Monday, September 13, 2010

Spadina E-way resurrected?

One would have thought the Spadina Expressway died when Bill Davis canned the project all the way back in 1971.   But it's not like the dream has died, after all the exit numbers on the 400 (based on kilometre posts) are numbered such in anticipation of the day when such were to happen (the highway runs from the north end of Toronto up to Parry Sound, and eventually it will to Sudbury as the old #69 is twinned.

But now a Toronto councillor has resurrected the idea.   Well sort of, just a few kilometres east:   Mayoral candidate, Rocco Rossi says, just extend and bury Allen Road south of where it ends at Eglinton and run it more or less parallel to the Spadina Subway to Bloor then under the streetcar tracks down to Harbord.

I've heard of insane ideas, but this is just Looney Tunes.   Remember the chaos a number of years back when two subway trains crashed near Casa Loma?    Now imagine a car crash a hundred metres below ground.

Toronto needs more public transit ... it doesn't need more highways.

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2 comments:

Skinny Dipper said...

Technically, Rocco Rossi is not a councillor.

Skinny Dipper said...

The problem with Rocco Rossi's campaign is that I don't know who the real Rocco Rossi is. Is he a Liberal? Conservative? Or somewhere in between?

I'm not even sure who is target audience is. Is the audience in downtown, the 416 suburbs, or the 905'ers in Richmond Hill/Thornhill?

I wonder if this mayoral race is a warm-up for a candidacy for MPP or MP in Richmond Hill or Thornhill.

As for the Spadina tunnel, I don't where he got this idea from. I didn't hear anyone clammouring for a tunnel. I have heard different people ask for different subway lines. When candidate Sarah Thomson supports a downtown relief subway line, it makes sense in that citizens have proposed it during the election campaign.

Unfortunately, Rossi's Spadina tunnel proposal demonstrates that he has not spoken to the citizens to ask their concerns. Yes, he has gone to many community events to get photographed. However, he has not conducted any two-way communication with the citizens of Toronto. If he had, he would have buried the Spadina tunnel proposal.