Where's The Cabana Tunnel

Where's the outrage? Where's the Mayor? Where's Councillor STOPDRTP/BUDGET since Cabana is in his Ward? Where are all of the tunnel groups that have just sprung up?

Gord Henderson's column on Cabana Road "Road rage" was hilarious and disturbing. It demonstrated more clearly than anything I can imagine the absolute hypocrisy of this Mayor and Council on the DRIC road to the border!

Honestly, how can anyone take them seriously any more?

Imagine that Eddie cannot be consistent about whether to tunnel one road and not tunnel another. Doubling the size of Cabana is OK but increasing the width of Talbot Road is not so tunnel it. Destroy one residential community and protect another. Hmmm I wonder if someone did the calculation where there are more votes.

The front page headline screams: "Officials to study tunnel to border." Transport Canada's Windsor Gateway Project representative Mark Butler says: "We've heard the concerns. We've heard what Windsor residents have told us... Because of those meetings, we're looking at tunnelling as an option."

Instead of claiming a partial victory at least, what are our local elected officials doing: turning two lane Cabana into a four lane road. Never mind that there are several schools on or near Cabana, homes on Cabana, churches on Cabana and businesses on Cabana. Let's make it into a major east-west thoroughfare.

I attended the DRIC media briefing the other morning. BLOGS must now be considered "information sources" for the public along with the traditional media I hope. I asked if the City had asked for BIF money from the Senior Levels to help pay for this increase in lanes on Cabana. I was told that no request had been made.

Now why would I ask this you might think. Isn't the BIF money for border road improvements? Of course. And didn't Mike Palanacki, acting general manager of public works say that "Cabana will never become a truck route." Absolutely.

But don't you find it strange that this story just came out a few days after Eddie's big tunneling meeting and on the DRIC announcment day. Well I did.

Maybe I am reading too much into things again BUT if Eddie's tunnel is to be built on Talbot Road and the trucks need to detour, then where would be a nice place for them to go----how about to an upgraded 4-lane Cabana Road as a "detour" not as a "truck route." Only for a few short years, mind you. Keeps those nasty trucks off of E C Row too so Eddie is keeping his word.

The road would all be paid for by the Senior Levels under BIF since "the project isn't in the five-year capital works program" of the City. It would solve Eddie's financial and road problems too.

Now this has to be a devastating column about the Mayor except you do not see his name there. Can you imagine if it had been Mike Hurst who dared do that? The "City" is mentioned and so is "Palanacki." But did you see Eddie's name as the head of Council and the only full-time member of Council who is supposed to know all about this mentioned? Not a word.

It is time for Gord to stop protecting a Mayor who is losing rapidly the trust of Windsorites. Perhaps if Henderson and the Star had not treated Eddie so gently for so long, he might not be making the errors he is making now. He might have learned.

However with the almost total lack of criticism by the major media outlet in town, our Mayor is free to keep on making mistake after mistake with few consequences. It has to be the longest political honeymoon in history. I wonder why.