"Hub-and-Spoke"

After JUST posting something POSITIVE, I have no choice but to go off on a major tirade about the latest and greatest in making Winnipeg even more backwards and home to even more dumbassery.

Isn't this just about the stupidest fucking thing you've ever heard.

This guy is a transit EXPERT? This is a possible solution to increasing ridership? ONLY in Winnipeg would this idea ever even be dreamed up. Nowhere else could think of this, because nowhere else is as BACKWARDS as we are! There are so many things wrong with this plan. I mean, you don't even have to have half an opinion about Winnipeg Transit to see all the garbage and stupidity.

Figures it's the suburbanites who won't abandon their cars, they aren't getting on the bus. And why aren't they? Well the article points out that a bus doesn't go where you want it to when you want it to. I can add to that. The buses are dirty. They're old. They aren't safe. The bus shelters aren't heated. The wait times are too long. Little or no late night buses. No air conditioning.

So what's the EXPERT'S plan to fix this? Pick the suburbanites up from their homes?

...WHAT?

Does this make sense to ANYBODY but our "expert?" Is this Winnipeg Transit, or the SCHOOL BUS?

And then where does this bus take Mr. Suburbanite? To another bus route? You mean they have to get on to the same bus system they don't want to take as it is ANYWAYS? This only ADDS to people's grievances. Not only do they ultimately have to ride on the same bus service, but they have to be tossed around to every Tom Dick and Harry's driveway who want to use the "hub-and-spoke" before they even GET to the bus system!

And all because as it is, Mr. Suburbanite doesn't want to walk a quarter mile or less to the bus stop, wait for 20 minutes and get on a sweltering hot, unsafe, dirty bus?

And Mr. Barry Prentice thinks ridership will SOAR?! ...SOAR?

It'll make ridership stay the same and our tax dollars will be wasted on new, useless, super-short SHUTTLE BUSSES instead of real, practicl, functional, BENDY BUSSES. Our tax dollars will be wasted on fuel with the useless junk miles these shuttle busses tack on every day to go pick up all 3 of you who will take "advantage" of them.

I think, after reading this, every citizen in Winnipeg can be a self-proclaimed Transit expert.

I will now briefly explain how to make ridership SOAR.

Think of Transit like a business.

How do you make your business attractive? Notice the word "attractive." It's a VISUAL thing. Visual, key word.

If thousands of commuters every day down Henderson saw a diamond lane and a rail, with buses whizzing by every several minutes, you might nod your head in approval. If thousands of commuters every day down Pembina saw nothing but brand spanking new bendy buses with air conditioning, they might think twice. If thousands of commuters down Bishop Grandin noticed a high-speed Transit corridor down the boulevard, they might think twice. If every single traffic light downtown had Transit Priority, when you're sitting in that gridlock, you might just contemplate taking that bus next time.

Those are visual. Those say "THIS SYSTEM WORKS!" Those say "this system is comfortable and EASY TO USE!" Those say "we've ridded ourselves of the problems that used to plague us!"

And you thought 160 mil on a bridge was bad. How about the millions of dollars that would be spent on totally useless shuttle buses. That's millions of dollars that could be used to buy new buses for already existing routes to IMPROVE SERVICE! Complaining of long wait times and no night service? That's too bad because instead of less wait times and night service, Mr. Suburbanite wants to get picked up AT HIS DRIVEWAY!

And it doesn't stop there, this "idea" is going to a conference in Fredericton. Even the Maritimers will wonder how we on the prairies survive.

Hub and Spoke. Pfffft. Rename it Winnipeg Transit School Bus.

Progress!

..Yaaay! Red River College might be Winnipeg's downtown hero.

First of all I would like to say how happy I am about this announcement, as the Union Bank Tower is easily my favourite building in the city. I feared that it would meet the same fate as so many other iconic heritage buildings in this city (especially as of late) and become a parkade or something else equally as useless.

A lengthly conversation on this blog with an "anonymous" commenter a few posts ago got me to better realizing how valuable having post secondary education downtown is towards downtown revitilization.

An extra 100 apartments to the Exchange area? Bring it on! More students downtown at the Red River college and the Exchange, excellent. Even a new building...and you can damn well bet it won't have a bloody fucking parking lot like that regional health atrocity.

"We need to expand it anyway, so rather than do it on Notre Dame, we want to do this downtown, where it makes more sense for students and the industry."

So...what does the Red River College understand about downtown that CentreVenture and Heritage Winnipeg don't?

I'm not quite sure, but I do know that RRC and the U of W are doing more to "revitalize" downtown and bring more activity there than the aforementioned organizations are. Red River college is bringing students from a suburban campus to a downtown one. Everyone else does the opposite. Even Crystal Developers, when they almost seemed to be Winnipeg's downtown hero, turned tail and ran to the suburbs.

Red River College. Local heroes. Now I can finally say "now that's progressive," without the sarcasm.

548

I did some math.

According to a new report (funny how these things always come out at such convenient times) the human rights museum will attract over 200 000 visitors a year, effectively putting it in the same league as this museum.

So here's the grade school math.

200 000 visitors by 365 days gives you 548 visitors to the museum per day. That's assuming they're open seven days a week all year.

That seems a little pie-in-the-sky for Winnipegers...doesn't it? That's a little less than one third of our population, will visit this museum every year. No wonder they wanted a parking lot.

If You Build It, They Will Come

That's the saying, right?

And with rising gas prices, some people think that if gas was at 1.50 a litre, they'd hop on the bus. But I don't think so. Not in Winnipeg, nobody here will be abandoning their cars anytime soon. Why should they....affinity to attract riders is the last thing on a very long list of what Winnipeg Transit doesn't do well.

But, noticeable only to people like me who read this stuff, somewhere there in the front section of the Saturday Free Press, was a piece about trading cars for alternate transit. (This is on A13, where there is an article on tailing ponds for the oil sands, something which I believe gets minimal coverage of the amount of impact the operations have.)

And I read this part...

Buses in Ottawa are already running at capacity and leaving passengers stranded at bus stops after ridership surged in February, when the transit service took on 5.8 per cent more passengers than at the same time the year before.

....and thought, "I guess there IS something to be said about an attractive transit service." As the saying goes, if you build it, they will come.

Ottawa is known for it's very effective transit system. Strait from their website, "Ottawa's award-winning Transitway forms the backbone of OC Transpo's current commuter system." Not only does it have a reputation but it's award winning! What kind of award, I don't know, but their bus tickets also cost 0.95 each.

**EDIT...I did not thoroughly read the OT fare page, bus tickets do cost .95, but you need two bus tickets for an adult fare (thus making it more expensive than Winnipeg Transit)**

And look at this, they even have a goal. On this page it shows two very effective pictures with the following statement:

For financial and environmental reasons the City of Ottawa cannot build its way out of congestion. For our transportation system to sustain future growth we must use road space and transit facilities more efficiently and we must become less car dependent.

And now I understand why other cities have so much better transit systems. They WORK on it. It's an ISSUE. With a kind of statement like this, I would expect that no issue would be too big for Ottawa Transit to handle.

Ottawa built it. Gas prices went up. Ridership went up.

Winnipeg didn't build it. Gas prices went up. Fares went up in a lame-ass attempt to increase ridership. Ridership did not go up.

Meanwhile, Winnipeg does the opposite...searching for ways to grow while building our way out of traffic congestion. Transit is some kind of afterthought. Fuck, our Transit people can't even wrap their heads around diamond lanes. At the end of the day, few if any politicians or anybody holding any sort of office are actually inclined to care. The only people who do care it seems, are those who ride the bus.

As far as I'm concerned the situation isn't out of reach in Winnipeg. It's just that this tug-of-war between ideas of rapid transit, transit corridors, diamond lanes, and whatever else one can dream up, has to end.

Put up a task force, a think-tank of sorts, some savvy traffic engineers, some transit people, maybe some students, city planners, man while you're at it throw in a couple architects, representatives from each area of the city. Put them in charge, tell them to come up with something. Get it over and done with, come up with a plan and put it into action.

The Friends of [insert philanthropist project here]

Well well, what an interesting trend.

I thought that "Friends of the [whatever]" phrase meant that the "whatever" was in danger of something or other and there was a support group to get people behind it and save it.

But apparently that isn't the case....We've already seen the "Friends of Upper Fort Garry" episode pan out, campaigning to "save" something that was never in danger.

But now there is the (note who co-wrote this) Friends of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Wow. Was the museum ever in danger? Was the plug ever threatened to be pulled? Who's stopping the construction of this museum? It can't be the fish bones and ceramic shards...can it?

Oh, oh...wait, I know. It's in danger 'cause they don't have the money to get what they want and they think it should come from the taxpayer. (for related examples, see the "Friends of Upper Fort Garry)

Just hold on.

I'm waiting for the "FRIENDS OF THE ASPER BOMBER STADIUM."

Henderson Diamond Lane

Maybe I should consider this "part one." Rush hour traffic pictures to come later.

Starting just south of the Cheif Peguis bridge, Henderson Highway becomes 3 lanes in each direction. This continues all the way up to the Disraeli Bridge.

I took some pictures today, just of the state of traffic for a majority of the curb lane during the day. These pictures were taken just before 3pm, just south of Leighton Avenue.



This picture is of of the southbound lane. Note that when I took this, I waited for a light change at Leighton to make sure I got a decent representation of traffic. Only 2 cars used the curb lane while I took this picture. As I am quite familiar with Henderson Highway, it is a personal observation that cars in general only use the curb lane to PASS.

This is because of the sparse parking areas down many parts of Henderson. Many areas don't allow parking, then a small area will. A low frequency of parked vehicles in the curb lane means that it's not worth it to use that lane...you're just going to have to get out of it for the parked cars anyways.

And how about those parked cars:



This is on the more "retail-heavy" east side (northbound) of Henderson, directly across the street from the first picture. Note the infrequency of parked cars. For many of these small businesses, there are a couple parking spots behind the store, as well as ample parking on residential streets.

I think it's safe to say that by not allowing parking on either side of the street, nobody's business will be hurting. During the day, traffic flow won't be restricted if that lane is unavailable.

I couldn't stick around for the rush hour show. I plan to take northbound rush hour pictures at the same location as the second picture.

As of now, I don't think it is unreasonable for Transit to commandeer the curb lane. I'm sure 70 million dollars would more than pay for the paint and signage for both north and southbound lanes. Which, for 7 kilometres, would be pretty hard to believe it would cost 70 mil to complete. Even still, whatever it would cost, would be far more cost-effective than any bus corridor would be.

Unethical Ethanol

I've never bought into the "green" biofuels craze. As if by switching to biofuels we'll somehow save the world. Most people are surprised if they hear me say something bad about biofuels. The truth is I can't say anything good.

This article got me to thinking about revisiting the topic.

That and a comment my brother made, about how our neighbor has a "green truck." I asked him how a truck is "green," to which he replied "it runs on ethanol."

I'd bet a million dollars that, if people had to grow their own food, there would be absolutely no way they would devote some of their food to making a combustible fuel. And ethanol production is unethical for that reason...ethanol is for people who won't be starving anytime soon. It's greedy, selfish.

Another, less obvious reason, is the belief the media portrays that biofuels are good. Like it's "going green". And people read that, and believe it. Less emissions (always comes back to emissions, eh?) which, if you think about it, doesn't make sense, because you're still burning a hydrocarbon. Less emissions maybe, but farming wheat and corn for this is an incredibly intensive operation. Growing corn isn't like drilling a hole in the ground and watching the black stuff come to the surface.

How long till things snap?

Of course us in the developed world like to turn a blind eye to things like adversity on the other side of the world. How long before people here in the developed world complain that the price of food is too high? How long until this is an issue facing politicians: lower income people can't afford to feed their family?

Only recently has it been suggested that biofuels are a factor in rising food cost.

It took this long to figure this out? Maybe 10 years ago we had all the land for food, the whole pizza pie. But now in 2008 we have the pizza pie less 2 or 3 pieces. Those 2 or 3 are used for biofuels. I learned, I think maybe in grade 2, that if there is less supply, demand goes up and prices rise.

Now more than ever there is pressure to be "green," more and more money for biofuel research, legislation that says we need X% of ethanol in our gasoline. How will this affect food prices in the near future? More importantly, how will this affect the media portrayal of biofuels, and people's perception of it?

In the end, biofuels are no different than regular gasoline. It's just a combustible fuel. If anything, they are an indication of just how strong our addiction to this commoditiy is.

And in the meantime, people here will continue driving their ethanol vehicles and thinking they're making a difference.

If someone in a starving nation asked my neighbor today if he could have some wheat, my neighbor would have to reply with "sorry, I'm using it so I can drive my truck."