http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/editorials/story.html?id=e496f9...

The Ottawa Citizen Published: Wednesday, August 08, 2007

There was a time in the bad old days of Eastern Ontario politics when you could tell how people voted by the state of the roads.

If your riding supported the government, there were flat roads and lots of highway construction. In other ridings, well, let's just say it led to a bumpy ride to town. Roads were, and apparently still are, often the measure of your MP's effectiveness.

There is a provincial election coming on Oct. 10 and, not surprisingly, we're talking roads. That discussion happened in previous elections and thus we have, for example, construction of four lanes along Highway 7 in the west end.

Now Premier Dalton McGuinty is proposing a $104-million expressway from Orleans to Rockland. There are provisos. The province would contribute $40 million if the federal government did the same. The rest would be left up to the city at about $15 million and $9 million for the county of Prescott-Russell. The 22-kilometre road, following the route of Regional Road 174 and County Road 17 is projected to take between seven to 10 years to build.

The problems with expanding this route are many. First, it's expensive. Second, urban planners are trying to get people out of their polluting cars, and here comes the province touting a long, four-lane freeway. If Ottawans need to go to Montreal by car, they already have speedy Highway 417.

In addition, the city has an urban boundary beyond which development cannot pass. But Mr. McGuinty wants to create a highway that would encourage people to settle in Rockland and commute all the way to Ottawa. We're all for development in Rockland, but one hopes that people who will buy homes there would travel to jobs in Rockland rather than Ottawa.

Those who propose them believe the theory behind wider freeways; that they make the commute easier. But reality shows that more and more people locate along that route, use it, and eventually it just becomes congested again. Witness the 12-lane Highway 401 across the top of Toronto. You can't build roads wide enough in major cities to handle the congestion of two commutes each day. Furthermore even if they do flow freely, they funnel a huge number of cars into an already-overloaded, 19th-century downtown grid.

Building wider roads is a no-win option. Address any safety concerns on the Rockland road, but don't use any problems as an excuse to buy votes with a $104-million freeway.

Widening roads is, of course, popular with commuters. They can buy cheap homes in the suburbs and get an inexpensive, fast drive for a few years. And that makes them popular with politicians who need commuter votes.

So let's dump this idea of an expanded east-end freeway and get serious about the real transportation problem in Ottawa -- urban transit.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007