Billions For A Tunnel Or For Trucks

I see that Al Teshuba has announced that he is running in Ward One for Council. That should make it an interesting race between the incumbent, Councillor Budget/STOPDRTP and the fellow who is becoming increasingly identified with tunnels for Windsor. (Sorry Eddie, you have been too quiet on the "quality of life" diversion designed to make people forget about the Schwartz Report. Al has stolen your thunder and is getting all of the headlines.).

These two will be battling for the votes of those concerned about the border it seems. Of course Drew Dilkens will win one of the seats unless Charlie Hotham decides to run and then it will be a real horserace in that Ward. And if the other candidate I hear may run (and he is to decide by the end of the month I was told)....well there will be a lot of action in the campaign by mid-November! This may become the most personal of all of the elections.

Obviously, I will be talking about the election race more but I wanted to offer Al some advice after watching Councillor Brister perform over these last 3 years as a Councillor.

Be careful that you do not become identified as a one-issue "tunnel" candidate and then Councillor. You also want to be identified as finding the right solution, not just any solution. By right, I mean one that is doable quickly and practically and solves a problem.

It is a no-brainer that Councillor Brister won with the most votes of any Councillor because he was Chair of STOPDRTP. But after the election, he became virtually invisible on the border issue. He seemed to become afraid of it because of a possible "conflict of interest" charge. Take some time and check out how many stories in three years in the media he has been involved in respecting the border. He transformed himself into the Budget Crusader and became one-issue on that instead!

If Councillor Brister loses this time around, one of the reasons will be because it will appear as if he has abandoned his community and his strong base of support.

I say this to Al because of some information I have seen on the Natural Resources Defense Council's website. It claims that it is the "most effective environmental action organization" in the US.

• "A New National Standard for Diesel Fuel: NRDC was instrumental in the U.S. EPA's adoption, in 2001, of dramatically strengthened national standards for diesel fuel and emissions. The final rules included stringent limits on tailpipe emissions from new large trucks and buses, along with a requirement that the vehicles use diesel fuel that is virtually free of sulfur.
  
  The effect of the EPA's new rules will be similar to what happened when lead was removed from gasoline, which paved the way for the use of catalytic converters, vastly reducing emissions from cars on American roads. The new rules will reduce asthma attack-inducing soot particles by 90 percent in 2007, and smog-forming nitrogen-oxide emissions by 95 percent from 2007 to 2010. That's the equivalent of removing 13 million trucks from American roads. More important, this "2007 Rule" will save more than 8,300 premature deaths, more than 700,000 asthma attacks and other respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.5 million lost work days, every year --together, more than $66 billion in net benefits to the nation."

If what is being said is true, and harmful particulates are being reduced to virtually zero, then why do we need a tunnel in Windsor? Why would the Governments spend any money to fix a problem that is going away? It is a waste of time and energy to fight a non-issue. By the time the Tunnel is built, there will be a low amount of particulate emissions anyway.

I am sure that you saw the story about the weekend border traffic:

• "border officers also are spending more time scrutinizing each traveler's identification documents since a federal report last week blasted the ease of slipping into the United States from Canada with fake identification, conceded Ron Smith, spokesman for the Detroit office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection."

There were waits of one to one-and-a-half hours at the Ambassador Bridge, at the Blue Water Bridge it was two to three hours and at the Detroit-Windsor tunnel for three hours with an accident contributing to the delay there.

Do you really believe that a truck driver will want to sit in a tunnel for that length of time! OR will the driver take every step that he can to avoid the crossing.

So what is the solution? If I were Al, I would change my approach somewhat to build on what he is saying but to take into account what is really going in the world of transportation. If I were Al, I would demand that the billions he wants the Government to spend on a tunnel for Windsor be better spent on ensuring that all trucks NOW have the new emission control systems, not just new ones. The money would be better spent helping the truck companies convert systems by a subsidy than wasting it on a tunnel that is not going to be built!

In this way, if Al takes up my suggestion as his campaign platform, he solves a real problem for Windsor, NOW, not 10 years from now and in a way that Government is used to acting. Al can score big political points. Heck, even the OTA and David Bradley will love him!

If you take me up on this and are elected Al, you owe me a drink!