Transportation planning is vital to the future of the GTA

Thespec.com
April 26, 2021
Dave Wilkes (Opinion)

This Saturday, readers will notice the first of a very special series that BILD has produced with the Toronto Star. Tracing the growth of the GTA decade by decade, this 11-week retrospective marks our association’s 100th anniversary and celebrates the industry that built our vibrant and diverse region.

It will be apparent to anyone delving into the series that the change and growth that have taken place in the GTA in the last century would have been impossible without transportation infrastructure. That’s why our association and our industry consider recent Star articles condemning the proposed Hwy. 413 to be short-sighted.

In the last century, the population of the GTA has gone from about three quarters of a million people to just shy of seven million in 2021. The Ontario Growth Plan projects it will rise to 11 million in 2051. Accommodating this growth, while enhancing the quality of life for residents, has required the building of houses, schools, workplaces, hospitals, leisure facilities and parks -- all bound together with a backbone of road and rail.

Without the 400-series highways that were started in the 1940s and constructed in earnest through the 1970s and on -- along with GO Transit, which was started in the 1960s and steadily expanded, and, more recently, extended subway service -- the cities and towns that make up the GTA could not support the communities and economies that it does today. Whether you live in Burlington, Vaughan or Oshawa, the home you live in, the goods you consume and the services you use depend on highways and rail lines that were planned and built well in advance. This is why having an ongoing, fact-based discussion about growth and planning is vital.

A key part of that discussion is the need for transit routes and investment in public transit. The lands around the proposed Hwy. 413 corridor are already being planned for growth, and it is true that the highway would support this future planned residential and commercial development, but that doesn’t negate the need for it.

Governments at all levels have a responsibility to plan for future growth. This involves difficult decisions that need to be taken with a view for the long-term and not be revisited every four years during the election cycle.

For more than two decades now, governments have managed growth and development in the GTA by trying to limit expansion and avoid building new infrastructure. They have not succeeded in making the GTA more affordable or livable. Instead, we face housing shortages and affordability challenges, along with congested roads and insufficient services and infrastructure. Simply doing the same thing for the next 20 years will be delaying necessary action, a tactic paid for daily by every resident of Ontario.

Planning for growth, including transportation planning, is vital to enhancing the quality of life of every present and future resident of the GTA and Ontario. This is the real issue that deserves to be the focus of serious, fact-based discussion.