sound barrier for me and my neighbours? Pass. Build a $1 million glass wall imported from UK for new City Hall? Heck yeah!

Poor Urban Planning
One of the biggest sources for noise pollution isn't the objects generating the sound but the fact that these objects are placed too close to residential areas. Take my mall issue for example that seeks to place a huge shopping plaza behind my house and widen the road to a main truck route.
More interest is being put into potential tax dollars rather than properly designed neighbourhoods that separate main industrial centres and busy commercial facilities from residential areas. Everything now is just a hodgepodge where anything can go anywhere without regards to noise or other forms of pollution generated.

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Green Hysteria = Tax Revenue Gold

I opened up the paper this morning and was met by yet another story on global warming. This one disgusted me more than most since the fears of many GW debunkers are coming true. BC has become the first government in North America to institute the much dreaded carbon tax. Who will pay this tax? Not businesses but you, the ordinary citizen. Namely motorists and those who heat their houses with hydrocarbon fuels such as oil and natural gas. In other words, most BC residents will be footing this bill. The tax will be set at $10 a tonne of carbon dioxide, increasing the price of gas another 2.4 cents per liter. As you probably know, BC already has some of the highest gas prices in the country. They play to increase the tax to $30 over the next five years. They gave an example of a person driving a pickup truck $40,000 a year. This is a typical vehicle a construction worker or trades-person would drive. The tax alone would add another $500 to their fuel bill. I find that utterly outrageous. What makes this more upsetting is other provinces, particularly with less cool headed liberal governments will likely follow suit. Quebec is already talking about instituting a tax.

BC Finance Minister Carole Taylor said "We promised you green and today we deliver green." Noting that "This is an important turning point for B.C., and we think for Canada because we are out in front on this," she said, suggesting the new tax could raise up a new "social movement." So basically, this social movement means that already overtaxed Canadians will have to stretch their budgets even further in order to pay for a problem that does not exist? This is just another blatant cash grab by left wing governments looking for any excuse in the book to tax their citizens further. What makes this particularly outrageous is legions of people, brainwashed by the lies of the global warming people, will buy into it and gladly pay. This needs to stop NOW. I personally refuse to pay any carbon tax, regardless of the consequences, because I feel that the government should not be using fraud to extort even more money for citizens. This is wrong and yet nobody can see it. Global warming is the biggest money making scam since the Papal indulgences of the 16th century. Scamming lower class people to pay for lavish expenditures. At least one man was smart enough to stand up and say that was wrong. Where is the Martin Luther of global warming?

Source: National Post

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Kincardane Bridge Collapse Worrying

It's unfortunate that this news story has not received more press than it has. A bridge in Bruce County Ontario collapsed yesterday, seriously injuring at least one construction worker. My inside sources have told me that what's being reported on the TV and in the papers is not the truth of the story. Here's the story. Workers were pouring concrete on the bridge deck around noon and were almost finished. When the pour is almost finished a "screeding" machine moves across the bridge to smooth out the wet concrete. The weight of the machine moving across the bridge caused it to collapse. It appears that the pillars holding the deck up gave way under the added weight. Perhaps one of the most disturbing aspects of this incident was that fact that I know the person who was operating the screeding machine. I would call him an acquaintance. I've met him on a few occasions. Seems like a nice guy. He runs a business that does just that, smooths concrete on bridge decks. My family running our own bridge construction business uses his business as a near exclusive sub-contractor. He is one of the few companies that does this smoothing who actually owns... well, owned his own equipment. The machine was destroyed yesterday. He had to be airlifted to hospital with serious injuries, though what these exact injuries are I do not know yet. It is a miracle nobody was killed in the collapse.

We've been in the bridge construction business as a family for 15 years while my father has been in it for near 30 years. Not once have any of our bridges failed. It is very rare that they do. However, very few of these incidents are freak accidents. A lot goes on in the nether world of construction that most people are totally unaware of. Our business has tried to focus on quality work and maintaining steady profits rather than sheer volume. However, this sort of thinking makes us dinosaurs. A lot of outfits now focus on sheer volume of jobs, often cutting corners or using unskilled (read cheap) labour to get the job done for the lowest cost possible. These people run into nothing but trouble using this business model, falling deep into the red, using money from one contract to pay for others (which is illegal), and running jobs far behind schedule. The bridge that collapsed was already three months behind schedule and only 80% complete at the time.
I won't name names but these people know who they are. My father, who is a civil engineer, refers to these outfits as "cowboys". Unsophisticated people who have no business doing the work they're trying to do. In some cases, these companies may not even hire engineers to make sure the job is safe. They also cut corners in terms of material and men in order to reduce job costs further. This leaves a vast number of our province's bridges with a questionable safety record.

Are Ontario's bridges safe? The answer is a definite no. Ontario's bridges are a ticking time bomb. What happened in Minneapolis, Minnisota this past summer should have been a wakeup call, but it wasn't. We still have provincial and municipal governments who refuse to allocate more funds to improve our infrastructure. They choose to go for the cheapest contractors rather than investigating their quality and reliability and are surprised when they run into the issues I mentioned above. Governments are purely satisfied with shoddy construction or patch work jobs that just barely extend the life of roads and bridges a few more years. Sure, it costs them more in the long run but they don't seem to care. Owners are not properly inspecting their jobs and sleazy contractors are getting away with blue murder. To paraphrase CTV's W-Five, it's an industry built on indifference. We have decided to retire from the industry at the end of this financial year simply because we can no longer compete against these crooked contractors.

It's not a question of "if" Ontario will experience a Minneapolis style bridge collapse, it's when. In fact, I think I can say with almost certainty that it will be some part of the raised portion of Toronto's Gardiner Expressway. Perhaps the most dilapidated structure currently in heavy everyday use in the province. It is rusted with rebar supports showing through chipped and rapidly deteriorating concrete. Imagine it's Monday morning during rush hour. Traffic on the Gardiner is crawling, and so is traffic on the Lakeshore under it. You're sitting in your car on top of the highway when all of a sudden you hear a loud groan that drowns out your radio. Next thing you know your car is plummeting some 50ft to the ground below. The cars on top leave a mess of twisted metal and carnage while everyone on the Lakeshore below is crushed to death. Disturbing isn't it. Now, I'm no engineer and I know very little about bridge construction, but it doesn't take an expert to see this coming. If you think such a thing is unlikely think of it this way. They were almost finished pouring the concrete for the Bruce County job yesterday. What if they had completed it without this happening? The structure will still be too weak. A tractor trailer or dump truck or a row of cars weighs a lot more than a single concrete screeding machine. Steady traffic causes a lot more stress, particularly over time. It very well could have weakened and collapsed after it was finished when people were driving on it. I think it's time the Minister of Transportation comes up with some answers. Our governments and the contractors they are hiring are playing a dangerous game with our lives. The safety of our roads and bridges should not be left up to a craps shoot.

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Toronto Falling Apart

Yesterday, a chunk of concrete fell of the Gardener Expressway in Toronto, nearly missing a car. This chunk was said to be the size of a basketball. Many citizens who use the highway and nearby roads fear that what happened in Montreal a few months ago with a bridge collapse could happen to the Gardener. My Dad is a professional engineer who specializes in bridges. I asked him if he thought the Gardener was safe. His answer came in one word: "no". Even to the untrained eye, the stripped concrete and exposed rusty rebar is enough to start asking questions.

Most highways in the GTA are owned and operated by the Ministry of Transportation of Ontario (MTO). Three notable exceptions are the 407, the Gardener Expressway, and the Don Valley Parkway. The 407, as most people know, is privately owned. The Gardener and DVP are owned by the city of Toronto. These two roads have become infamous in GTA commuter lore. The DVP is often referred to as the Don Valley Parking-lot for its jammed, slow commutes. The Gardener is not much better when it comes to traffic, and its downright frightening when taking its structural state into consideration. Construction of the raised causeway section began in 1955. I don't know its exact history, but I can tell by the architectural design that the highway today is the original. The highway cost $110 million to build in 1955 dollars, about $700 million today. The road itself receives patchwork repairs every so often but its getting to the point of being too dangerous to drive on, or under. The collapse of the Gardener is not a matter of if, but when.

Toronto in recent history has not been taking its crumbling infrastructure seriously. Once thought to be a clean city, Toronto's core areas are no better known by dilapidated roads, sidewalks, buildings, and a mysterious open sewer smell in the financial district. Old water pipes are constantly bursting, garbage is everywhere. Once proud buildings such as Maple Leaf Gardens have fallen into such a horrible state of disrepair. In an expose on CFTO News, it was found that there are still unwashed dishes from 1999 still in the arena. (Though to be fair, it's owned by Loblaws, but it's still a historical building)
Toronto's Mayor David Miller promised, broom in hand, that he'd clean up city hall in the 2003 election. Perhaps now he should take that broom and use it to clean up the rest of the city. The city has become a disgraceful mess, and it's no wonder tourists don't want to go there. Would you want to vacation in some place dirty with roads at third world country standards?
What's Mr Miller's argument about this? Well, he likes to scapegoat the McGuinty Liberals and Harris Conservatives for downloading costs onto the city and not giving them enough money to deal with the problems. It's quite clear that Big D is becoming irritated with Miller. The new City of Toronto Act gives Toronto huge amounts of revenue powers. Toronto does indeed collect vast amounts of money. Most of it gets wasted on hair brained, socialist schemes to help the homeless bums and Toronto's other human garbage, rather than tackling the city's most pressing issues. The Gardener needs to be torn down and rebuilt. There are no other options for Mr Miller. Take the highway away and make traffic worse, or let it collapse and kill possibly hundreds of innocent people. Think of the law suit there.
Unfortunately, transportation is not on the mind of Miller. He'd have us all riding our bikes to work, like people do in Bejing. Unfortunately for Miller, we are not in the People's Republic of China. Bicycles are not practical in Canada's harsh winter climate. Roads are needed to get goods, services, and people into and out of the city. Without the expressway, Toronto's economy would halt. Mr Miller better find some money soon, or Bay St could become a ghost town. Businesses and people won't want to stay in a city where transportation is a nightmare.

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