THE SPRING ISSUE of In The Hills magazine has a fascinating little "sidebar" to a

story on commuting.

Accompanied by a good photograph depicting a rush-hour lineup of northbound traffic extending at least a mile to the south of the lights at Highway 24 and Charleston Sideroad (Peel 24), the article included confirmation of something we'd long suspected.

The magazine said it had obtained confirmation of the fact that the long-awaited widening of Highway 10 through Caledon Village to the existing four-lane section on Orangeville outskirts is no longer in the Ontario government's five-year plan.

In fact, it would seem pretty obvious that this criminally negligent inaction of Ontario's Ministry of Transportation - dating back to the 1960s, when widening of the highway suddenly stopped at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment - will continue until the voters of the new riding of Dufferin-Caledon signal that they will no longer slavishly support the Conservatives.

As we see it, this area's needs have been ignored by successive governments at Queen's Park because when the Tories were in power the riding (whatever its name at the time) was so safe there was no need to "prime the pump." And on the few occasions when the Liberals or New Democrats were in office, the riding has been seen as one the governing party couldn't hope to win at the next election.

(The sole exception to the rule was in the single term Liberal Mavis Wilson won in 1987. Then, some fledgling efforts to address the needs, including a first attempt at GO Transit service, were interrupted by an early election call in 1990 that brought the NDP a win even they hadn't expected.)

In Ontario, politics has always played a big role in transportation, with "swing" ridings getting far more attention than those safely in one camp or another.

As one small example, when it came to downloading provincial highways, the Harris Conservatives dumped Highway 9 throughout the riding of Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey in the knowledge the action would scarcely threaten David Tilson's stranglehold on the riding.

But farther west, the same roadway was no longer deemed "primarily for local traffic," and the portion in the swing riding of Huron-Bruce remains a provincial highway to this day.

The sad fact of the matter is that the traffic lights in Caledon Village have cut the highway's capacity to roughly half what it was when the road was paved (with concrete) in the 1920s and likely carried about 200 vehicles a day.

Sadder yet is the fact that without any property acquisitions the horrendous backups could be eliminated by simply paving the road's shoulders to provide four 10-foot-wide lanes.