TLDR: By providing…

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019-9265

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TLDR: By providing alternatives to highway travel to get more people off the road, road and highways will be open to those who need it. By providing choices for alternate travel for rural Ontarians like trains, Ontario can become a more equitable place to live and get around, no matter who you are.

Multiple studies over decades (2 sources listed below) show that adding lanes of highway only produces more traffic. If it's easier to drive then more people will, and therefore the congestion is ultimately the same. It is instead more effective to provide alternatives to car travel by providing *reliable* and *convenient* modes of public transit like trains, LRTs, etc as well as infrastructure like bicycle lanes. Of course, sometimes driving is the only option depending on where you're going and what you're carrying with you. In which case, if more people take the train or their bike, highways will be less congested with commuters going to the office and be open to the people that need them.
If it's easier to take the train to work, why *wouldn't* people use it?

Instead of building more highways, I'd instead suggest reacquiring the 407, infrastructure that already exists and is severely underutilized.

Canada is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to high speed trains and interconnected networks of reliable and convenient transport. Train travel to BC is SLOWER than when it was first built over a century ago. In Germany, there is a train station in every small hamlet creating transportation equity between both rural and urban regions of the country. Rural Ontarians don't need to be isolated from the rest of Ontario.

With more choices for travel to suit everyone's needs, we'd make it more equitable for everyone, no matter where you live.