Toward a New Mobility Agenda for Toronto

Toward a New Mobility Agenda for Toronto:
Step by Step

1. Here's what we know today

The cost, impacts and degree of urgency of the inefficiencies of present transportation arrangements in environmental, life quality and economic terms has already outstripped the carrying capacity of Toronto.
Toronto is not alone in this mess. The global record city after city around the world is one of continuing decline of virtually all the main performance indexes -- and all the more so if the duly signed Kyoto protocols are taken as a base.
This is not to say that there are not a number of specific point, action or technical successes, particularly in leading edge European cities but also in Toronto itself. There is even a gradually emerging if still incomplete pattern of how to put this all together. However, overall, at the bottom line of the city as a whole, the record of the last decades is miserable, with no real relief in site. (But let's not lose sight of the specifics of the progress at the leading edge, because we are sure going to need them in Toronto.)
It is our firm conviction that the city and the citizens of Toronto can, if they decide to meet the challenge, make major near term inroads in congestion, pollution and life quality on its streets, without waiting for international treaties to be signed, new technologies to appear from heaven, or large piles of government funding to pour down from the nation's capital.
The needed breakthroughs can only be achieved however through an (a) aggressive, (b) coordinated, (c) locally-driven,(d) now-oriented (e) pattern-break commitment on the part of local government and all concerned with the transport sector and its extensions and their impact on the city and its region.
There is no one solution, big or small that is going to do the job. But there is a "solution set": a very large and extremely varied "package of measures" building on leading experience world wide as well as the many creative things that are already underway in Toronto itself, and integrating all these many elements into a (a) sharply defined, (b) highly visible, (c) very short term remedial program marked by extremely ambitious, announced public objectives.
Moreover -- and this is a trait which makes this approach radically different from the kinds of remedial actions undertaken in the past -- many of the actions that will be part of the global project are going both to be defined and then to require extensive participation at all levels of society and the economy. This is, one can say, very much a civil society program, a new form of defining partnership between public, private, volunteer/community sectors
Any eventual remedial action program that is going to yield results has to be accompanied ("sold") by a clear global target and process that the voters and public can see, understand, want to work toward, and which they are confident will yield visible near-term results.
. (Incidentally, if we can make it work this process is sure to open up new ways of thinking and action that will in time find application in matters well beyond those targeted in this project.)

2. So what do we do when everyone else is sitting on their hands?

To figure out where to go from here, let's first make a quick detour to list some of the things that are often touted here and there as solutions, but which we know by now simply are not able to do the job ... at least if you consider as we think you must, that these are very high priority problems, public health and economic menacees that quite simply cannot wait for some eventual long term fix.

There is no "big project" solution possible within the time frame.
You don't start to plan and build another yet another highway
You don't even give high priority to a new metro.
Never mind anything like PRT, monorails or other such wondrous solutions to someone else's' problems (maybe).
You let someone else devote time and money to long term scenarios (remembering what Lord Keynes said about the long term).
You don't wait for fuel cells or new automotive or transportation technologies to dig you out of these pits in the decade or more ahead (gasp! gasp!).
Nor do you wait for all those interest groups that are making good money out of present arrangements to step forward with anything that is going to change the basic transportation problematique (which is after all their problematique).
You might pray for World Government to solve your problems (but don't hold your breath).

Why none of these things? Well quite simply because even if they work (which is far from sure at the bottom line), they have nothing to do with the time scale that we need to be acting on in light of the emergency situation in which we find ourselves today.

What this means is truly simple: and that is that if you want the problem to be solved, you the good citizens of Toronto have to roll up your sleeves, get together with your neighbors, have a close look at what is really going on unencumbered by all you are being told you cannot do to solve the problem, open up the debate, get public attention, mobilize real on-street expertise, and go to work yourself. Remember this. No one else is going to do it for you.