GTA Relief Valve -New Cities on Ontario's Next Freeway
This post relates to a growth and highway proposal for Ontario's northern 519 area and the GTA. It has ties to the 400/401/402 freeways and to Huron, Bruce, Grey, Middlesex, Simcoe and Wellington counties. Having fallen off the CN/CP rails in the 1960s and losing out on rural employment and county revenue growth, a Georgian Bay freeway is overdue; highway upgrades and new job centers are survival end games.
Promoted is a freeway from the 402 east of Strathroy, north towards Walkerton/Hanover and thence east to the 400 south of Barrie. To keep the province competitive, expansion of the freeway grid should get on the South-west’s rolling 5-yr Highway Plan. Once a Right-of-Way is secured, construction is staged over decades as a 2-laner and then built out to full freeway standard as mid-century needs dictate.
Promoted is a freeway from the 402 east of Strathroy, north towards Walkerton/Hanover and thence east to the 400 south of Barrie. To keep the province competitive, expansion of the freeway grid should get on the South-west’s rolling 5-yr Highway Plan. Once a Right-of-Way is secured, construction is staged over decades as a 2-laner and then built out to full freeway standard as mid-century needs dictate.
The Greater Toronto Area's (GTA) populace will grow at an astounding 43% (about 2.8 million in 20 years) bringing total population to 9.5 million. Reactive thinking is fixated on new jobs going to the GTA with workers transiting to expanding dormitory cities.
Thousands of commuters feel a short-line subway system and public transit are unsatisfactory. The build-out of dormitory cities and extended transit are just band-aids on centralized growth and job concentration. With GTA's densification nearing geographic and livable limits, planners have to explore orderly location of new employment centers. A new slate has significant cost and design advantages, while a 20 to 30-year phase-in makes for feasible budgeting.
To contain Toronto's metropolitan girth, the "New Cities" solution, along with enabling Freeway Connections and Special Economic Zones have to be considered. This provides real pressure-relief for the Greater Toronto Area, while stimulating the northern 519 economy -and encouraging long-term protection of the Green Belt. Such unifying vision by counties and towns leads to the goal of a better future for all.
The challenge: Fix problems born of over-stimulated growth in a metropolitan area, and of neglect in an adjacent rural region.
Let's boldly address four related issues:
1. Ignoring implications of GTA's insatiable demand for development land and infrastructure.
2 Neglect in planning an expanded freeway grid in face of expolding southern Ontario population.
1. Ignoring implications of GTA's insatiable demand for development land and infrastructure.
2 Neglect in planning an expanded freeway grid in face of expolding southern Ontario population.
3. Severe cut-backs in road maintenance, and health care due to shrinking rural tax base.
4. A rising Atlantic forces millions along the US east coast to flee north-west towards a cooler Great Lakes region.
Locally, editors, merchants, teachers and other stakeholders have to hit the reset button; else, it's R.I.P. in the hinterlands. The message to leaderships in the counties and towns serviced by zig-zag highways 4, 6, 10, 21 and 23: Engage. Think Strategically. Act Regionally. Overcome Inertia with Collaboration. Push for Freeway Extension. Make it Happen.
Do that, and families and firms in Bruce, Dufferin, Grey, Huron, Perth, Simcoe and Wellington counties prosper, productive farmland further south is saved -and mega-GTA may even avoid choking. And importantly, a new tourist/trade corridor brings modern connectivity and jobs to Southern Georgian Bay communities.
Forward-looking municipalities focus on connections rather than isolation as the best road to regional cohesion and lasting economic traction. With an expanded freeway grid, our grand-kids experience an intact Green Belt, and employment in a broad region serviced by that essential Southern Georgian Bay Freeway.
Our ambitious young know the status quo in energy, in rural jobs and transportation is stifling, hence they migrate via vintage two-laners for futures along dynamic six laners. To avert further school closings and ghost towns, a start on a practical trade/tourist route attracts science, technology, engineering and math startups, and arrests exodus of more food processing and manufacturing plants.
Change agents in the rural take-over generation have to push hard for a freeway -and for affordable on-farm/in-home energy systems. On-site generation of electricity and heat, called LENR suitable for farms, households, industries, institutions and unlimited-range vehicles is now being engineered for farms and future cities.
And, LENR retrofits of fossil-fueled power plants eliminates the need for refurbished radioactive power plants. For competitive reasons, governments, industries, and institutions have little choice but to adopt cheap and ultra-clean power; else adaptive jurisdictions prosper and laggards falter.
Sure, those invested in oil, natural gas and nuclear could end up with diminished assets. A desperate and flawed nuclear industry will do everything in its power to ensure self-preservation. Still, accountable MPPs, Mayors and Wardens realize local jobs in nuclear plant overhaul have to be sacrificed for the safety of a populous International Great Lakes Region.
Visionary Councillors, Mayors, Wardens and MPPs might:
1. Look to a scenario where Toronto remains the administrative and financial center, while new towns (laid out as future cities) absorb much of the growth in population and jobs.
2. Realize that with modern highway connections, new cities need not be Toronto satellites .
3. Agree new cities be on stony ground, and phased in as the new freeway is completed.
4. Acknowledge a regional transportation authority is key to county collaboration.
5. Ask why a mid-western freeway doesn't warrant more priority than a vanity passenger train (paralleling a widened 401) from the Quebec border to Michigan.
6. Question where is the strategic freeway to support moving goods and people for detailed population projections 20 to 30 years out.
7. Ponder: Does the Green Belt become a beltway for a vanity passenger train, a multi-lane truck by pass of GTA North and boulevards of condos?
Simply Put: Manageable growth requires new population centers -well beyond the Green Belt- be factored into freeway planning.
Excerpts from a study commissioned in the Mike Harris era:
"Most of rural Canada cannot sustain itself. Rural towns need provincial subsidies to cover up to 90% of their infrastructure needs. Rural industries, agriculture above all, need subsides, too."
Report's conclusion: "The government should re-train young people in rural areas who are willing to move away from their communities as part of a rural restructuring and by implication -an eventual abandonment of much of rural Ontario."
In 2010, when Kathleen Wynne was Transportation Minister, she said, " I've become acutely aware of the role that transportation networks play in inhibiting economic growth and reducing quality of life."
And now, we have new Transportation Minister, Jeff Yurek, telling us there’s no reason we can’t be better connected; needed are conversations about improving regional transportation between small municipalities and the cities.
Yes, Southern Ontario has to grapple with very real rural infrastructure and urban growth problems. The province has to plan long-range, as piecemeal reaction seldom gets us where we need go. Dismal prospects across the counties are remedied if informed citizens, Agri Associations and Chambers of Commerce collaborate in building consensus leading to over-due planning action.
A seamless highway through the northern 519 counties is facilitated by a contribution from the Rural & Northern Communities Fund. This expedites the initial task of highlighting alternate routes for the new freeway and new town sites (future cities). Since Ministry of Transportation's projects for the northern 69 Highway to Sudbury, plus GTA investments in subway extensions and the new Windsor/Detroit crossing are underway, freeway planning now shifts to the mid-west.
Hemmed in by the Green Belt, the GTA is at a Y in the road. Which fork to take? The one with redirected population growth, or one with a trajectory of a 2.8 million population increase every 20 years -and chaos after mid-century.
Refining strategies and making the Georgian Bay Freeway/New Cities project visible to businesses and residents, and to local, provincial and federal politicians is challenging. Collaborative leadership across the counties, towns and cities is a must, given the extent of disinterest and variety of agendas and egos. A sturdy civic platform has to be crafted for dialogue to begin.
For ideas, see: https://www.fastcompany.com/27333/trillion-dollar-vision-dee-hock
The population/highways solution requires municipal input headed by Mayors of affected towns and cities and members of the Western Ontario Warden's Caucus plus Chambers of Commerce, followed by top-level provincial deliberation -and funding.
Real economic revival starts with grass-roots prodding and gets underway when farm and business associations together with local politicians lobby senior governments to plan the heavy-duty freeway. Progress comes from sharing the vision, building momentum and finding visionaries cum champions. As mobility improves, consumers, employers and tourists respond; miss the opportunity and rural communities shrivel and the GTA eventually implodes.
A Southern Georgian Bay Freeway, a westward extension of the 403 from Woodstock to the 402 near Strathroy plus a west-London Provincial Highway were promoted over a decade ago here, here, here & here. Thus, seeds were sown for mid-west freeway expansion.
Prior to the 2018 elections, versions of this article went to Agri-associations, some Editors, Mayors, Wardens, MPPs and Ontario Premiers. Voters now realize that unless fertilized by elected representatives of impacted municipalities, such ideas are unlikely to be germinated by Queen's Park before the noose tightens on on a congested GTA.
And, if eastern Mayors, MPPs, and Wardens feel neglected by such provincial largess, then our Premier can promise that as the mid-west freeway is completed to the 400, it will be extended eastward as the Georgian Bay & Ottawa Freeway.
Given the proposed 30 year time-line, improving the freeway grid is doable. But, the notion of a bullet passenger train on dedicated lines is left on a siding, pending justification by 22nd Century population density -and affordability of levitation and tunneling technologies.
With the current GTA growth trajectory and rural economic and population decline, agricultural and business leaders have to show awareness and urgency, while their elected do the heavy work ...pushing transportation planning. Politicians could start by reading (a) how President Eisenhower built the Interstate Grid in record time and (b), Dr Glasier's treatise on what happened to Buffalo, NY.
If The GTA learns nothing from Buffalo's trials, then, our Premier and his Agricultural, Infrastructure and Transportation Ministers can try reverse prodding by getting expansion of the freeway grid on the south-west's rolling 5-year Highway Plan.
In the spring of 2019, Ontario unleashed a 10-year, $30 billion infrastructure program boosting rural and northern transportation, Toronto subway extensions plus GTA transit to dormitory cities.
Now, Ministers McNaughton, Hardeman and Yurek await a joint response from Agri Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Mayors and Wardens.
And, while we await such response, this post, launched in June 2018, as a work-in-progress, continues under a new title because of stale date and extensive edits. It now pivots to follow the province's progress in its declared intention to improve Southern Ontario's motorways infrastructure. Welcome aboard, as impacted municipalities and stakeholders take a long view of improved routes and future cities in assisting the province in its attempt to accommodate accelerating economic and population growth. Looking forward to your comments at:
https://neuenergy.blogspot.com/2019/05/ontarios-new-freeway-for-new-towns.html
ADDENDUM
With the build-out of London's south-west and developments in nearby Delaware, Kilworth and Komoka, regional politicians should pursue an opportunity of mutual benefit: A Highway 4 diversion along Denfield Road and Westdel Bourne to the 401/402. here and here. http://londont.blogspot.com/2007/11/ and http://londont.blogspot.com/2009/07/
Since the Highway 4 section between Clinton and London was not down-loaded in1998, any southern re-routing from Clandeboy through Denfield and west London would logically be a provincial responsibility. With a Provincial Highway designation, the costs of engineering, construction and ultimate maintenance would not fall entirely on London and Middlesex taxpayers.
UPdate # 1 Western Ontario Wardens Caucus*
2019 appointments:
Chair: Bruce Warden, Mitch Twolan also sits on the AMO Board, County Caucus.
WOWC officers, Jim Ginn, Warden of Huron County, Vice Chair; Sonya Pritchard, CAO of Dufferin County, as Treasurer; and Mark Aitken, CAO of Simcoe County, as Secretary.
Our ambitious young know the status quo in energy, in rural jobs and transportation is stifling, hence they migrate via vintage two-laners for futures along dynamic six laners. To avert further school closings and ghost towns, a start on a practical trade/tourist route attracts science, technology, engineering and math startups, and arrests exodus of more food processing and manufacturing plants.
Change agents in the rural take-over generation have to push hard for a freeway -and for affordable on-farm/in-home energy systems. On-site generation of electricity and heat, called LENR suitable for farms, households, industries, institutions and unlimited-range vehicles is now being engineered for farms and future cities.
Sure, those invested in oil, natural gas and nuclear could end up with diminished assets. A desperate and flawed nuclear industry will do everything in its power to ensure self-preservation. Still, accountable MPPs, Mayors and Wardens realize local jobs in nuclear plant overhaul have to be sacrificed for the safety of a populous International Great Lakes Region.
1. Look to a scenario where Toronto remains the administrative and financial center, while new towns (laid out as future cities) absorb much of the growth in population and jobs.
2. Realize that with modern highway connections, new cities need not be Toronto satellites .
3. Agree new cities be on stony ground, and phased in as the new freeway is completed.
4. Acknowledge a regional transportation authority is key to county collaboration.
5. Ask why a mid-western freeway doesn't warrant more priority than a vanity passenger train (paralleling a widened 401) from the Quebec border to Michigan.
6. Question where is the strategic freeway to support moving goods and people for detailed population projections 20 to 30 years out.
7. Ponder: Does the Green Belt become a beltway for a vanity passenger train, a multi-lane truck by pass of GTA North and boulevards of condos?
Simply Put: Manageable growth requires new population centers -well beyond the Green Belt- be factored into freeway planning.
Excerpts from a study commissioned in the Mike Harris era:
"Most of rural Canada cannot sustain itself. Rural towns need provincial subsidies to cover up to 90% of their infrastructure needs. Rural industries, agriculture above all, need subsides, too."
Report's conclusion: "The government should re-train young people in rural areas who are willing to move away from their communities as part of a rural restructuring and by implication -an eventual abandonment of much of rural Ontario."
In 2010, when Kathleen Wynne was Transportation Minister, she said, " I've become acutely aware of the role that transportation networks play in inhibiting economic growth and reducing quality of life."
And now, we have new Transportation Minister, Jeff Yurek, telling us there’s no reason we can’t be better connected; needed are conversations about improving regional transportation between small municipalities and the cities.
Yes, Southern Ontario has to grapple with very real rural infrastructure and urban growth problems. The province has to plan long-range, as piecemeal reaction seldom gets us where we need go. Dismal prospects across the counties are remedied if informed citizens, Agri Associations and Chambers of Commerce collaborate in building consensus leading to over-due planning action.
A seamless highway through the northern 519 counties is facilitated by a contribution from the Rural & Northern Communities Fund. This expedites the initial task of highlighting alternate routes for the new freeway and new town sites (future cities). Since Ministry of Transportation's projects for the northern 69 Highway to Sudbury, plus GTA investments in subway extensions and the new Windsor/Detroit crossing are underway, freeway planning now shifts to the mid-west.
Hemmed in by the Green Belt, the GTA is at a Y in the road. Which fork to take? The one with redirected population growth, or one with a trajectory of a 2.8 million population increase every 20 years -and chaos after mid-century.
Refining strategies and making the Georgian Bay Freeway/New Cities project visible to businesses and residents, and to local, provincial and federal politicians is challenging. Collaborative leadership across the counties, towns and cities is a must, given the extent of disinterest and variety of agendas and egos. A sturdy civic platform has to be crafted for dialogue to begin.
For ideas, see: https://www.fastcompany.com/27333/trillion-dollar-vision-dee-hock
Real economic revival starts with grass-roots prodding and gets underway when farm and business associations together with local politicians lobby senior governments to plan the heavy-duty freeway. Progress comes from sharing the vision, building momentum and finding visionaries cum champions. As mobility improves, consumers, employers and tourists respond; miss the opportunity and rural communities shrivel and the GTA eventually implodes.
A Southern Georgian Bay Freeway, a westward extension of the 403 from Woodstock to the 402 near Strathroy plus a west-London Provincial Highway were promoted over a decade ago here, here, here & here. Thus, seeds were sown for mid-west freeway expansion.
Prior to the 2018 elections, versions of this article went to Agri-associations, some Editors, Mayors, Wardens, MPPs and Ontario Premiers. Voters now realize that unless fertilized by elected representatives of impacted municipalities, such ideas are unlikely to be germinated by Queen's Park before the noose tightens on on a congested GTA.
And, if eastern Mayors, MPPs, and Wardens feel neglected by such provincial largess, then our Premier can promise that as the mid-west freeway is completed to the 400, it will be extended eastward as the Georgian Bay & Ottawa Freeway.
Given the proposed 30 year time-line, improving the freeway grid is doable. But, the notion of a bullet passenger train on dedicated lines is left on a siding, pending justification by 22nd Century population density -and affordability of levitation and tunneling technologies.
With the current GTA growth trajectory and rural economic and population decline, agricultural and business leaders have to show awareness and urgency, while their elected do the heavy work ...pushing transportation planning. Politicians could start by reading (a) how President Eisenhower built the Interstate Grid in record time and (b), Dr Glasier's treatise on what happened to Buffalo, NY.
If The GTA learns nothing from Buffalo's trials, then, our Premier and his Agricultural, Infrastructure and Transportation Ministers can try reverse prodding by getting expansion of the freeway grid on the south-west's rolling 5-year Highway Plan.
In the spring of 2019, Ontario unleashed a 10-year, $30 billion infrastructure program boosting rural and northern transportation, Toronto subway extensions plus GTA transit to dormitory cities.
Now, Ministers McNaughton, Hardeman and Yurek await a joint response from Agri Associations, Chambers of Commerce, Mayors and Wardens.
And, while we await such response, this post, launched in June 2018, as a work-in-progress, continues under a new title because of stale date and extensive edits. It now pivots to follow the province's progress in its declared intention to improve Southern Ontario's motorways infrastructure. Welcome aboard, as impacted municipalities and stakeholders take a long view of improved routes and future cities in assisting the province in its attempt to accommodate accelerating economic and population growth. Looking forward to your comments at:
https://neuenergy.blogspot.com/2019/05/ontarios-new-freeway-for-new-towns.html
With the build-out of London's south-west and developments in nearby Delaware, Kilworth and Komoka, regional politicians should pursue an opportunity of mutual benefit: A Highway 4 diversion along Denfield Road and Westdel Bourne to the 401/402. here and here. http://londont.blogspot.com/2007/11/ and http://londont.blogspot.com/2009/07/
Since the Highway 4 section between Clinton and London was not down-loaded in1998, any southern re-routing from Clandeboy through Denfield and west London would logically be a provincial responsibility. With a Provincial Highway designation, the costs of engineering, construction and ultimate maintenance would not fall entirely on London and Middlesex taxpayers.
UPdate # 1 Western Ontario Wardens Caucus*
2019 appointments:
Chair: Bruce Warden, Mitch Twolan also sits on the AMO Board, County Caucus.
WOWC officers, Jim Ginn, Warden of Huron County, Vice Chair; Sonya Pritchard, CAO of Dufferin County, as Treasurer; and Mark Aitken, CAO of Simcoe County, as Secretary.
Chair, WOWC. Economic Dev Sub-committtee -Mayor George Bridge, Minto Township, appointed as Chair, WOWC Economic Development Sub-Committee including Mitch Twolan, Bruce; Selwyn Hicks, Grey; Darrin White, Dufferin; Walter McKenzie, Perth; and Jim Ginn, Huron.
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