It is coming as surely as daybreak. Traffic. Additional cars. Tighter gridlock. More pollution. Wasted time. Lost productivity. Ill health.

All that boils down to money, of course. Public and private money. So why wouldn't London start now to tackle traffic issues by improving the transit system?

In the biggest planned overhaul in its history, London Transit Commission wants to spend $105 million over the next decade to encourage transit use by making the system better, faster, easier, more efficient.

Sure, it's a tough challenge. North Americans love their cars, and London is no exception. And small-minded, short-sighted critics will encourage taxpayers simply to widen the roads.

The new plan calls for a bus system based on key nodes and corridors. Gathering points would be at schools, business districts or shopping malls, and buses would use main roads, sometimes taking dedicated lanes to ensure they would arrive at stops every five minutes during rush hour.

This is a key proposal -- to give priority to transit vehicles on main corridors. Also included in the plan are better, more comfortable shelters, for faster and easier boarding, plus a satellite bus facility to ease congestion at the existing centre on Highbury Avenue.

"We should have started on this yesterday, but we can't, so we have to start today," said Russ Monteith, chairperson of the London Transit Commission.

London is growing. Nobody denies that. Roads can be only so wide, and we can't simply keep investing in roads without doing more to discourage excessive motor vehicle use.

It's a matter of debate whether London has a traffic problem at the moment. It's certainly no comparison to Toronto or New York or London, England. But it is coming. Another 100,000 in population will mean tens of thousands more cars.

Meeting the challenge won't be cheap anyway you look at it.

The LTC recommends spending $68 million on 102 replacement buses 32 additional ones. The extra operating costs will amount to $19 million each year by 2024. At present, the LTC budget proposal for 2007 is about $49 million -- more than $18 million comes from London taxpayers and the rest comes from fares and the province.

But the money will pale in comparison to what will need to be done to our roads in future without investment in transit. And investments in transit also pay off in reduced health care costs, environmental costs, and real estate costs.

Meanwhile, for the plan to work in the long run, LTC general manager Larry Ducharme says the commission will need to be more involved in land-use planning. He's absolutely right.

This plan is only a start, but it's a late start. Sure, changes will be necessary, but it's as good a place as any to start the debate, and get Londoners educated about the bleak future we face if we don't have a comprehensive transit plan before the problem becomes acute.

There's no time to lose.