The Hamilton Spectator – Letters to the Editor
Downtown, GO are key issues
RE: ‘Questions set for mayoral candidates’ (Oct. 17).
Several issues should be on the front’ burners of the mayoral candidates.
An Oct. 17 letter to the editor, entitled, “People need reason to go downtown,” should ring alarm bells.
It is unfortunate that many candidates subscribe to weather-vane politics; they go with the wind.
One example is the rhetoric of well meaning, but misguided, people who suggest abandoning the one-way street system in favour of two-way traffic downtown.
Core revival is the answer; we need lower taxes and incentives for new housing and new businesses to replace the derelict and abandoned buildings.
The Ontario government has just announced plans to expand the QEW.
Until these improvements are completed, Ancaster motorists will still leave at 5 a.m. to be at work for 8 a.m. in Toronto. Returning, they’ll still get stuck in the Oakville bottleneck from 2:30 p.m. until well past 6:30.
Would not the expansion of public transit, such as more GO trains to Hamilton, alleviate this problem? And there would be a side benefit for all of us.
As correctly stated in The Spectator’s Oct. 15 Men & Women section, “Angry driving is killing us.” One only needs to paraphrase the middle of the article: “People are frustrated at how much they have to drive. They are spending two hours a day in their cars … This is dehumanizing.”
Would it not be wonderful if all those who travel back and forth between Hamilton and Toronto could use the GO train? It would be less stressful, and more environmentally conscientious. And, most of all, it would save a lot of money.
Dez Miklós, Hamilton.