Here is the textbook model of bureaucratic inefficiency and council sluggishness that deserves a satirical Gilbert and Sullivan song of its own: Collingwood is conducting a “speed limit survey” through its user-hostile website. What’s inefficient about that, you ask… well, first consider the timeline. This survey is so complicated, so difficult to assemble, so challenging to put online it has taken the town three years to get all of the four vague questions online and ask residents what they think about the idea.*
Yes, I am serious. In May 31, 2021 — THREE YEARS AGO! — Council requested “a staff report on the possibility of setting a Town wide [sic] speed limit of 40 km per hour including consultation with the Town of Wasaga Beach if advisable,” But since that seemed too bold a step for the council of the day, it was quickly watered down to “an update at the next meeting of Council on what a staff report would entail.”
Recall that, in mid-2021, our feckless council was at that time focused solely on adding costs to the taxpayer-funded vendetta of the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI, eventually wasting more than $10 million). Saunderson himself, never keen on or competent at actually doing the work of being our mayor, was eager to get out of office so he could campaign to be the nominee for the provincial Conservatives in the 2022 election, so he was merely putting in his time before he could shed his responsibilities and leave council rudderless.
On June 28, 2021, staff provided Council with four options for their consideration, which, being three more items than they were capable of handling at once, befuddled them. Since council loves to spend your tax dollars on outsiders instead of actually doing anything themselves, councillors went with the recommendation to hire a consultant to provide a “comprehensive review report.” Then they waved their hands as if they had accomplished something.
Of course, a more competent council might have gone ahead and implemented speed reductions in specific areas with traffic counters and radar to test the effect of those reductions, and thus have practical, empirical data to work from, but why would they want facts? Facts never informed their decision prior to that.
THREE YEARS LATER, predictably, nothing concrete has been done about traffic calming or speed reductions.** But this month, the town finally posted an anemic survey with a limited number of generic questions. The town’s uninformative webpage provided no actual details about the implementation or a timeline, nothing about specific trouble areas, and no reference to other forms of traffic calming. There’s no suggestion anyone has measured traffic speeds on any of our streets and nothing about creating test areas to measure the effectiveness of speed reductions. Really? This is the best we can do?
And more than THREE YEARS LATER we still have no idea when the consultant will file a report or when (or even if) any recommendations for speed limits will be implemented! That report — the Master Mobility and Transportation Plan (MMTP) — was announced way back in January on the town’s user-hostile website, with another survey. Did you even know about it? Maybe if the town had an actual communications strategy and someone to manage it, residents might actually be informed about things and have real citizen engagement. On the other hand, maybe keeping us in the dark is the strategy.
The MMTP promises “a comprehensive strategy which deals with current and future transportation issues” but despite the late launch, is still being mulled over without any definite date of publication. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, it will emerge within the Age of Mammals… but we can take heart that when it is finally produced after much use of public funds, it will “leverage existing transportation assets…” whatever TF that bureaucratese piffle means.
And how much will this consultant’s report cost taxpayers? At least $463,000 of your money; the amount approved in the 2024 budget… but given the glacial speed at which it has progressed, I suspect it will run over that as it stretches into 2025 and perhaps beyond while it leverages our assets. And then the review begins and priorities need to be identified… glaciers move more swiftly.
Even then, there’s no guarantee anything will be done or any form of traffic calming implemented. We might, if we are fortunate, get the shadow of a whisper of a hint of a suggestion of a possibility of a promise to perhaps look into making a motion to do something about the problem in the indefinitely distant future. After all, the FAQ about the plan says:
Following finalization of the Master Mobility and Transportation Plan, the Town will begin to review and implement the individual transportation projects and priorities identified during the process and within the report. These individual projects identified in the Master Mobility and Transportation Plan will be carried through to preliminary and detailed design, and then construction. The timing and implementation of such projects will depend on their priority and approval of budget.
Three years later and we’re still no closer to anyone on council or staff actually doing something — anything! — about the worsening traffic in Collingwood and still years out from councillors even talking sensibly about it. But they sure can wave their hands.***
Collingwood deserves better!
Notes
* But what should we really expect from the town’s in-house IT department? After all, it has a mere 5.3 full-time employees and a budget of more than $1 million (almost ten times the IT budget in 2014), not including undisclosed office space costs, benefits, parking space allocation, equipment, and other incidental costs to the taxpayer. And years after bringing IT into town hall, the website is still a user-hostile mess. Maybe it will be fixed by the time the MMTP comes out…
** As I noted in a previous post, staff seem to think it is residents’ responsibility and not staff’s to prove a street or road needs some measure to reduce traffic speed and volume. For the past three years, we learned this spring, staff have been responding to resident requests about traffic issues with the equivalent of “It’s not my job, it’s yours.” Yet all anyone needs to do is simply stand on any of the busier sidestreets and watch the cars race by.
*** As I wrote earlier, our anti-environment Council and staff sure love vehicles and much prefer them over residents, cyclists, and trees. Council recently approved a staff plan to chop down 36 mature trees — some more than a century old — to make Sixth Street even more of a speedway for cars passing through town. The entire street will be deforested with no plans to replant trees on other boulevards in town. What townhall wants there are more vehicles, making more pollution, more noise, and less safety. The previous council approved chopping down more than 50 mature trees along Hurontario Street for a sidewalk so one of its members didn’t have to face the inconvenience of crossing the street to use the existing sidewalk. And, of course, none of those trees were ever replaced on boulevards in town.
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