4- Wednesday, August 10, 1988 - North Shore News TY JZ0b TRUNTER ® strictly personal © TORONTO IS a Strange spectacle this summer. The ‘‘City That Works’’ is having all sorts of problems. It is suddenly suffering the equivalent of arthritis, has definite respiratory problems, and is becoming paralyseci in vital areas. At the end of June, Premier David Peterson muttered darkly that if the smog got as bad as it had been for the previous week one moie time, he'd have to start shutting down major industries, One of the big differences be- tween here and Vancouver, of course, is the fact that rather than being entirely carted away to land fill sites, a huge amount of gar- bage is burned. Incredibly, the major incinerator towers are lined up along the lake shore, virtually downtown. One incinerator, which is used by airlines to burn their wastes, was threatened with closure at the height of the smog, but without it, mumerous airlines would have had to shut down their Toronto connections. An extension vas granted. This won't help much in the long run. The city is up to its gutters in garbage. Surrounding com- munities, which have doubled in size in the last decade, don’t want Toronto’s you-know-what. Meanwhile, Ontario’s municipal dumps are nearing capacity. Within three years, 1,400 dump sites will be full. The road system is a nightmare. No new highways have been built for 17 years. Politicians dithered Tho ee ye all that time on whether to build another subway line, which was finally turned down by the pro- vince on the grounds of being too expensive just last month. In the meantime, the population in the outlying metropolitan area has been growing at the rate of 5,000 new arrivals a month, means every subway line is choked with passengers twice a day. Along the 401, there are probably 5,000 vehicles concrete trough that laps across the northern end of the city, routinely seizes up. Not very long ago, it was a perimeter highway, allowing southern Ontario traffic to skirt Toronto. Today it is an integral part of the city's over- burdened transportation grid. Standing on a bridge over the 401, looking west, you can take in what is surely one of the great wonders of the world. Certainly, it rivals anything I’ve seen in places like Los Angeles, Tokyo, Paris, Rome or New York. ludced, Toronto frets endlessly in view — 10,000 if you swivel your head - all sitting perfectly still, half of them facing one direction, half the other. They are all very alone down there together.’”’ Parkways and expressways and freeways sag under the weight of crawling vehicles. As long as you travef on the roads at non-rush hours, they are marvellous. You just hop on a great tongue of asphalt like the Don Valley Parkway and, whoosh, you're downtown, Ditto for the subways. But al peak hours, forget them both. Highway 401, the mighty 18-lane about being a ‘“‘world-class’’ city. (Sound familiar?) And, as it turns out, in one respect it definitely is: world-class traffic jams. Along the 401, there are proba- bly 5,000 vehicles in view — 10,000 if you swivel your head — all sitting perfectly still, half of them facing one direction, half the other. They are all very alone down there together. Eerily enough, no one honks. There is only the seismic thunder of all those internal combustion engines vibrating, all those ex- haust pipes panting carbon monoxide into the sky. The image comes to mind of spawning salmon, rotling before your eyes. Meanwhile, overhead. there is a constant stream of jets blowtor- ching up from Pearson Interna- tional, leaving trails like slash- marks in the tortured lung tissue of the urban atmosphere. From the same bridge where I can look down on the 401, [can normally see the downtown core of towers rising in scintillating tes- timony tc the power of concen- trated banking. Looming over even these monolithic edifices, of course, is the CN Tower. This would be the equivalent of being able to see the skyline of Vancouver from somewhere in Langley. The tower saves Toronto, Otherwise one would be over- whelmed by claustrophobia — which is exactly what. happens when the smog closes in. For a week in June, not a trace of the city could be seen from my usual vantage point. There was only a sweep of undeveloped film obliterating distance. People were actually dying downtown, Anybody with respiratory pro- blems was advised to stay indoors, At school, while running around outside, my own son choked up from lack of breathable air and had to be brought hose. We live near the meandering Don River. It wasn’t too bad in the spring, but now that summer’s here, it foams and froths and stinks of flushed things. You would no more dip a toe in it than take an acid bath. The beaches were all shut down by mid-July because of the col- iform count. Unclean. The place is unclean @ 3 WU Couneil considers noise at night WORK ON the Ambleside Revitalization project may force West Vancouver District Council to con- travene its own noise bylaw. Council vated to amend its bylaw Monday, waiving night-time noise restrictions so that construction workers, may, if necessary, work one or two 24-hour shifts at the end of the revitalization work, Ald. Mark Sager explained that this might be the only way to complete the intersection at 13th Street and Marine Drive without closing it completely. “If 13th were closed for even a day, there would be terrible pro- blems,’’ explained Sager. ‘‘The only other route would be up llth, which has a difficult in- tersection and is very steep.” “It is necessary that we main- tain mobility for the police, who are at that intersection too,’”’ add- ed Mayor Don Lanskail. The intensive intersection work would fikely occur at the end of the project, between Aug. 20 and 31, with advance public notice. 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