We shouldn’t be entertaining Ford’s idiotic highway 401 tunnel pipedream, let alone charging taxpayers 9.1 million dollars to conduct a feasibility study.
There are many things wrong with the 401-tunnel idea. To clarify, this is a plan to build a three-level tunnel under Highway 401 — from Scarborough to Mississauga — with two levels dedicated to east and west traffic and one level dedicated to transit.
It is obvious that this project won’t solve the problem it intends to address: reducing traffic. Dozens of studies have shown that adding more lanes to an existing highway doesn’t alleviate traffic since bottlenecks are the root cause of congestion.
To illustrate, adding more lanes to the Gardiner won’t solve traffic when it originates from a lack of road capacity on Toronto city streets. The only car centric solution to this would be to raise city blocks to build suburban type stroads.
Even this solution wouldn’t work. Those who’ve commuted in suburbs should consider that with a population as dense as the GTA’s, the only effective solution to traffic is to get as many people off the road as possible and to expand public transit. That’s simply a fact — not a political stance — as every other idea proposed simply won’t solve traffic congestion.
Highway 401 is already in the top five widest highways in the world at 18 lanes. While you could argue that the tunnel is a more environmentally friendly way of adding capacity, it just isn’t the most efficient and cost-effective way to do so.
The best option to add capacity is to build transit. This is what the province was originally trying to do, with plans to create an electrified modern suburban rail service in GO Transit, before the idea was scaled back.
Given the province’s track record with construction projects as simple as throwing up electric wires or building an LRT, it’s hard to imagine an incredibly complex project succeeding, especially with very few successful global examples.
The second-best option — if we were to focus solely on cars — would be to complete the Highway 413 project, which would then act as a publicly owned (assuming we don’t sell it) bypass highway for traffic.
Another option would be to buy back Highway 407, which should never have been sold in the first place. A cheaper alternative could also be to heavily increase GO Bus service along Highway 407, in hopes of reducing the number of cars on Highway 401.
Ford’s tunnel plan is simply absurd and should not be considered an option. As said by the Leader of the Official Opposition in Ontario, Marit Stiles, “I don’t know how they sleep at night. […] I’ll just say it; I think very few people believe that this is a real thing.”
There is simply no logical or economic reason to advocate for this project and politically, it’s a distraction at best and some form of corruption at worst. In general, I think we should stop giving politicians any serious consideration on nonsensical ideas.
The more we hear a politician out on their latest idiotic idea, the more power we give their rhetoric and the further we drift away from any actual progress.
So, how do we know if an idea is idiotic? Well, beyond simply taking a moment to read through it and considering its practicality, general expert opinion can also provide support for identifying an idiotic idea.
It’s a lesson for opposition leaders to learn as well. Instead of just playing back the absurdity of Ford’s ideas, they should present their own counter in addition to giving their reactions, so that Ford is not the only one making a proposal.
We shouldn’t simply be hearing people out just to knock them down without providing our own proposals, as that makes for weak politics. We should instead lead with a clear idea of our own.
Essentially, I think the opposition has been doing too much to try and make us consider Ford’s ideas. They haven’t been doing enough to outwork him and show the electorate what other options there are.
It’s one thing to stand up and point out how stupid your opponents’ ideas sound, but it’s another to actually stand up and show the electorate what your ideas look like in comparison.
We shouldn’t be talking about Ford’s tunnel idea. We should be talking about the opposition’s proposals on how to mitigate traffic along Highway 401’s corridor, but we aren’t. Until then, Ford’s stupidity will be the only thing we hear.