SCREWING UP ROAD REPAIRS

TIME TO FIRE TRAFFIC ENGINEERS

I think it's time for the election survivors of an inept city council to come clean on an unfunny practical joke.
 Or was it just a plot to so massacre the replacement for the east-bound York/Bay/Yonge ramps from the Gardiner that the voters would seek revenge on the anti-car councillors to whom the Gardiner is the Great Evil?
Now the Gardiner, one of the great work horse roads of North America, has always been hated by those politicians and planners who believe we should just walk or TTC or bike to move around this urban behemoth.
For years they cheated on the incredible amount of  traffic it carried, trying to lower the stats even as they ignored that the waterfront had grown around the Gardiner like coral around a sunken ship and prying the super road  out of the skyscraper woods would be as difficult and costly as it would be silly.
Yet the Gardiner has outlasted most enemies because it is one of the vital arteries of the city and blasting it out of downtown would cause cardiac arrest to thousands if not a congealed core.
Which brings me to the current mess which you and I have plenty of time to contemplate as we try to manoeuvre to make simple turns into the core of a city that is vital enough, fortunately, to survive even this looney bin of a City Hall.
I don't feel like repeating at length the obvious reality which was true even when I was enduring urban geography lectures at U of T  in the age of the dinosaurs.
Most people and all goods move around this city by vehicles and will continue to do so even if the transit is vastly improved and ridiculous bike lanes don't strangle major streets.
I live near the Royal York subway station, the renovation of which is another municipal embarrassment, and try to TTC as much as possible to avoid $20 parking and the molasses movement of traffic. But Mary uses a walker and like many older people with medical appointments finds the car superior to the complications of Wheel Trans or the gauntlet of regular transit.
So I have had to negotiate through this stupid replacement for the downtown ramps. According to what I can decipher out of the Y B Y internet site for this project, the contractor will be back. We just got the first stage in January, which is like saying we just got the first act of a horror movie.
My son Mark, who spends half his time in China where he has worked for almost a decade, returns to sit in the car as I curse my way through any drive which lasts more than five minutes. He is used to road and transit construction in most modern Chinese cities taking a fraction of a time. They built a new subway line in Dalien, his lovely home city, in the time it takes for one council debate on new routes.
Of course, I apologize to him as we muddle through traffic, it is easier there in a dictatorship with tens of millions of workers. But, he replies, it looks suspicious to him when we try to drive around Etobicoke or to the Kawarthas when the same roads and bridges are under construction year after year after year.
I admit that the lackadaisical timing is suspect. It certainly drives up the cost for taxpayers along with our tempers. Unfortunately, not that new! When I was a kid reporter covering politics, some construction contracts came with a whiff of scandal about the cost, the politics of the company owners, and indeed, the necessity.
And then we often come to another stalling point in our drive where the road has been under repair for years and we both heartily agree that something stinks to high heaven about how we build in Ontario.
Repairs to our infrastructure have boils deeper than our potholes!
So I look forward to the mayoral media conference where John Tory says that it is rather obvious now that what is being done to the Gardiner downtown is a terrible mistake and it's back to the drawing board for our traffic engineers after a few have been fired and planners told to start acting like they live in a real city and not one just in their dreams.
And while Tory's at it, he should chat with his colleagues who sit on the board supposedly supervising the police force (stop this semantic nonsense it should be called a service) to order that either the chief and his deputies improve the dire quality of traffic policing in this city or face review.
Present policing procedure in this city favours paid-duty work for every cop even as every year it sticks more and more organizations like the CNE with higher policing costs.
When you consider the taxes we pay for municipal services. TTC and policing, it is obvious that either our councillors can't manage a doghouse or we are being played for suckers.
 The quality goes down as quickly as the costs go up, thanks to union and gutless management. No wonder there was a foul mood during the last municipal and provincial elections, oceans of unhappiness with what we've been getting.
If you know anyone who really is satisfied, she or he is bound to be making more than $100,000 annually that is paid in one form or another by you and me. And they don't even feed us before they screw us.
Something to ponder as you contemplate your next attempt to drive around T.O. without dreaming of just getting to hell out of town, and staying there, that is if the light ever changes.