Why DRIC Was Silent At Council

It was all very strange don't you think. The performance by the City's outside counsel demolishing the DRIC proposal by showing how they violated the law. The brilliant cross-examination by our City's Perry Mason, our lawyer/Mayor. The incisive and trenchant questioning by Councillors.

And then the DRIC representatives... the high-priced, out-of-town experts who seemingly failed in the most obvious and simplest of tasks. They did not look exhaustively at the Greenlink Road proposed by the City and then failed to explain satisfactorily why they did not do so. They sat there stuttering as they were being demolished over a period of several hours.

Why, if you read the Letters to the Editor selected by the Editorial page Editor of the Star, one ought to be strapping on a "W" and cheering the efforts of this Mayor and Council to stand up for the quality of life in Windsor in the face of impossible odds.

Of course now we can be pretty certain that there was something going on behind the scenes. Exactly what, who knows! This whole border file is becoming more and more convoluted as time passes.

However, it is clear after the Star article "County less hostile to DRIC border plan" that the DRIC reps were instructed to keep their mouths shut and allow the City to dump on them. They had an answer to all the questions that were being asked at the Monday Council meeting but chose not to give them clearly and straight out. I watched their attendance at County Council on Cogeco and they did not have any problems answering questions. I'll talk more about that in another BLOG.

Oh well, when the DRIC road is killed and we get an upgraded and uploaded EC Row then we will understand why. Speaking of the expressway, several people have commented to me that it appears as if a third lane is being added to the roadway at least in the area of the construction. Perhaps someone can explain what is actually going on there.

Back to the Star article. Here are the relevant parts:

• "Baxter said he's still trying to figure out what additional benefits are in GreenLink to justify almost $1 billion more in capital cost...
  
  While many elements of GreenLink and the parkway as now designed are similar, Wake said DRIC's analysis didn't find significant environmental benefits warranting almost $1 billion in additional cost in the city's GreenLink plan.
  
  The parkway proposal has 11 tunnels with a combined length of about 1.9 kilometres, but none exceeding 240 metres.
  
  GreenLink has six tunnels, but with a combined length of about 3.8 kilometres.
  
  Wake said the critical factor for tunnelling is the need for ventilation systems when length exceeds 240 metres. However, the air quality improvements from the additional tunnelling are minimal, Wake said. The main benefits of tunnelling are the improved local connections of roads, more parkland and trails, he said.
  
  Most of the air quality improvements for either GreenLink or the parkway come from eliminating stop-and-go truck movements and idling now common along Huron Church Road, Wake said.
  
  Even an end-to-end tunnel creates relatively little additional benefit in air quality for almost $4 billion in capital cost, Wake said."

As far as significant changes go, there can be "refinements" to the DRIC plan that would be allowed, and this may be Eddie's face-saving way out:

• "Changes to the parkway plan to improve connections between neighbourhoods, to add parkland or extend trails can be made if justified, Wake said."

It really was very easy to knock out Greenlink. It was the same tactic used with respect to DRTP and the Ambassador Bridge but now applied to the City's proposal. DRIC determines the criteria and then disqualifies a proposal if it does not meet its criteria. It's really as simple as that.

With respect to DRTP, DRIC wanted six lanes of traffic while DRTP could only provide a maximum of four. The elimination of the Ambassador Bridge proposal was a bit more subtle... DRIC decided what they thought the proposal should be with respect to a new bridge at the existing site (which bore no relationship to what the Bridge Company proposed) and then eliminated it because it was going to destroy a good part of Sandwich.

In the case of Greenlink, DRIC determined that no tunnel should be longer than 240 m. Since several of Greenlink's tunnels were longer than that, then Greenlink was disqualified--poof, gone!.

Moreover, and I think that this is the real key to ignoring Greenlink, the reality according to DRIC is that a full tunnelled solution does not offer much improvement over what they are proposing at a cost of several billion dollars more than the DRIC road. I know that the Mayor does not like to talk costs but unfortunately we poor taxpayers do.

Just keep watching. We will learn soon I am certain why Sandra and Dwight did not want to go after Eddie at this stage. I do hope that Eddie remembers, if he chooses to litigate, that one day he could be answering questions fired at him by lawyers who actually have been in practice for a good number of years.

It is certainly not as much fun as doing the questioning when you are sitting in the Chair at the head of the Chambers and being called Your Worship.