In an era when we should be discouraging citizens from getting into cars, we continue to build and refine our highways to accommodate even more of them. We are seeking to expand our biggest parkway, removing traffic lights at the south end and extending it off the north end all the way to Kitchener.

One has to ask: could that money not be better spent? If we put even half of the money we are putting into highway 6 and 7 upgrades into our beleaguered passenger rail and city bus networks, would we not find that the need for the highways would be reduced enough not to require new expropriations, cloverleafs, lanes and alignments? Would huge numbers of people who currently have to drive every which way every day not then find a faster, more comfortable, safer way to get around?

If GO trains ran up the CP to Cambridge and the CN to Kitchener, possibly at a cost well below that of all the proposed highway "improvements," would the highway improvements not themselves become totally redundant, with the highways able to accommodate the remaining traffic that cannot be moved by rail? Could we not connect Grand River Transit to Guelph Transit and efficiently move more people around the region for less road?

And if we do feel compelled to blow up people's homes to make way for more highway, is it not incumbent upon us to find a way to minimize such destruction and disruption?

If we are to be forced to "upgrade" the Hanlon, not much is needed to both eliminate a traffic light and connect an interchange. A ramp that parallels the road it is coming off as the road climbs for an overpass, turns as at an intersection when it reaches the highway, and parallels the highway until it merges could be built at relatively low cost, requiring little more work than a simple overpass, in both money and land expropriation, and could work at each of Kortright, Stone and College, without diverting still more traffic down residential streets and without building massive cloverleafs.

Too novel? It is exactly how Montreal's Highway 20 - which parallels a busy commuter rail line - works.

Highways are the way of the past, not the way of the future.

David Graham

Guelph