Transportation - Car Free Zone

Sustainability in Denial and Contradiction

AIR POLLUTION COALITION
761 Queen Street West, Suite 101
Toronto, ON M6J 1G1

Deputation to: Roundtable on the Environment and Roundtable on a Beautiful City
Toronto City Hall, 10 July, 2006

Ah! Sustainability.
You have used this buzz word in a politically correct mode, but the many conflicts and contradictions of your actions do not add up to sustainability.

[We define sustainability as the measures and controls taken to manage a system that will prevent damage and degradation of the urban environment, ecological integrity and land area on a long-term basis.]

According to your definition of sustainability: “The balanced integration of the economic, social and environmental systems”.

CONFLICTS AND CONTRADICTIONS:

• Balanced Economic system: Neither the Municipal government nor the Provincial have computed the Cost of the Car on Society and the widespread damage on our health, economics and our environment that our car-dependence has inflicted. That is Not a balanced  economic system.
  
  The car: the most unsustainable mode of  transportation. Yet, it has been subsidized by all levels of government, and automobile traffic has been facilitated by maintaining 4-6 car-lane roads in the City, and in conflict with the Official Plan’s recommendation for reducing car-traffic.
  
  
• Balanced Social system: You encourage Cycling and Walking while you have bogged down a bike-lane network, mismanaged and wasted funding for it while councillors’ antiquated and regressive thinking is perpetually impeding its progress. That is socially discriminatory against a number of residents who chose an alternative mode of transportation, yet a most sustainable.
  
  As for Walking: You have never implemented Car-free areas on a permanent basis, that offer both connectivity and mobility to walkers, as other cities have done. (Forget the flippant hourly parties of one Car-free Day or the few Kensington Market car-free Sundays, a year.)
  
  You encourage Public Transit: Yet, you treat the car as the pivotal mode of transportation and maintain ready and ample access to auto-transport by multiple
  car-lane roads; and That is not Balanced transportation.
  
  
• Balanced Environmental system: You address air quality and greenhouse gas emissions; however, you have disregarded that the emissions from Transportation
  is 34% which is equal to the Industrial percentage, and 77% of that is from Road transportation while only 4% is from Rail.
  
  Even hybrid cars are unsustainable, considering that the slightly improved amount of emissions will be offset by their sheer number, in addition to the continuation of land space waste, urban sprawl, soil and water damage.
  
  Furthermore, your words: Encourage and Discourage, are Useless; because Social Behaviour Modification does not happen with words. It happens with Laws, By-Laws and Infrastructure planning that facilitate mobility sustainably. [Example of tobacco/smoking: persistent social behaviour did not change until the Non-Smoking Law was passed]

Social behaviour will change when you implement restrictions to driving, make anhonest and committed effort to implement cycling network, car-free districts and a drastic reduction of parking spaces. Not the rearrangement of parking according to the type of vehicle, as you propose; that is playing musical chairs.

Social behaviour will change when you assign Full-Cost pricing to auto-users and transfer revenues to city and regional public transportation.

So far, Toronto’s fragmented and micromanaged urban planning has been socially and economically divisive and imprudent. Not sustainable.

And these are the signs of denial and contradiction.

Lela Gary