Lecture notes and selected slides from Paul Bedford's address to the June 21 Jobs Prosperity Collaborative Luncheon in Hamilton.

Initial consultation in the GTHA supports the need to be bold and move ahead

We cannot afford to continue with the status quo but must be prepared to take risks, develop new funding strategies and build a transit network that is capable of serving the daily needs of a 10 million person region

Congestion and gridlock is the number one issue confronting us today and people are expecting answers

Jane Jacobs’ last book called “Dark Age Ahead” is proving to be very accurate but we can’t let gloom and doom overtake us

It is always hard to change direction but we do have a real and critical choice to make

The Province has shown bold leadership by passing the Places to Grow Plan, establishing a Greenbelt and creating a vision to concentrate future growth into a series of centres

Looking ahead into the future is always a challenging exercise but it needs to be embraced now more than at any time in our history if we are serious about the economic, social and environmental health of our region

The transit networks we have today are the product of visionary thinkers from the past but they haven’t kept pace with the tremendous growth of the Greater Golden Horseshoe

Our collective challenge is to connect the dots and provide the political and bureaucratic leadership necessary

Union Station already accommodates twice as many passengers as Pearson and this will double again within the next 10-15 years

Transit is the only sane answer for our collective future as a successful city region with 72 lanes of expressway needed to accommodate the same number of people traveling on the TTC, GO and on foot through Union Station each day

We need to rethink how we use our existing road space to accommodate more transit riders not more cars as the roads we have today are the roads we will have in 25 years

The daily Don Valley Expressway commute is a parking lot while GO trains offer some a viable choice

A comparison of gas prices around the world shows that we are now in the middle but will definitely join the European club in the future with prices forecast to rise toward $10.00 a gallon

$7.00 a gallon is no longer too far fetched!

Every municipality must address the building blocks of successful city building

A view down Yonge Street clearly illustrates how the subway has shaped the urban structure of this corridor over time

This same lesson is true for cities that are much smaller in size in both North America and Europe where light rail and even subways have been built in phases if strong political leadership is present

Now is the time to enthusiastically embrace city planning because it matters now more than ever by bringing together all the fundamental experiences of daily life

My experience in developing a totally new Official Plan for Toronto after amalgamation involved creativity, energy, passion and risk taking to add a million more people to the city by 2031

The building boom since 2000 is unprecedented with a population increase of 300,000 over the past ten+ years

The next ten years will be similar with about 13-15,000 condo units coming on to the market each year

In 2009, 16,000 condo units were sold which is double the number in New York City and triple the number sold in Vancouver

There are currently 332 active condo sites in the GTA which represents about 180,000 units in the development pipeline

The change that people wanted has created enormous opportunities in our downtown with about 200,000 people now living there

Innovative new city planning approaches that removed traditional land use and density controls in favour of urban design performance standards in King-Spadina and King-Parliament have exceeded all expectations

Concentrating mid rise housing on main streets has begun to bear fruit with development attracted to streetcar routes

This has meant a new push for mixed use to break the traditional mindset of single storey or separate land uses for drug stores, schools, LCBO, and a city wide prohibition of all drive through uses within 30 metres of residential districts

The lesson is that fixed rail attracts investment/buses don’t/experience elsewhere has shown that successful transformation from suburban to urban streets is possible with the introduction of fixed rail transit

Ottawa is learning this lesson now with the introduction of Light Rail Transit to replace Bus Rapid Transit after 30+ years

BRT moved a lot of people but it didn’t stimulate development in centres or nodes