No win

Toronto's City Council's acrimonious debate over the fate of the Gardiner Expressway seems one of utter futility. They are about to render a decision. It is the ultimate no win.

At the moment, the whole council seems completely split right down the middle. Both sides really don't know what they are talking about. Personal agendas flow into the scene. The vote took place during the writing.

The Gardiner Expressway was called the mistake by the lake when it was constructed. In high school, one teacher gave us a study in urban planning. His assessment about its construction was that once used it was going to be like an urban planning Heroin. It does what it was designed to do. Once employed it became an addiction hard to kick.

Challenging most logic, if one carefully leafs through the various projects, one finds that they are all valid. Another commonality infused in each advocacy seems laced with the blissful ignorance of winter conditions. A flaw in both sides was in the limited view these people had of the highway. One would naturally think that the highway existed for the sole convenience of the suburban commuter. Another problem is the speed of which it is constructed. The City engineers seem to believe that the structure will eventually become dangerous about the year 2020. For a major project this is not all that far off.

A lot of political capital was expended by each side. The boulevard advocates abandoned cited magical studies and polling reports. They used every euphemism for the word stupid referring to their opponents. They had studies. There were studies supporting a highway teardown, There was an equal number of myths. For many politicians of both sides, if not all, this debate will come to haunt them in the future.

For the observer this debate seemed a real life example of the no win scenario. Truly the Gardiner Expressway debate can be called the Kobayashi Maru of city politics. There were four choices. Keep it. Tear it down. Or merge the highway projects into something called a Hybrid. Each version would work. BUT

No matter the choice, it would be wrong. The people who lost the close vote vowed to continue to vocalize against it. This project isn't really worth the political fight. It was something that had to be dealt with. The losing councillors and over social media vowed to keep up the fight. The whole debate was a red herring argument.

The same people that want to tear down are also in a severe fight to prevent the island airport to expand to  accommodate jet aircraft. They have proven very poor advocates of any position. Here is a proposal that would have a far greater impact on the city than that intersection. Some of the City Mayor's Executive came out for tearing it down completely.

Basically these councillors were voting against the boss. This can only happen so many times without being forced out of their perk laden cushy appointments. Now the airport vote will be another very close vote with many of the same people sitting on the fence. Several key votes are on the Executive Committee. These councillors expended a lot of political capital and may have to hold their votes to support the expansion of the airport.

It is why this was a no win. By fighting this issue so severely, the expansion of the airport will pass because the four votes on the Executive committee will be forced to vote for the expansion. They lost a lot of their political blood on their support of another plan. Many of the councillors also prove themselves to be totally undemocratic vowing to reverse council decision. These same political hacks will not have the same persuasive power because its going to be very difficult after calling other politicians basically thoughtless idiots on this lesser issue.

Regardless, no matter the choice, every choice is wrong. And that is a very rare example of the no win situation.