The Whitby Report – October 15, 2019

Today is Tuesday, October 15, 2019. I am your host Stone and this is The Whitby Report.

Weather
Last night we had a frost advisory. I went to bed and it was 1°C. When I woke this morning, I was too upset at seeing the frost advisory alert on my phone, I just couldn’t go look at the garden. My poor, poor, planted-way-too-late-in-the-season garden. I had high hopes for the radishes. I’ll be checking on them tomorrow.

Local News / Stone’s Take
The Future of Downtown Whitby Parking. So to summarize, our planning department is fully aware that we’re removing parking lots downtown in favour of new mixed commercial/residential buildings. Our mayor believes that a truly great downtown has no wasted space for mass parking.

I agree with this, up to a point.

Yes, I agree we should be getting the focus away from cars in the downtown, however, on the flip-side we need to invest more into transit. This is the problem that Toronto faces in that they have a congested core and transit is just terrible. Wait hours and hope you can catch a streetcar.

Whitby is not Toronto. We do not have the population to justify converting our parking spaces over and pretend we are a world-class city raking in billions of dollars. There needs to be a balanced approach to this. Not everyone rides a bike, able or not, to be able to get around.