As a former P. Eng with…

As a former P. Eng with international experience in transportation issues, I find it fascinating that to my knowledge the Ontario government is the only one in the world, who is proposing to reduce congestion by encouraging individuals who have abandoned use of automobiles in the city, to return and get back into private cars and thus increase the number of vehicles on the roads.
Cities around the world where populations and density grow from year to year, have long ago realized that the only way to ease existing gridlock is to limit the number of cars and create alternative infrastructure that includes public transport and lanes for bicycles, scoters and small sized electric transportation vehicles.
To me the proposal appears to be not a solution to solve traffic congestion but rather a political maneuver to appeal to a segment of a population who believes that only private automobiles should have a use of public roads.
Though this may be a successful gambit in the short term for the government, the citizens of Ontario will suffer the consequences. All one needs to do is to look at short sighted decisions made by previous Ontario governments who cancelled the Eglinton subway line in 1995 and spent money to refill the sites where work already started, the decision of selling Highway 407 and the decision of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to cancel the ‘shovel in the ground ready' light rail projects in Toronto in 2010.
If this proposal does become law the long-term legacy will be the same as the legacy of cancelling the projects above and the losers will be all of us who live in this province. Of course, when it comes to politics that likely makes no difference.