Talbot Encore

Gord Henderson's column today was predictable if you read my earlier note on Talbot Road. (Read note below first). Giving people false hopes in my opinion and unreal expectations. And didn't you like the placement of the Bridge Co. expansion story right beside Gord's column. All those trucks going down Talbot Road due to the bad Bridge Co. expanding their plaza. Priceless.

But it is more as well. The column is unwittingly setting us up for an announcement in a few weeks that Eddie has a new idea for the roadway route in that area. I think it will be part of a "You scratch my back, I scratch yours deal" to help out Eddie there and elsewhere in the City. Don't forget the new rallying cry: CODA, CODA, CODA! Gridlock Sam is back in town after all.

Gord wrote:

• "It's sickening to think that the bureaucrats, even in the volatile midst of a federal election, are leaning in favour of a bargain-basement fix for the most critical infrastructure problem in Canada and offering feeble excuses for not doing the job right...
  
  Whatever the DRIC recommends and whatever the two senior levels of government end up doing, Windsor will live with it for decades to come. And if the "solution" is merely an at-grade, six-lane urban freeway with a service road and sound barriers, an "80-metre swath" as Mayor Eddie Francis put it, Windsor will co-habit with an infrastructure monster. If a tunnel can't be built for technical reasons, Windsor deserves, at the very least, the below-grade cantilevered road proposed by "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz...
  
  If Australia and France can pull off these engineering and design triumphs, immense sources of pride for both countries, why must we here in Canada, and especially in Windsor, settle for lame excuses and chicken manure proposals? It's not as if Canadian firms lack technical expertise. They work on giant projects around the world. To repeat the question, where's the vision?"
  
  
  

An Engineer I know wrote to me the other day on this topic and said:

"I’m not sure there is any good message for the Talbot Road residents – let’s say we convince the MTO/TC to pay for a cantilevered or tunneled roadway… the construction in front of their homes will be a tremendous inconvenience for 3, 4 maybe 5 years – most of them might wish they had sold out."

The battle for Talbot Road is not for the residents. The battle is for a Mayor and Council who have done nothing worthwhile on the border and who desperately need to pretend they are doing something. The battle is for a Mayor and Council who failed their electorate and who did not "Dream Big" for a long-term solution right at the start but who rallied for a billion-dollar short-term dream. The battle is for a Mayor and Council who have kept their citizens in the dark because of their secrecy and have never trusted us and who now want us to help them out.

The Talbot Road battle is part of a phony war to try to get them re-elected! In that war, I intend to be a "conscientious objector."