The unspeakable "T" word.

I can't decide which one makes me angrier: the suburban and ex-urban commuters in their gas-guzzlers with only the driver as passenger - or the lily-livered politicians who are afraid to use the "T" word when it comes to paying for roads - for fear that the electorate (who hate to pay for anything) will dump them out of office.

O.K. O.K. So I'm irritated. Who cares? We should all care. It is our money that highway expansion funds because no matter how much they protest against suburban sprawl, no one wants to anger a voter. It's easier to build and widen highways.

Two embarrassingly contradictory stories in the past few weeks: the magnificent new transit plan to make it possible to travel quickly and seamlessly across the entire GTA and beyond; the revelation that Milton, a one hour (two hours plus in rush hour) drive from Toronto, is the fastest growing municipality in the area. People are flocking there to get out of the big, bad, smoky, dirty, crime-ridden city, and into the sylvan wonderland of a small town now growing into a big town with cookie cutter subdivisions and one car families who have to become two car families and fathers who relish the idea of their kids having some place to play while having to face the fact that they will spend more time on the highway than they will with their kids. Ah me. Sigh.

Hard choices for politicians who hate being unpopular. First - let the mayor of Toronto stop whining about how we are being short-changed by both senior levels of government. Yes we are - but wringing your hands in grief and indignation will not put money in the treasury.

Action. Toll roads to increase revenues and maybe decrease traffic, and maybe dissuade people from more fifty foot lots on pristine farmland.

The paradox, and I quote (more or less) from the definitive book on urban sprawl "Asphalt Nation": when government spends money on highways it's always called "investment." When they spend money on transit or rail systems it's called "subsidy."

All of us pay for highways with our hard earned tax dollars. Some of us pay for transit because in this part of the world most of the cost is born by the transit rider.

Time to level the playing field. Get serious. Stop pie-in-the-sky plans for transit expansion and
develop revenues to bring those plans back to earth.