Tag Archives: anti-auto

Druh Farrell and her goofy anti-auto ideology yet again.

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jaywalking-downtownThe tiny yet vocal anti-automobile crowd in Calgary love going on and on whenever an auto/pedestrian accident happens about how this is due to our sick car-culture and such. They love to paint a picture of Calgary’s streets as if it is a never ending scene of carnage with cars mowing pedestrians down at will. Due to the laws of physics, pedestrian vs. automotive collisions often do end in tragedy and we should examine ways to reduce these sorts of accidents as much as is reasonably possible. This is where anti-auto ideologues such as Druh depart from common sense yet again.

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This week’s incidents proved that people like Druh Farrell and her supporters don’t really care about pedestrian safety. Their goal is simply to attack personal automotive usage however possible.

If we truly want to look at reducing accidents involving pedestrians the approach has to be multi-facetted and look at a number of things. Infrastructure, traffic movement and the enforcement of traffic laws all are factors in road safety. The anti-auto set only wants to look at one factor however and that is personal automobiles. They endlessly call for traffic calming projects, reduced speed limits, increased enforcement of traffic laws against drivers and even the outright removal of many roads. What the anti-automobile gang never mentions however is that we need to crack down on reckless pedestrians too if we truly want to reduce collisions.

Construction is a pretty common thing in a growing city like Calgary. With construction, we occasionally have to close some sidewalks temporarily for reasons of space and safety. BOMA Calgary excellently explains all of that here.

Sidewalk closures are clearly marked with bright orange signs and a simple detour making people walk on the other side of the street is typically required. At a construction project at 7th Avenue and 5th Street, many pedestrians were lazily and dangerously ignoring the clearly marked detour and walking in the roadway rather than crossing the street as directed. This led to a great hazard for both drivers and pedestrians and led to complaints. This led Calgary police to set up and write 40 warnings and 90 jaywalking tickets.

peds

Are the signs bright enough? Is the detour not clear enough? I think the picture above says it all. It is even a short block and it is not like it is mid-winter when walking is uncomfortable.

The straightforward enforcement of traffic laws on pedestrians made the usual suspects in the anti-auto set go haywire on social media led by the ever vapid Farrell who tried to imply that the construction company was somehow at fault for these jaywalkers. Druh feels that the pedestrians are not 100% to blame in this and they are sometimes “forced” into traffic. Pardon me? Forced? How? Only by their own laziness. There is a perfectly safe crosswalk and more than enough signage to show them how to get there. Nobody was forced to break the law Druh.

Some called this a cash grab. Really? A few officers for a day issuing 90 tickets? How much was the net fiscal benefit of this? A fraction of that of any red light camera or speed on green I imagine. If they simply wanted to make money, there are many lucrative speed trap spots they like to set up in.

Some said that if the police really wanted to stop the jaywalking they would have stopped people from doing it before they jaywalked rather than waiting and ticketing them afterwards. Huh??? Does that mean the only way for officers to stop speeders is to tail vehicles to make sure they never do it? Can we only stop trespassers who ignore signs by standing there and stopping them? Do we need to assign a police officer to stand day and night at every sidewalk closure to inform people what those bright orange signs mean? No! The signs are clear. The police did exactly the right thing and set an example. If common sense won’t stop these jaywalkers, perhaps the threat of fines will.

Reducing pedestrian collisions requires increases enforcement of all traffic laws and that certainly includes jaywalking. If anybody claims that they want to reduce pedestrian/automobile accidents in Calgary yet opposes enforcement of laws against jaywalking that person is clearly and simply full of shit. Drivers who run red lights and go through crosswalks with pedestrians in them should be ticket just as idiot pedestrians who blindly step into traffic should.

If nothing else this weeks incidents proved yet again that folks such as Druh Farrell and her anti-automobile supporters are driven only by blind ideology as opposed to outcomes. Anybody who is outcome driven and truly wants to reduce pedestrian injuries and fatalities would have applauded the Calgary police service and their crackdown on jaywalkers.

Calgary’s war on cars now targets suburban park-and-ride users.

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The ideologically driven transportation department in Calgary is hitting new lows in their war on cars as they now attack folks who park their cars in order to use transit. That’s right, it’s not good enough that people park their cars at LRT stations in suburban communities and take the train to work. These people are expected to walk, ride bikes or somehow find one of those rare, crowded and often pungent busses that will take them to the station.

The City of Calgary plans to remove 1250 stalls from Anderson LRT station!

Councillor Brian Pincott is of course absolutely giddy with this notion. He feels that the parking lot is not “walkable” enough. No surprise that he is one of the head members of the “Flakey Four” on city council.

I stopped by the Anderson LRT station today to take a few pictures. As can be seen below, the lot is already full beyond capacity to the point where people are desperately double parking and hoping to get overlooked by Calgary’s finest ticket issuers.

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It should be noted though, that the bike racks at the station languish empty as usual.

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So where are these 1250 commuters going to go? Whether Nenshi’s council like it or not, citizens simply are not going to abandon their cars no matter how hard they are pushed. This was proven with recent numbers showing that the vast majority of Calgarians prefer personal autos despite years of an anti-auto agenda from the Nenshi administration.

Cars are already overflowing into neighboring communities as the picture below demonstrates. Residential permit parking and mass enforcement may drive out these commuter refugees but they will still have to go somewhere.

IMG554Commuters can’t go one more station South as the Canyon Meadows park and ride is already full to overflowing (likely spaces next on the city hit list).

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The sad irony is that many of these displaced commuters will throw up their hands and just drive the entire way downtown rather than ride the train.

This sort of planning idiocy will also of course contribute to the growing trend of businesses relocating to areas like Quarry Park and up near the airport as downtown becomes increasingly unviable for employees. This of course increases the ongoing exodus of citizens to bedroom communities and the ever demonized “sprawl” accelerates.

To remove 1250 spaces from a lot that is already filled beyond capacity is a whole new level of stupidity from our city planners but I guess we shouldn’t be surprised.

This is the city that is letting a homeless charity lose $350,000 per year purely due to their anti-auto agenda.

Eventually Nenshi will move on to his federal ambitions and the city will tire of his allies in the “Flakey Four”. How much damage will these ideologues cause to the city before they leave though?

Bureaucracy run wild in Calgary costs a homeless charity $350,000 per year.

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homeless

Examples abound but this one is a truly magnificent demonstration of the anti-car idiocy that has taken over  in Nenshi’s city hall. It is hard to write anything about the actions of Calgary city hall without the word ridiculous being used too much.

The Mustard Seed is one of the most respected charities in all of Calgary in helping with homeless people. They expanded to a large new building downtown. The new facility provides 228 affordable housing units and three stories for education and employment services. Due to city regulations, the building had to contain 79 parking stalls and 60 secured bike racks.

Due to the reality that homeless people typically don’t need parking spaces, 70 of the parking stalls and all of the bike racks are languishing empty.

Thanks to years of city hall’s anti-auto strangling of parking spaces, Calgary is second only to New York city in all of North America for the highest prices for downtown parking. These rates will only be going up as hundreds of downtown stalls are going to be removed for a bicycle track “pilot” program. This has the side-effect of making downtown parking spaces a very lucrative possession, that is if you are allowed to rent them out.

The Mustard Seed could make $350,000 per year renting out those empty and wasted parking stalls. Unfortunately adding parking goes against the anti-auto ideology of Calgary city hall these days so they refuse to allow the spaces to be rented out. The volunteers and staff at the Mustard Seed get to look at those empty spaces every day and wonder what charitable works $350,000 per year could be dedicated to if only Nenshi’s city hall transportation could drop their ideological agenda and let a little reality creep in.

According to this story, the Calgary Transportation department told the Mustard Seed that letting them rent out their parking spaces would encourage traffic.

Essentially a charity like the Mustard Seed will be paying $350,000 per year to remain in keeping with the anti-auto agenda of city hall councillors such as the Flakey Four (Pincott, Farrell, Woolley & Carra) and their leader Naheed Nenshi. Anti-auto ideology trumps simple common sense and Calgary’s charities are paying the price.

Ward 4 Councillor Sean Chu has thankfully been speaking up on this issue.

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Evan Woolley, the councillor for the ward that the Mustard Seed is in has so far remained utterly silent on this issue.  In the next week, I hope we see some more city councillors questioning transportation bureaucrats on this latest idiocy. I expect we will hear nothing but silence from the usual anti-auto suspects. I wonder how good they feel knowing the homeless get to subsidize their anti-auto agenda?

 

Time to clear up some things on the Calgary Southwest ring road

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The hard-left collective four on Calgary’s city council (Druh Farrell, Brian Pincott, Gian-Carlo Carra and Evan Woolley) have managed to stir up quite some discussion through their hyperbolic posturing during a committee meeting the other day. Discussion on issues is always a good thing. The Flakey Four (ht. Rick Bell) however are on more of a water muddying mission than any real pursuit of facts. It has been something of a dark comedy as we listen to these four initially claim to be concerned about costs (they never have shown such concern before), yet invariably go on anti-auto tirades as soon as extended discussion ensues.

The four aforementioned city councillors are all inner-city representatives with long-established reputations of being anti-suburb. These four are extremely ideologically driven and consistently oppose anything they view as being supportive of suburban development or automotive infrastructure. Their opposition to the ring road has utterly nothing to do with the cost of the project and everything to do with the fact that the road will serve the needs of suburbanites.

It’s time to cut through some of the BS.

For starters, this is a provincial issue and not even within the jurisdiction of Calgary’s city council. The province has already made it clear that this project is going forward no matter how much noise inner-city councillors make.

Next is a demonstration of need. Opponents of the ring-road are simply claiming that we don’t need it. In the poorly edited image below I will demonstrate the need.

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I couldn’t find an image that combines current traffic flow with the projected ring road location so I cobbled one together. If you can squint really well or expand the image you can see the need for this traffic artery demonstrated.

The poorly drawn yellow line is an approximate rendering of where the ring road is going to go. The dark purple lines on the map indicate roads that carry over 100,000 vehicles per day. People familiar with Calgary’s Southwest will recognize the traffic bottlenecks immediately. Glenmore Trail, Crowchild Trail and 14th Street SW are all heavily congested with both commuter and trucking traffic. As can be clearly seen, all of those roads will see a great reduction in traffic with the coming of the ring-road as traffic can and will by-pass those narrow and traffic-light laden routes.

The red line is pointing to where development will be happening in the city of Calgary. The city boundary includes those areas and development down there is not a matter of if, it is a matter of when. Calgary is a fast growing city and despite the efforts of our density obsessed members of city council, 92% of people are choosing to live in the suburbs. Most People just do not and will not squash themselves into inner-city condos no matter what the inner-city ideological four think.

Hundreds of thousands of people will be building on and living in the Southwest region of Calgary in coming years. Is not one of our common complaints that infrastructure is always built after the fact rather than in anticipation of growth? The need for the ring road is already there and will only become more acute with time.

The need for the ring road is clearly established. The Flakey Four loves wistfully talking about the amount of LRT tracks that could be laid with the money but that will not aid in the movement of goods and services. Your plumber is not going to ride the train to your house, a parent of a family of five is not going to ride the train to get groceries and the grocery store will get it’s stock by truck, not LRT.

With the need established, the more realistic area of contention is the cost. It must be remembered, the need is not going away and the cost will not be going down over time. That said, the ballpark cost of $5 billion is a very large number. We need to break down and work out why it is in that range as much as we can before the province lays out more detailed information on this.

For a history of the ring road click here. The gentleman who created this blog has done a fantastic job of digging up and documenting the history of the road as well as reporting new developments on it. Considering it appears that the province’s first approach to the Tsuu T’ina band on this road was in 1947, there is a lot of history to cover.

The largest cost factor that differentiates the Southwest leg of the ring road from the rest of the segments is that the road goes through the Tsuu T’ina native reserve. This brought about a great deal of added costs as compensation for land and other factors came into the deal that other legs did not have to deal with. Dealing with potential burial grounds and other culturally sensitive issues arise on the reserve.

There are clauses in the agreement that guarantee some of the contracting on the construction of the road to the reserve. When working in the North, mandatory hiring of native contractors is usually part of our obligations in permits to work on crown land. The reasons why it costs so much more to use native contractors would be fodder for an entire series of blog postings. Be assured though that while native contractors can often do a fantastic job, they cost a great deal more than any other contractors tend to.

The ring road goes through the old artillery range of CFB Calgary. The clearing of the land of potential unexploded ordnance before construction is a huge and unique cost.

The Southwest ring road is in some environmentally sensitive areas that other legs of the road did not have to deal with. Crossing upstream of the  Weaselhead area is one example as well as crossing smaller water bodies like Fish Creek.

From the ring road blog:

The Southwest Ring Road includes:

  • 26 km of six and eight-lane divided roadway
  • 37 bridges
  • Crossings of Elbow River and Fish Creek
  • Rail flyover
  • 13 interchanges:
      • Westhills Way SW interchange
      • Sarcee Trail SW interchange
      • Old Strathcona Road SW interchange
      • 90 Avenue SW interchange
      • Anderson Road SW interchange
      • 130 Avenue SW interchange
      • 146 Avenue SW interchange
      • 162 Avenue SW interchange
      • Stoney Trail/Highway 22X systems interchange
      • Spruce Meadows Way SW/James McKevitt Road SW interchange
      • Sheriff King Street SW/6 Street SW partial interchange
      • Macleod Trail SW interchange

 

As demonstrated above, this is a very large project with many unique costs and challenges.

It took two referendums and decades of negotiations to get an agreement with the Tsuu T’ina band to get this ring road going. Part of the agreement also says that if the province does not have this road going within 7 years of the land transfer, the deal will be void. There is no time to dither on this. We can’t navel-gaze and think about it for a few years now. It would take decades longer and unimaginable compensation to do this deal again if we break it with the Tsuu T’ina now.

I don’t know how much it would cost to simply break the agreement right now but be assured there is a clause that states we would be paying the Tsuu T’ina  a great deal of money just to get out of the contract. Something that can’t be measured in dollars would be the lost faith and trust between the Tsuu T’ina band and the province/city. Trust is a limited commodity with First Nations as it is. Breaking new deals won’t exactly help.

One more thing that many folks are neglecting to mention is that the projected costs include 30 years of the maintenance of the ring road. The $5 billion is not simply for construction, it covers decades of maintenance that will be expensive under any circumstance.

It was irresponsible for Alberta Transportation to toss out what they now call a “ballpark” figure on the cost of the ring road. We need more detail before we can properly understand and absorb the costs associated with this critical piece of infrastructure. Having no detailed breakdown for the costs leaves room for opponents such as the Flakey Four to speculate and it is difficult to counter such unfounded speculations.

We need detailed costs and we need our provincial representatives to debate and work on these costs. There probably is room to reduce the cost of this project if we look closely enough. Let’s be clear though, the ring road is going ahead. To cancel the deal now simply is not a realistic option no matter what some inner-city councillors are dreaming.

Sideline the Flakey Four when it comes to further discussion on the ring road. They would oppose the project if it was 1/4 of the projected cost. Their issue is not with cost, it is with ideology and it always will be.

The ring road needs open and rational discussion and the place for it is in our legislature rather than city hall.

Another bike count.

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In my ongoing quest to find the apparent 12,000 daily downtown Calgary bicycle commuters, I have been setting up and counting cyclists using bike lanes at what should be peak usage times as documented here and here. Most of my point is that I feel that the utilization of and demand for has been grossly exaggerated by City Hall and bicycle proponents and so far my measures have proven my instinct to be quite correct.

Yesterday I chose to measure bicycle usage on the 53 St. NW bike lane in the Varsity area of Calgary as folks from the bike lobby have been bitching and whining up a storm about how despite the street being designated as priority one for plowing because of the bike lane, that it still is not being plowed quickly enough for their liking.

Oh the complaining is nigh totally insufferable as can be seen in their blog here. Read as they collectively organize to try and swamp Calgary’s 311 system with complaints due to there being snow on their precious lane. The entitlement is striking but not unexpected from them.

To hear these bicycle fanatics complain one envisions thousands if not at least hundreds of cyclists battling giant snow drifts while trying to commute to work. The need and demand on this 53 St bike lane must indeed be tremendous in order to rob residents of street parking and to make it a priority one plowing location to accommodate all these bicyclists all winter.

Rather than sip coffee at home in the morning I ventured forth with my little counter to see just how many cyclists must be crowded on this critical commuting artery.

Due to a bike fanatic commenting and wrongly claiming that I measure on “the coldest days of the year” I am including all details of the count here.

It was Friday morning March 23 between 7:00am and 8:00 am on the 52 St NW bike lane. There was no snow on the street, the sky was clear, wind was calm and the temperature was -7. Bear in mind these are apparent winter commuters complaining so these conditions should be ideal for bicycle commuting.

The count and grand total are pictured below:

IMG089

 

Yup, with such ideal conditions a whole sixteen bicyclists used the lane during the busiest hour of the day. I can’t imagine that the number rises on days when it is snowing even if plows would move quickly enough for these little darlings.

I then moved on to the 11 St SE bike lanes which came at a cost of two automotive lanes and gave it a 1/2 hour count. During that period I counted zero bikes. There really is utterly no reason at all to have those bike lanes in existence.

Believe it or not, I am supportive of bicycle infrastructure that compliments automotive traffic and provides real commuting alternatives. Bike paths are excellent and I have no issues with improving those. The problem we have though with the bicycle lobby is that these people are not pro-bicycle so much as they are anti-automobile!

Why else would the cycle lobby so strongly battle for the closure of auto lanes when clearly there is no actual need or bicycle demand for that expensive paved infrastructure? Should not people who truly care about bicycle use in Calgary focus where their demand and needs are strongest? Why not fight for expansion of bike paths where hundreds of bicycles travel daily and often have close calls with pedestrians? Those paths are truly alternative transportation.

With bike lanes taking up existing automotive lanes, traffic and congestion only increases as people simply are not giving up their cars in favor of bikes. Even by the City’s own stats the percentage of people riding bikes to work has remained flat for 20 years despite so much effort. If a person really wants to reduce idling and emissions, they should be encouraging automotive traffic flow rather than trying to choke it with bike lanes that nearly nobody uses.

Do we really believe that if we strangle automotive traffic enough that upper middle aged suburban commuters will suddenly get on bikes for a couple hours a day five days per week in a city with temperatures that range from -30c to +30c? Get real people. It simply will never happen.

Max (a regular reader of this blog) sent me a couple great pics from Japan where they are working realistically and pragmatically to have complimentary alternative infrastructure.

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It is recognized in Japan that there is an advantage to having more people commute by bicycle but they are working on a basis of realism rather than an anti-automotive idealism. Sidewalks are widened slightly for bike traffic rather than cutting into automotive lanes while markings and regulations are focused on keeping traffic of all types moving smoothly rather than adding one type at the expense of another.

If we truly want to build infrastructure that will enable more utilization of alternative transportation, we first will have to sideline the anti-automotive elements of the bike lobby and their supporters within Calgary City Hall. Then we may be able to really examine and see how we can have a mixed use type of infrastructure for Calgary commuting.