Six Points Interchange – Kipling Avenue to reopen, Monday March 11, 2019, 5:00 pm

I’m pleased to post a recent email from the City of Toronto concerning next steps for the Six Points Interchange.

View this email in your browser

The text of the message reads:

At 5 p.m., Monday March 11, Kipling Avenue between Dundas St W and Bloor St W will reopen to vehicular traffic, one lane in each direction – 12 hours ahead of schedule.

Pedestrian access will remain closed on Kipling Avenue between Dundas St W and Bloor St W until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, March 12. When pedestrian access is reopened on Tuesday, there will be a temporary sidewalk on the west side of Kipling Avenue.

What to expect when travelling:

Road users should expect delays and increased traffic on nearby main and side streets. Efforts have been made to manage traffic in the area for the safety of workers, road users and residents. City Staff are continuing to monitor road conditions as vehicles and pedestrians adjust to the new road configuration.

Please refer to Construction Update 8 for information regarding ongoing construction works and alternate travel route suggestions.

More information:
www.toronto.ca/etobicokecentre

Field Ambassador
etobicokecentre@toronto.ca
416-338-7755

Thank you for your patience. Building a great city takes time. Better infrastructure for all of us is worth the wait.

[End]

Commentary

Click here for previous points about the Six Points Interchange >

Yesterday I was in Toronto for a short time. It was late in the day and I decided not to go to the Six Points Interchange, to take photos of the current construction. However, I look forward to taking some pictures on a future occasion.

I like that tagline: “Building a great city takes time.”

I like the tagline because I enjoy reading fatuous claims of all kinds. It’s a pleasant diversion to read such a claim.

Services cost money. There are times, when raising taxes to pay for services makes good sense. That being said, from the perspective of the current Toronto city council, now is not the time. That being the case, ‘Building a great city takes time’ is a portentous and essentially meaningless statement – rhetoric essentially untethered from reality – in light of the evidence, that is currently available.

By way of a summary of the history of land-use planning in Toronto: The 1998 amalgamation process that led to the current City of Toronto has been an unmitigated disaster.

The problem, as Jane Jacobs and many other wise and perceptive observers have noted, is that the divisions of power, enshrined in the BNA Act on 1867 or thereabouts, have no correspondence to current realities, in which municipalities are the economic drivers of the country.

Key provisions of the BNA Act made good sense at the time, but do not make any sense now.

The concept that municipalities are creatures of the provinces made good sense in 1867 – but makes no sense whatever now. Bad history, very bad history, has given rise to the current state of affairs at the City of Toronto. As citizens of Ontario, and of Canada, we can do better.

By way of summary: The Canadian constitution is urgently in need of major revision, to take account of the years that have passed since 1867. The constitution, as it currently stands, is a recipe for municipal land-use disaster, and never-ending municipal dysfunction.