Interesting article from the Saturday Free Press:
Ring road around London still a dream
KITCHENER - During a public debate last month between the two candidates for the Regional Municipality of Waterloo's top elected office, the incumbent chair, Ken Seiling, launched into a vigorous defence of a proposed light-rail transit system that would run from the north of Waterloo to the south of Kitchener. It's a project he supports.
"Can anyone imagine K-W today without the (Conestoga) expressway?" Seiling asked - his point not lost on anyone in the room. He went on to argue that the same type of long-term thinking that, four decades ago, sparked construction of the essential freeway will be needed to build an LRT system in the decade ahead. And Waterloo Region residents ought not to shirk the moment of opportunity.
Seiling went on to assert that the expressway, which loops from southwest Kitchener to north Waterloo, has been the single biggest catalyst in the economic development of the twin cities - and, by extension, the Region of Waterloo.
Without that vital artery, he implied, access to the universities and industrial nodes in the north would have been restricted and developments such as the giant RIM Park might never have happened.
The veteran politician got not a word of argument on this point from anyone in the audience, nor from his electoral opponent, Robert Milligan. In Waterloo Region, the crucial importance of the freeway to regional economic development is already conventional wisdom, even among many environmentalists and supporters of alternative modes of transportation.
The only quibbles that occasionally bubble to the surface here have to do with the fact that the "ring" was never finished, due to lobbying by powerful landowner interests - a fact some residents now think was the only political mistake in an otherwise important and successful project.
London has had its own long and rather tortured history with the concept of a "ring road" around the city. It fumbled its golden opportunity in the early 1970s to have the province shoulder half the cost of such a project by approving the construction of Hwy. 402 across the city's north. Influential landowners were successful in bending the proposed highway's route around the south of the city past Lambeth.
Since then, city politicians have tried a few times to revive the ring-road concept (and demurred even more often), but were twice foiled by the Ontario Municipal Board. Negotiations with Middlesex Centre and Middlesex County a decade ago about a northern right-of-way went nowhere.
Over the past few years, the discussion has shifted from ring road to the notion of a possible U-road, says Dave Leckie, London's director of roads and transportation. City staff are testing that concept - as well as many others related to transportation corridors and development intensification - through an update to the transportation master plan, which they've dubbed Smart Moves. There's a website that invites citizen involvement (
www.london.ca/smartmoves) and a third public workshop on the issue is planned for Dec. 7.
An effective vision takes guts and requires calculated risks. Back in Waterloo Region, residents are being reminded of their generational responsibility to think big and to think long term.
At a seminar earlier this week, Joe Berridge, a partner at Toronto-based planning and urban design firm Urban Strategies, told his audience it's time to imagine K-W as an ethnically diverse, dense and busy mini-metropolis that will likely reach more than 700,000 people within the next 20 years. Different modes of living and travel won't be options; they'll be necessities, he said, adding that Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge will inevitably resemble one big city.
Coming to terms with those realities now - and taking the important first steps - is "an investment in the next generation," Berridge said.
It's interesting to note that, during the election campaign just passed, taxation in the Waterloo Region wasn't the consuming issue it was in London. Voters were interested in trying to keep the rate of tax hikes to the rate of inflation, but the "vision" issues dominated.
And it hasn't stopped. One of the first priorities of the new regional council and its staff is continuing that re-imaging process through online citizen input and a series of face-to-face public consultations.
And with all that focus on a long-term vision, it just so happens that Seiling, as well as the mayors of Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge, were all re-elected - bucking what was a bit of a provincial trend toward dumping incumbents.
Coincidence? Perhaps not.
http://www.lfpress.com/comment/colum.../15989576.html
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I agree, all of these projects are greatly needed. Especially the Southdale road widening. It, like Sunningdale, isn't a country road anymore, and now that development has sprawled onto both sides it badly needs widening to Colonel Talbot. Same goes for Hyde Park with that new "Smart Centre." 
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