Gardiner proposal a sacrifice to the Cult of Motorism
Motorism in Toronto and much of the rest of North America is a belief system

thestar.com
March 3, 2016
By Edward Keenan

My friend John Michael McGrath was tweeting recently about his theory of “Motorism,” an “ideology” which, he wrote, “demands its adherents put the demands of their cars ahead of their homes, jobs, and families.”

It’s a handy way to understand a lot of municipal politics. The only quibble I’d have is that it may be beyond ideology - Motorism in Toronto and much of the rest of North America is a belief system, a faith, a cult that demands constant tithing and sacrifice to appease the car spirits.

Exhibit 2,783 in the case of the Motorism Car Cult: The grand compromise proposal for the Eastern Gardiner Expressway that is coming before city council at the end of this month.

When the item was approved at this week’s Public Works and Infrastructure Committee meeting, there was a lot of talk about how this proposal to adopt “Hybrid Option Three” was a great happy medium between two bitterly divided factions, an arrangement that allows the eastern Gardiner to remain in place connecting to the Don Valley Parkway, while also allowing many - though not nearly all - of the city-building goals along Lake Shore Boulevard that tearing that section of elevated highway down would have accomplished.

Councillor Mary Margaret-McMahon said the proposal was “a soft spot for everyone to land.” To some extent it is that: it will keep most proponents of the road who narrowly won the debate on the main question of tearing it down last year happy, and for those who preferred the Gardiner-free “Boulevard” option, this will look like snatching partial victory from the jaws of defeat. And it is that. Before going further, let’s acknowledge this is progress from where we were last summer.

But oh my, at what great expense. The “Boulevard” option removing the Eastern Gardiner that was rejected last year came with a 100-year price-tag of $461 million. The option likely to be approved this month, to in effect keep the Gardiner and build much of the Boulevard, will cost $1.052 billion.

That’s more than half a billion dollars to keep up a few kilometers of road that are travelled during peak rush hour by fewer than 5,000 cars. Without it, according to city projections, their commute might be two to three minutes longer. Let us keep in mind when thinking about ways to spend $500 million-plus to help commuters, that the number of cars affected here represents about a third of the daily ridership of the Birchmount bus.

And the thing of it is that there are good reasons, based on the preponderance of expert opinion and a body of global evidence, to suggest there may be no 2-3 minute benefit to those drivers at all. The experience of other cities that have removed downtown expressways is that there is virtually no increase in travel times. The “Fundamental Law of Road Congestion” says that research shows that the more road you build, the more traffic you will get. The concepts are called “induced demand” and “traffic evaporation” and they are backed by volumes of real world research on actual experience.

But this is actually of no consequence, for faith is immune to arguments based on evidence. These ideas were openly mocked by Gardiner supporters during last year’s debate. Many - most? - of you reading this will not believe them either. Adherents of Motorism care less for research-based evidence than for common-sense gut feelings. You say there’s “evidence” the earth revolves around the sun, but I can see the sun moving across the sky. You say “research shows” the world is round, but I can see it is flat clear out to the horizon. This is a matter of faith, and that faith says a monument - a great $500 million golden calf - must be built so as not to anger the Great Car Spirits that rule over Toronto.

Our adherence to the faith actually makes us pursue counterproductive policies that cause ever greater congestion. There is compelling evidence that suggests ample parking causes traffic congestion, yet we have an entire city agency in the Toronto Parking Authority mandated to keep parking available and affordable. We increase the cost of taking public transit each year, but we will never consider user fees on roads (in the form of congestion charges or road tolls) and the vast bulk of the city rejoiced when a meager $60 car registration fee implemented in 2007 was repealed in 2011. That’s in addition to the way arranging cities around car infrastructure just makes them worse places to live, compromises public safety, and imposes astronomical environmental costs.

Motorism is immune to considering these. Its tenants are simple: cars make life easier, so we should do whatever we can to make driving them easier. The unsolvable riddle at the heart of it is that almost anything that makes driving easier creates more traffic, which both makes driving harder and much of life less pleasant. Motorism tries to solve this problem by taking further steps to make driving easier. It is like the smoker who cannot realize that cigarettes are the cause of nicotine withdrawal symptoms, not the solution to them.

So: this Hybrid Gardiner compromise. It is better than no compromise. But the cost - a $500 million monument to the Cult of Motorism far more valuable as a symbolic tribute than as a transportation imperative - feels like a strange form of progress.