@ the 100th Meridian

Living, Working, and Wasting Time in Southern Manitoba

Category: opinion (Page 4 of 4)

Is the Daly Overpass the Problem?

16 November 2013 /

The week after my last post on the 8th Street Bridge, there was a new provincial budget presented in Winnipeg by the governing NDP. One of the points, and few mentions of Brandon, was the “redevelopment” of the Daly Overpass. A few days later, local columnist for the Winnipeg Free Press Deveryn Ross tweeted the following:

Shortly followed up by:

Yes, I have to agree on both points. I’ve already made my case for not replacing the 8th Street Bridge with a new traffic bridge, but I also have some reservations about “redeveloping” the Daly Overpass.

For those not immediately aware, the Daly Overpass is that bridge over the train tracks on 18th Street at Pacific Avenue. It is two lanes headed south, but it reduces to one lane over the bridge headed north. During high use times, the congestion exists as far back as Victoria Avenue and is quickly becoming a sore spot in the city.

Now many people have suggested that the overpass needs to be expanded to 4 lanes, which would rectify the situation for a number of years. However, it is my contention that there are a few facts being ignored in this approach. The first is the actual bridge itself. I do remember the bridge being expanded once already in the very early 1990s. It was made wider and the sidewalk was widened and separated from the roadway by Jersey barriers. For this reason it seems to me that the bridge could not be “expanded” again, because the current bridge supports probably could not support the load. The only option would be to twin the bridge, moving one existing lane and a new lane onto a new bridge. I assume the “duck plant” building would be razed for this new bridge.

I think that Deveryn Ross’ suggestion of less expensive ways may hold some water. If not less expensive, at least something that allows for future growth and actually pays attention to what is the underlying problem of why there is so much traffic on 18th Street.

If you look at a map of Brandon, it becomes evident that the three main ways over the CP tracks all are within a one mile stretch. You can get over the tracks at 26th Street, but it is a level crossing so most people make it their last choice; plus you have to slow down and turn at McDonald Ave which is not built as a main arterial street. So you have 1st, 8th, and 18th Streets which all have a bridge over the tracks; no stopping for a train. After 18th you have 26th which has the aforementioned problems, and then you have…

Kemnay

Yes, the next spot that you can get over the tracks (well, under) is Kemnay, almost 6 miles west of the city.

And that is your problem. Everyone from about 12th Street and west wants to go over the tracks at 18th street, converging on a single lane at the Daly Overpass. No wonder the thing gets backed up.

My solution, and I’ve been saying this for years now on other venues, is that we have to build a faster route west of 18th Street for people to get to the north end of the city. At the very least we have to make it faster. There seem to be two possibilities.

First option, extend 26th Street to curve over to Hilton Ave near the water treatment plant.

26th street

Now, this doesn’t immediately alleviate the problem with the level crossing at the CP main line on 26th Street, but it does speed up the trip from 26th to 18th enough that more people would most likely use the route. If we ever got an underpass or overpass at the tracks it would be a much more effective way to move traffic to the west of the city than over the Daly Overpass.

Second option, extend 34th street over the tracks and past the parking lot at the Wheat City Golf Course, then over the river to Grand Valley Road.

34th street

A couple of buildings would be razed, but it would work and you would have an express route from the west end to the Corral Centre shopping area. I’ve heard it said that there isn’t a viable route there, but I think there is. The only concern would be the fact of having to build the roadway up to a height and strength to withstand the flooding that we know happens to the area. It would probably be more expensive than a Daly Overpass “redevelopment”, but in the long run would most likely be a more effective transportation network.

It seems to me that we have trouble identifying what the real issue with traffic is in our small city, and therefore do not look for the right solutions. It just does not make sense to “fix” a road that has too much traffic on it rather than finding a way to get the extra traffic off of it.

We need to work the root of the problem and not just treat the symptoms.

*images courtesy of Google Earth.

A bridge unneeded…

9 November 2013 /

There seems to be this feeling that just because you’ve always had something a certain way, that it should stay that way. At least that seems to be the attitude when it comes to the Eighth Street bridge in Brandon.

A couple of years ago Dillon Consulting was tasked with the job of coming up with plans for the aging structure. It is obvious to anybody looking at the structure that the bridge is nearing the end of its useful life, at least as a traffic bridge.

So, they came up with 4 options. All of them replaced the bridge in some fashion with another traffic bridge. According to a story in the Brandon Sun last week, the costs for these options range from $20 million to $34 million. Let me write that long hand:

$20,000,000.00
to
$34,000,000.00

This is where the study falls down. Where is option E? Build an “active transportation” link, for walking and cycling, and forget about building a new traffic bridge. It seems to me that in 2013 that the “no bridge” option is perhaps the best.

The problem lies in the fact that some people think that they are having something taken away from them. I recall some discussion on eBrandon about option E and there was definitely some resistance to not having a traffic link to downtown. However, if you really start to think about it, there is not really a good reason to have a traffic bridge between downtown and “The Flats”.

What are the reasons to have a traffic bridge between the two areas?

The first reason seems to be that the 18th Street Bridge is seen as too far away to be an effective link for the area. Some simple math shows this to be untrue. At 50km/h it should take about 45 seconds to get to 18th, about 30 to get over the bridge, and another 45 to get back to the other side of the 8th street bridge. At the speed limit it should take less than three minutes to make the trip, probably closer to two.

The second argument I’ve heard is about ambulance times to the hospital. My first point partly addresses this, and I suspect that at ambulance speeds that the extra time would be negligible. Combine that with the fact that the new fire hall is essentially IN the same neighbourhood and it could be argued that “the flats” have some of the fastest response times from the time of the call to the front door of the emergency department at the hospital. Someone calling from the west end would certainly have longer wait times both ways.

Yes, I can see how an active transportation link to the flats would be considered needed. On foot or bicycle, the distance is too far to go around, but in a car it is not enough of a hindrance to spend $20 million to $34 million.

In my opinion, the eighth street bridge cuts the neighbourhood in half that it is supposed to serve. The whole area looks like a nice place except for that area directly adjacent to the bridge. I personally feel that if the bridge was gone and had only a pedestrian bridge in its place, it would positively affect the neighbourhood. I suspect that most of the traffic is a shortcut to the Corral Centre and that 8th Street North would be safer without it.

Money saved could be used to start improving other routes west of Eighteenth Street where the traffic bottleneck really originates, or improving pedestrian safety in other areas. (Try walking down Currie Boulevard almost any day of the year, and you will not be able to comprehend the lack of a sidewalk for the people of Brentwood to get to the rest of the city. But that is another topic for another post.)

There is no sensible, economically sound reason to replace the Eighth Street bridge with another traffic bridge. 

None.

Checked the mail…

8 November 2013 /

Found this in my mail today…

torymailersmaller

Any guess which party it is from? Of course, it is the Conservatives. Not sure how they figure this will work.

I see two problems with this.

1) They possibly just sent mail to a bunch of people who like to smoke weed but that do not pay any attention to the news, that there is a political party that wants to make it legal. Will they vote? Perhaps not, but why take the chance.

2) The second statement is complete hokum. Ask any teenager what is easier for them to get; alcohol, tobacco, or pot; and the answer seems to be pot. Alcohol and tobacco are legal but controlled substances. There is no underground trade in alcohol or tobacco because most of the people who want it can buy it legally from a store. Seems to me that marijuana should be treated the same way. I truly believe that making marijuana legal for adult consumption will actually make it harder for kids to get, not easier.

Frankly, the Conservatives lose me more each day with their tenuous grasp on reality. Their logic is flawed. To me, it is an ad about why I should vote Liberal.

Ramblings on the Brandon-Souris byelection…

27 October 2013 /

Brandon-Souris will be having a by-election on November 25, 2013 after the Prime Minister dropped the election writ for 4 ridings a week ago.

The lead up to this election has been interesting to say the least. When former Brandon-Souris MP Merv Tweed resigned his seat back in August, it was a forgone conclusion that the next MP for the area would be the person who managed to win the Tory nomination process, which promised to be the real race to watch in this constituency. Except for a blip in 1993 when the Reform Party was splitting the vote on the right, allowing the Liberals to shoot up the middle, Brandon-Souris had always voted for the Tories.

For most of that time, The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada was THAT party. At one point I was a member of that party.

Now, I would describe my political leanings of that time as a fiscal conservative with some doubts (in fact major doubts) about the social agenda of many on the right. While I had interest in following the antics of the Reformers, deep down I knew that I would never fit in that party. The social platform of the party was just too far right of my personal beliefs.

I was what you would call a Red Tory. The leader I would identify closest with in the party would have been Joe Clark. For a politician he was unusual. He worked hard to get his job done, something I had seen during the dying days of the Meech Lake Accord. While every other politician, including his boss Brian Mulroney, were busy posing for photo ops, Clark was actually busy trying to get the accord to work. He seemed to work hard and wasn’t looking for the glory. It is perhaps why he is one of our shortest serving Prime Ministers. He wanted to do what was right and needed, instead of what was popular.

He was also what you would call a Red Tory.

On the topic of my social beliefs; they have evolved, much like my religious beliefs. I had probably always had my doubts about the Judeo-Christian belief system that I was brought up in;’ you know, that niggling sensation that something just doesn’t add up. So, over the years I have moved from being apologetic for Christian beliefs, to calling myself agnostic, to pretty much referring to myself as an atheist. Having grown up with an interest in mathematics and computers, the scientific method has been ingrained in me enough that I have to follow the evidence. And the evidence says that there is not evidence to support that the Bible is anything more than a best-selling fiction book. Not very well written either. I recently completed reading Genesis and it hurt my head.

So, back to politics. It is with my slow evolution from religious apologist to secular humanist that I have found that I can no longer support the social stands of the right leaning politicians of this country. I believe in the separation of church and state, freedom of thought and association, and when in doubt about something that you should follow the evidence where it leads. Despite this deviation from the political right, I was and still am a fiscal conservative. I believe that governments need to run with reasonable to no debt loads in order to not burden future generations.

In 2003, Peter McKay succeeded Joe Clark as leader of the Progressive Conservatives and by the end of the year the party was gone, merged with the Canadian Alliance Party to form the Conservative Party of Canada. While technically a member of the new party, I had never asked to be and soon let my membership lapse as it was apparent that the party had went further right than I was comfortable with.

Much like former Prime Minister Joe Clark and my local Brandon-Souris MP, Rick Borotsik, my feeling was that I had not left the party, it had left me.

Now, during all this time in the 1990s and 2000s, it was actually apparent to me that the Liberal Party of Canada from a policy standpoint was probably most in line with my own personal political leanings. They were a centrist party, with both right and left leaning members. It was their really obvious feeling of entitlement that turned me off. It left a bad taste in my mouth the way they seemed to feel that they deserved to govern, and not that they needed to earn our trust. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for them. When I could no longer vote Conservative I jumped all the way to the NDP because, despite their obvious shortcomings, I knew what the NDP stood for. The Liberals never seemed to stand for anything. In 2006 they were punished for that attitude.

So, now it is October 2013. The Liberals have been through a handful of leaders. It is obvious at this point that they have now got the message that they have to earn the trust of the Canadian people. They no longer believe that they can make a gerbil their leader and that said gerbil will eventually become Prime Minister. While I believe that former astronaut Marc Garneau would have been a great choice for leader, it is becoming more apparent to me that Justin Trudeau has a lot of potential. Most importantly to me, this new batch of Liberal leadership supports evidence based solutions to real problems; not old tired rhetoric that has been disproven again and again. “Tough on crime” for example sounds good, and even has its place, but the evidence says otherwise when it comes to our justice system. The Tory muzzling of the nation’s scientists to the point that environmental experts are not allowed to discuss man made climate change is ridiculous. I cannot support it.

The NDP is not a reasonable option for me, and any belief that they have a chance in Brandon-Souris is laughable. Unfortunately, in our “first past the post” system, a vote for the NDP or the Greens is a vote for Larry Maguire and the Conservatives.

Back to that Tory nomination race. Three people were running, two got disqualified despite one of them having already pulled out, and Maguire was acclaimed. I don’t know if their were shenanigans, but it sure seems like there might have been. There was a lot of smoke for there to have been no fire. Whether or not his campaign was clean, Maguire’s nomination has a smell of taint, and that has allowed the local Liberal candidate, Rolf Dinsdale, to all of a sudden look like a contender. Even a recent poll puts Dinsdale in a possible lead.

Now, while still an uphill battle, Dinsdale has a couple of things in his favour. Name recognition can be a great help, and Rolf’s father Walter was our Progressive Conservative MP for 31 years. The Liberals have a young new leader who also has a political legacy in his father. Pierre Elliot Trudeau was one of this country’s longest serving Prime Ministers, and while his economic legacy could be described as a disaster, his social agenda and legacy defines the Canada we have today. While our southern neighbours are fighting over things we decided years ago, we have become more like the “Just Society” that Trudeau Senior described decades ago. If Justin Trudeau has just a small amount of the leadership qualities of his father we could be in for an interesting future.

Dinsdale also has the fact that Brandon-Souris is not as far right leaning as much of the rest of the area. When much of the West went Reform/Alliance, Brandon-Souris stayed Progressive Conservative. We only went Conservative when the old PC Party ceased to exist. To me, the Liberal Party of 2013 is the obvious place for a “Red Tory” to park their vote. They are after all the party who balanced the federal budget. With the Conservative move further right, it seems to me that the Liberals sit exactly where the old Progressive Conservative party used to exist.

On October 12, 2013 I bought a membership to the Liberal Party of Canada, and on November 25 I intend to vote for Rolf Dinsdale as our next Liberal Member of Parliament.

Another day in America…

21 October 2013 /

I heard about this as my wife and I were picking our children up from school today. These are days that I am thankful I live in Canada.

 CNN Story on Nevada Shooting

I cannot for the life of me figure out why another three victims had to pay today for the insane idea that any regulation on firearms in the United States is an affront to freedom. One man is dead, and two twelve year olds have gun shot wounds.

What about their freedom?

Mike Landsberry’s right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness ended today because of the failure of America to get its love of guns and gun ownership under control. He went to school to teach, instead he ended up dead. Doesn’t seem right.

Let’s get something straight. Canadians do not hate guns. In fact, we have a lot of gun owners in this country. The rate of gun ownership is about the same as it is in the USA. The difference is we have decided as a people that guns are a tool, like a hammer or a saw, or like an automobile, and not something to be worshipped. They are a consumer item and nothing more. As a tool they are subject to proper safety precautions, and considering their very dangerous potential in the wrong hands, we have rules on who gets to have them and how they go about doing that.

Like a motor vehicle, we require training, testing, and licensing of firearms. Almost anyone in Canada without a criminal or violent past can own a firearm, we just feel that it is a privilege one earns like a driver’s license and not a “God-given” right.

If there were more reasonable laws in place, the weapon today most likely would not have been a handgun. My guess is that it would have been a knife or something that required much closer range to inflict damage.

Mike Landsberry had served as a Marine. He had the training to disarm someone brandishing a knife. He would still be alive. Instead he’s in the morgue.

As for freedom, I feel more free in Canada. While gun crimes sometimes happen, I know that they are the exception. Yes, we have violence, but it doesn’t seem as out of control as what I see on the news from down south. I feel free partly because of our reasonable gun control, not despite it.

Franken-Meat

8 August 2013 /

So, as you’ve probably read by now, earlier this week the world’s first “meat” to not come directly from an animal, was served and was declared “close to meat”.

The coverage that I saw was on the CBC and of course there had to be a quote from a representative of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. He applauded the move as a kind of “methadone” for meat eaters while we get off of meat.

I got news for him, it ain’t happening. For a few reasons.

Firstly, humans are omnivores. That means we eat plants and animals, not just plants. In fact, without being very careful most people who try to go vegan do find that their omnivore body doesn’t cooperate and that they need meat to feel healthy. This is not to say that one cannot eat a vegan diet and be healthy, but it is a much more difficult road to go down than incorporating a small amount of meat protein into one’s diet.

That perhaps brings us to the problem with society today. It’s not that we shouldn’t eat meat, it’s more likely that we should eat less of it. We eat way too much of everything, including meat, and we should probably change our ways. A serving of meat is something  like the palm of your hand in size, and we eat a whole damn plate… it’s just not right.

But of course, no one can suggest we find a solution somewhere in the middle. Nope, humans should just stop eating meat. If PETA had their way, we would all stop eating meat tomorrow because it would be banned. I wonder how they will feel about the mass cow genocide and resulting extinction of the animal that would result from such a stupid move. Would the elimination of an entire species be the “ethical” thing to do? They probably do not realize that that is what would happen. Without humans to look after them, cows would cease to exist.

But this is one of the problems of religious-like movements like PETA. They get a set of “facts” as they see them and then try to shape the world around them. Here’s the problem. The modern cow has evolved to live on a farm. Yes, humans helped that cow evolve through artificial selection as opposed to natural selection, but nonetheless she exists. From an evolutionary standpoint, the cow has been an extraordinary success. In exchange for milk and meat, the cow has multiplied to all corners of the globe, expanding her territory much more than she could have done herself. Being a farm animal has been extremely successful for the cow.

Now, that does not mean that the current factory farming practices employed in some parts of the world are anywhere close to acceptable, and we have to reel these companies in. They are damaging the land, the water, the livestock; and they respect none of the three. They are a blight on our society.

But that doesn’t mean we throw out farming altogether. Farming, when done right, respects the land and the animals and works with it not against it, often resulting in more plentiful and more healthy results.

When it comes to this petri-dish meat… sorry, I’m just going to say no. My body has evolved over millions of years to consume meat, from animals, and while this edible food-like substance might seem like meat, it is not meat; just like margarine is not butter and like aspartame is not sugar. My body knows what to do with meat, who knows about this stuff?

As for PETA, I would like them to just shut up. They spout off about things they know nothing about. We would be much better served by a Family Farmers for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (FFETA?) if it was to exist; at least they know and care for the animals they would be looking to protect.

I will instead get my advice from someone like the author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Food Rules, Cooked) and follow his simple rule.

Eat food*, not too much, mostly plants.

*not edible food-like substances.

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