Oakwood Tunnel Park. Windsor-Essex Parkway
Windsor-Essex Parkway and Greenlink. Some Perspective
Our Civic Leaders do not seem to know when to throw the towel in. Painful to watch and stressing to think that they are blowing our tax dollars off and into the wind. This past weekend Windsor Star subcribers found their papers fully gift wrapped with Greenlink propaganda. Front page, back cover and both inside covers. Black plus one colour. For the record that ad placement cost city tax payers $20,000.00 plus agency fees which were probably half of that again. We have now seen several full page ads at five grand each and lets not forget all of the billboards around town which cost about two thousand dollars a pop per month. There's transit Windsor advertising which doesn't come cheap, radio ads, two batches of car flags (the first ones didn't cut the mustard so new ones were ordered at duplicate cost), mail in cards with all of the pre-paid postage fees, magazine ads and who knows what else. We are talking hundreds of thousands of advertising dollars; our local tax dollars. Dollars which we paid and which are quite frankly gone for good and to no good end.
Here's a bit of perspective which local bloggers have been pointing out for over a week. CKLW ran an opinion poll last week and the results easily revealed that over 60 percent of respondents agreed that the Windsor-Essex Parkway is a good way to go. The cost of that poll was zero dollars, nada dinero, zip and zilch. Think about that. CKLW's poll which costed nothing and ran for a mere three days told us where Windsorites stand on this issue. Our City Leaders have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past few months and are still spending even after the Windsor-Essex Parkway has been chosen. All of that spending and they still don't have any concensus. All of the ad dollars which our fearless leaders burned off between their knuckles could have been thrown into real causes like libraries, infrastructure, trees, or paying down debt. Heck...that money could have been used to promote Windsor to the rest of the world. The saddest part about all of this is that it may be all for not because, as we have been hearing lately, neither the state of Michigan or the Federal U.S. government have signed onto having a new border crossing citing unecessary cost and seeming satisfaction with the already under way twinning of the Ambassador Bridge.
Tunnel Vision
The Greenlink and the Windsor-Essex Parkway share the same path and footprint. They straddle the same neighbourhoods and municipalities and they start and stop at exactly the same points. That part is easy enough to envision. The Boys and Girls of Council have their knickers in knots over tunnels. For whatever rationalle, they are bent on longer tunnels. Why? Because they can cover them with more park land. Again: Why? Here is some perspective. Think about the tunnel that we know. The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. It is 1,573 meters long. Roughly one mile. Now envision the last time you drove through that tunnel. Not a very short tunnel is it. Greenlink proponents are pushing for 3830 meters of tunneling with three proposed tunnels being almost as long as the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. There is no logical or safe purpose for this. They don't guard against pollution (in fact it concentrates and exhausts it into the very neighbourhoods which the tunnels abut. At least with open roadway those pollutants get mixed with fresh air and carried away by prevailing winds. The Greenlink tunnels have no emergency shoulders either. That means if there is an accident in one of those tunnels the best scenario we have is traffic backups for miles. Worst case scenario is mass carnage as we saw in the California tunnel disaster of last year. http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&brand=msnbc&showPlaylist=true&playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:b55fa02b-b490-46f9-8f8c-1f113df7c991
As for parkland how much is enough? The Windsor-Essex Parkway is providing 240 acres of parkland. Most of that new parkland will be Labelle with 240 meters, Huron Church with 220 meters, Hearthwood with 220 meters, Howard with 240 meters and Spring Garden with 220 meters. Let's look at this in perspective. Square 240 meters and you get 16 acres. That's just the amount of greenspace which covers one tunnel. It does not take into account the greenspace which it joins to on either side of the highway. Memorial Park and Optimist Parks combined are 50 acres. Lansberry Park is 11 acres. Multiply 15 acres times 11 tunnels plus the peripheral green spaces and you get a lot of added green with all of the bonus trails and ammenities attached. Are sour grapes really worth the whining, kicking and fiscal hemorrhaging which our City Council is subjecting us to? Over 60 percent of us have already said no.
The Nafta Super Highway
Chew on this: Right from the beginning the Nafta Superhighway has been mapped out from Mexico and beyond via the I-69 straight through PortHuron/Sarnia and directly to London and Toronto via the 402/401. At this time, construction has already begun in the Southernmost affected states. This highway is planned to be four football fields wide. As we know, the involved governments are already planning to widen the 402. The next time you have your road map of South Western Ontario out take a hard look at it. If you think that Canada stops at London today, think about the impact of this new path of least resistance. Windsor will certainly come to know what it's like to be Wallaceburg.
