“(But) we need to change the direction the past has taken us in and go in the direction we need to go, which is less car.”
[Emphasis added.]
So sez Councillor John Parker, quoted in this week’s East York Mirror, positively glowing about a North York Community Council decision to deny a gas station redevelopment in Thorncliffe because it included a doughnut store drive-through. The same article also quotes/paraphrases Parker saying:
“But I don’t support this application. It is the best thinking of 1950s futurism” that envisioned everyone living in highrises and reliant on cars.
Wow. That’s the sound of a councillor clearly coming out against car dependence as a basis for planning. Unfortunately, this is the same Councillor John Parker who just last week made a surprise motion to eliminate the Jarvis Street bike lanes without any real reason, but presumably just because he (or whichever of his City Hall bosses handed him the motion and told him to put his name on it) thinks that cars should take precedence over other considerations when it comes to planning.
So to summarize: cars in Thorncliffe, in his ward, bad. Cars on Jarvis, in someone else’s ward and on the way between his home and City Hall, good. Is it any wonder that politicians rank somewhere below personal injury lawyers, E. coli, and Lucy van Pelt holding a football on the trust scale?