Parading the Streets

You Aren’t Stuck in Traffic, Oakville: You Are the Traffic (And Your Council Candidate Can’t Fix You) Every municipal election cycle in Oakville brings out the same seasonal miracle: candidates who spent twenty years in corporate marketing, wealth management, or commercial leasing suddenly discover they possess the divine secret to curing gridlock. They knock on your front door, peer past the three idling SUVs in your interlocking brick driveway, look you dead in the eye, and declare: "I am going to fix traffic, transit, and parking." It is a campaign promise as touching as it is utterly unhinged. Before we hand these aspiring transit czars the keys to Town Hall's traffic management nerve center, it might be worth examining the quiet comedy playing out on our roads—and the basic municipal arithmetic that no aspiring politician has the nerve to say out loud. 1. The Separation of Church, State, and Signal Timing First, a tiny civics lesson that seems to vanish into the eth...