Recently, Toronto’s chief planner held a campaign titled Feeling Congested. It stretched across the city looking for residents to speak their minds about congestion as part of the official plan review.

I worked with city planning to arrange a local focus group, and I extended invitations to representatives of ratepayer groups, condominium boards and tenant organizations from across Willowdale to join me.

City staff led a discussion about long-term transit infrastructure planning and the group offered their comments. However, the focus quickly changed to increased traffic congestion caused by new developments in Toronto and the GTA.

I believe that the way the city reviews development applications is not working. New developments are approved with transportation planning reports that claim we have capacity on our roads for more cars and on our subways for more people. Whether you live near Yonge Street, Bayview Avenue, Leslie Street or Don Mills Road, we all know how bad congestion is and do not agree with the reports.

The Feeling Congested meeting was very productive; however, these residents and I have more to discuss and we want to see this problem fixed. I am already working to organize a second meeting where we will continue to discuss transit and traffic issues.

It may take time to improve Toronto’s congestion problem, but we can take steps to start making things better now.

Step one is to change the reporting to reflect what the real impacts of development are.