[All] Hwy 7

[Eleanor Grant]

Hi All -

A little essay I'm composing on Hwy 7.  I'd appreciate corrections and fact
fill-ins ....

Eleanor

----------------------------
2014 April 7

Paving over prime productive farmland for any purpose must always be seen
as a last resort and something to avoid if at all possible.  With this in
mind, the cities of Waterloo Region are trying to solidify their
Countryside Lines and contain all development within them.

So it's troubling to see further steps now being taken toward building an
18 km new Highway 7 across Waterloo-Wellington - a highway the need for
which has never been amply demonstrated.

The construction date has been postponed several times, and is only
promised again whenever an election is looming.  This may have given
opponents the false hope that the highway would never be built after all.
But the March 29 WR Record carried a notice that the Initial Design Report
for the project was now completed and would be on view at Kitchener City
Hall starting April 9.  And a few days later an Ont government pre-budget
document announced that construction would begin in 2016.  Which Kitchener
Centre MPP John Milloy, the government house leader, quickly corrected to
2015, perhaps under pressure from local business interests.

This date is getting too close for comfort.

We all agree that doing nothing is not an option.  The present highway
narrows to 2 lanes from Spitzig Rd, just outside Kitchener, to Wellington
Rd 32.  It's a bottleneck for truck traffic and commuters, and makes access
to the area's greenhouse businesses difficult.  Crashes and fatalities are
increasing.

Yet no explanation is ever provided for not simply widening the road.  If
this stretch of Hwy 7 - apx 10 km - were made 4 lanes, plus turning lanes
where needed, the bottleneck would be eliminated.  One set of traffic
lights and a short service road could provide access to the businesses.

One more thing would be needed: improved access to the Conestoga Expwy,
bypassing Victoria St.  [perhaps by a bridge over the ravine at the end of
Wellington St to avoid the 2 turns on Shirley, and widening Bingeman Centre
Rd.  Is the rail crossing near Victoria a concern?  I remember being
delayed there for 9 minutes when on my way to work in Guelph one time.
Also if B C Rd became a highway, would access to small businesses along
there suffer?  A service road to them perhaps? ]

Until improving the present road is tried, no money should be spent to take
land out of cultivation and build a controlled access highway that's not
needed.  Improving the present highway is all that would be needed for a
generation or more.

By a generation from now, other significant things may have changed which
would make intensive road travel between Kitchener and Guelph less
needful.  For example:

- All-day 2-way rapid GO train service between Kitchener, Guelph, and
Toronto, also recently promised by Premier Wynne.  We hope the political
will will be there, whoever is in government, to complete this ambitious
project of buying tracks and upgrading them for rapid publicly-owned
passenger service.  A much better use of public money.

- Access to GO trains through a good bus grid in both Guelph and KCW, plus
frequent and rapid light rail through KCW.

- Park-and-ride GO stations at Breslau and perhaps also at the edge of
Guelph.

- A shifting of the manufacturing centre of gravity south to Maple Grove
Rd.  If this is accompanied with good transit, including a good bus grid in
Cambridge and connectivity between Hespeler and Guelph, there could be
fewer commuters on the Kitchener-Guelph highway.  [But I can't figure out
how truck traffic will get in and out of Mpl Grove.  And by removing more
and more commuters from highways, are we simply building highways for
trucks??? ]

The present 10-km bottleneck on Highway 7 is annoying as heck to those who
must drive it regularly - yet the difference in travel time is actually
small.  If you could drive 10 km at 100 km/hr it would take you 6 minutes,
while if you have to drive it at 50 km/hr it takes 12 minutes.  A saving of
6 minutes!  Is this a drain on the economy, or just on our nerves?
Education about this fact might calm people down.  The extra 6 minutes can
be planned for and spent listening to favourite music, for example.

For the sake of 6 minutes, do we really want to tear up a beautiful
productive farming community interlaced with pristine wetlands, and spend
over $400 million on construction?  (Where are all the people who objected
to the cost of the LRT!)  And leave a strip of land between the two
highways that will be useless for any purpose but ribbon development of the
most unsightly kind?

It would be helpful to know where the pressure is coming from to build this
white elephant and avoid widening the present highway.  Is it too late to
smoke them out, and have this long-overdue public conversation?

-------------------------

(Damn I wish somebody would find a Jefferson salamander in Hopewell Creek:)
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