Tag Archives: Druh Farrell

Where are all these bikes hiding?

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Well, it has been over a year since the city of Calgary really ramped up their rather aggressive policy of dropping bike-lanes on us in areas with little demand and with little warning. The city almost always calls these “pilot-projects” yet when these projects fail they still never seem to go away. The miniscule but profoundly vocal bike lobby in Calgary has been more shrill than usual lately and it appears to be paying off as City Council has just approved making “bike-tracks” on 6th and 7th street in downtown Calgary. Depending on the design, these “tracks” will cost potentially as many as 120 parking spaces downtown and will cause some new snow removal challenges. Downtown business associations raised concerns but they were shrugged off as they languish in an increasingly inaccessible city core with parking costs second only to New York City in all of North America.

The number cooking, hyperbole and outright misinformation from the bike crowd has been striking. One of the most fluid anecdotal numbers being tossed all over the place is the estimated number of bikes that commute daily into our city core. I have seen numbers from 6000-12000 tossed out there.

The only measure that I can find is here where it is estimated that bikes make up between one and two percent of downtown commuter traffic. That is a 100% margin of error so it leaves more than a little room for interpretation here. The bottom line is that nobody really accurately knows how many bikes actually commute downtown daily.

Another number tossed out there is that while bikes make up potentially as much as 2% of the traffic out there, they are being ripped off as only .05% of infrastructure is directly dedicated to them. That number is sheer bunk when it is considered that bikes utilize nearly every road in the city, alleys, parks and sidewalks at time. Cars are 100% limited to driving on automotive infrastructure.

Some other justification for bike lanes/tracks has been pointing out how much cheaper they are than automotive lanes being only$25,000 to $100,000 km to make as opposed to upwards of millions per km for road lanes. Again that is simply bunk. The bike lanes are being built on top of automotive lanes that taxpayers already paid to build! That is not a savings in any way. This is extra expenditure.

I even heard Mayor Nenshi making the case that every extra bike put on the road helps ease traffic for us all. As these extra bikes come at a cost to many lanes of formerly drivable roads, it will take thousands of extra bike riders to make up for the lost roadways. That simply is not happening. Bike ridership has remained static in Calgary for over  21 years. It simply is not growing no matter how hard city hall tries to choke traffic to encourage it.

Yesterday I had to travel down South to run some errands. My wife Jane constantly has railed about the bike lanes that were created on 11 st SE at the expense of two driving lanes despite rarely ever seeing a bike using the bike lanes. With all the disparate numbers out there I figured I would check things out for myself. I went to Staples and purchased a little handheld counter for accuracy’s sake and parked myself on 11 St. SE between 4pm and 5pm to count the number of bikes in rush hour as pictured below.

 

Well it turns out that I didn’t really need that spiffy tally tool. The grand total of bikes using the bike lanes on 11 St SE during rush hour was:

That is correct. The number was two! I did not forget a couple zeros. I did not nod off and have 500 bikes sneak by me. On a busy Thursday rush hour only 2 bikes used the bike lanes during peak hours.

Lets assume that perhaps 12 bikes per day use those lanes (that will drop in winter). For these bikes, we have given up two entire automotive lanes and made a double-wide and useless turning lane in the middle of 11 St SE to complement the unused bike lanes on each side of the road. This street is now a priority one road for plowing as well as the needs of 12 bikers are more important to the city during snowstorms than streets with firehalls or school zones.

I should give some benefit of the doubt here. Perhaps the city planners ate the brown acid that day and this was a one off. Other bike lanes have been well worth it right?

Well, typically I spend the early morning drinking a coffee and reading the news. Today I thought I would pop down to 10 St NW by SAIT to count the bikes there. That street was a pilot project turned permanent that was dumped on us over a year ago despite great objection from citizens.

Now last year a ballpark estimate was given that perhaps 600 bikes per day use 10th St NW to commute downtown (while 15,000 cars do). Those 15,000 cars have been jammed into one lane rather than two now and the congestion is brutal. Still the upswing in bike ridership should compensate for that no?

The city and the bike lobby has always claimed the old “if you build it, they will come” sort of attitude. If 10th St NW had apparently 600 bikes per day using it before the bike lanes were created, that street should be a veritable Tour De France by now right?

Well between 7am and 8am I counted a grand total of  52 bikes using the lanes in either direction! That works out to even less than the use claimed before the lanes were built!

Yes while cars lined up and passed by the thousands, a mere 52 bikes used the lanes that were built at the expense of a very busy artery into our city core.

One thing I did note though is there is a terrible bottleneck at the pedestrian crossing as many bike riders play the game of suddenly becoming pedestrians and hitting the light to cross as seen in the video below.

So it is safely determined that these thousands of bikes are not coming into downtown from the 10 St NW bike lanes despite them apparently being ideally placed for Northwest Calgary traffic. Where then are these bikes sneaking in?

I decided to head down to one of our better travelled bike paths to see if the bikes were indeed packed fender to fender there in agony trying to get to work but stalled due to our critical lack of bike infrastructure. To be fair here, I am strongly supportive of bike paths such as the one on the Bow as they do encourage and enable more bike and pedestrian traffic and they do it without impacting existing vehicular lanes!

My count in 1/2 an hour was 41 bikes.

While that is certainly a better number than 10 St NW was, it still does not account for these thousands of missing bikes that apparently head downtown daily. Some are claiming that 5% of downtown traffic is bike traffic. Anybody driving downtown on a regular basis knows that this is utter hogwash. There simply is no congestion or shortage of bike infrastructure and choking vehicular traffic is not causing increased bike ridership.

The lanes are failing all over. The 10th Avenue lane is proving to be a failure and again no flood of bikes or drop in traffic have resulted.

How many more vehicular lanes will be wiped out by a bike obsessed city hall despite a lack of need? How many parking spaces gone despite a gross shortage of them? How much longer will city hall ignore Calgary citizens as they move along on this bike crusade?

That is up to us folks. It is a year to election time. I strongly suggest that we wake up and clean house in city hall. It is simply getting nuts down there.

Fighting reality and pushing growth out.

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Well Calgary City Hall has been on quite the roll this week in demonstrating their almost religious-like obsession with urban density planning despite an utter lack of demand for such by the majority of the population of the city.

One of the main strategies over the years has been to strangle automotive access to our city core through choking parking availability and ignoring demand through spending our limited infrastructure funds on pedestrian bridges and bike lanes despite minuscule demand for these things. Hell, cutting vehicular lanes out alone and making those un-utilized bike lanes a priority-one for plowing was not enough, yesterday our luminaries at City Hall decided to sacrifice yet more parking spaces and more vehicular space by stuffing in bike “tracks” at quadruple the cost of bike lanes with plans to greatly expand that traffic and parking throttling next year.

City hall has purposely been refusing to allow developers to plan for adequate parking in our core for years in hopes of reducing automotive traffic for years. All this has done is given Calgary the dubious honor of being the second most expensive place to park in North America. People are still driving, but they are spending a great deal more to do it.

“Bike sharing” has proven to be a catostrophic and expensive failure around the world. Despite this reality, yesterday city hall set a timeline of 2015 to get a bike sharing program going. They claim it will not happen unless a private business steps up to do it, but rest assured that will change as the city chooses to subsidize a semi-private disaster like Bixi that Montreal sunk over $108 million into.

Now despite years of this effort in social engineering, Calgary’s growth has still been outward due to consumer demand. Business is retreating to the suburbs and even out of the city altogether in pursuit of our citizens who are moving ever farther from Calgary’s expensive and congested core.

Consumer choice will always win in the end but how much will the City of Calgary blow in fighting this reality?

It appears that our zealous city planners have realized that their density plan has been failing but instead of facing that reality and opening up our core again, they are fighting consumer demand and the free-market by stopping legitimate developments on the edges of our city! 

Look at the precedent that will be set if the commission (populated by extremists like Druh Farrel) decides to refuse to allow development in East Hills as recommended by our idealists in city planning. The site was zoned for this development years ago and investors have spent two years planning in good faith. If our idiots in city hall shut this project down it will demonstrate that Calgary is a terrible place to do business in!

Even if common sense prevails and the city maintains the go-ahead on this project, just the fact that they were so strongly considering shutting this down has shaken any considering investing in Calgary.

The idiocy knows no bounds though. The zoning demanded “big-box” style development so that small business on “International Avenue” may be protected. Considering that most of the business along 17th Avenue SE consists of pawn-shops, massage parlours and liquor stores, I don’t think there was much risk that a new development wanted to tap into those markets anyway.

Either way, through following zoning guidelines, the development now clashes with the pie-in-the-sky “Plan-it” framework that demands upward, high-density development. We should find out soon which ideal will win here.

The winners out of all of this idiocy will be landowners outside of the City of Calgary including our satellite communities such as Okotoks, Cochrane, Airdrie and Strathmore. Calgarians are never going to en-masse give up their backyards, sell their cars, move into downtown condos and ride bikes to work no matter how much pressure the zealots in City Hall try to force them to do so.

What really is happening is that citizens are retreating from the core. Now we are seeing head-offices and retail services following them out. We had better learn to plan for this reality or our development as a city will become more stunted than ever.

Shutting down a Wal-Mart on the East side of the city will not make the residents of Forest Lawn suddenly decide to go to Inglewood to buy a small handcrafted bookshelf for a few hundred dollars for their kid’s bedroom. The shoppers will simply commute farther in search of economical big-box purchases.

Calgary’s downtown will not become “vibrant” through this idealistic efforts. Small business in the core has already been heavily damaged by insanely high parking rates and inaccessibility. Further pushing up costs and access will not suddenly make consumers flock to the core to eat and shop. This again will simply push demand and development out. We will have a downtown deadzone populated by offices, some coffee shops and un-utilized bike share stations, This simple notion is apparently utterly lost on our current city council.

We are one year from the next civic election. I do hope that enough Calgarians wake up and vote for some realists on city council before we waste even more precious tax-dollars and mess up our city development. Vote carefully.

If you plow it, they still won’t come.

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In remaining consistent with their anti-car mandate and in ignoring the real utilization rates of roads by Calgary commuters, our wizards at city hall have hit new heights in idealistic idiocy in making all roads with bike lanes priority 1 zones for snow plowing.

We do not have the resources to keep a plow on every corner and it does not snow every day. It makes perfect sense that we prioritize which streets we plow first in order to get our main traffic arteries clear and safely moving during our frequent winter storms. Calgary has some simply formulas on estimated vehicular road use that serve well in making a snowplowing plans. All those formulas are now out the window as bike lanes now take top priority for snowplowing despite their utter lack of need or use in winter in Calgary.

At best, how many people are commuting to work on bikes in Calgary in February? Perhaps 1000 people are willing to bundle up daily and make a miserable ride to work through snow in temperatures reaching well into the -20s. Of that bunch, how many or actually using bike lane routes anyway?  Aside from those hearty masochists, we have hundreds of thousands of people who commute in vehicles in Calgary. What we have here is an element of people who make up not even a fraction of 1% of commuters who’s needs have been moved to the very top of traffic-flow priority list.

While plows are wasting hours plowing minor roadways such as Cambrian Drive NW or back industrial roads like 11 st SE (pictured here & never seen a bike using it) we can expect tens of thousands of cars to be mired that much longer on real priority streets such as Macleod Trail or Crowchild. We only have so many plows and when we divert them to relatively lightly traveled routes for these bike lanes, the traffic flow on the real arteries in the city must suffer.

Maybe this is all part of a deeper strategy. As I recently posted here, the city has even idiotically contemplated removing a lane of Macleod Trail in order to make bike lanes. Maybe a selling point for this traffic throttling plan will be to point out that Macleod will be plowed more quickly if it has bike lanes.

This almost fanatical push to socially engineer Calgary into a city of bike commuters is getting outright ridiculous. The majority of our commuters are coming from distant suburbs and they will not decide to jump on a bike and pedal two hours a day in winter in a business suit to get to work and back. Never have a seen a tail wagging the dog example better than the success of the Calgary bike cult in influencing city planning decisions. Despite a microscopic amount of real demand, a hugely disproportional amount of attention and resources are being dedicated to choking vehicular traffic and planning for a surge of bike riders that will never materialize. 

As you sit mired in unplowed snow in a traffic jam caused by an unsanded intersection this winter, you will have plenty of time on your hands. I strongly suggest that you spend some of that time thinking of who your city councilor is and whether or not they are one of those who are constantly front and center in pushing this bike garbage. Take part in the next civic election and toss these clowns out on their idealistic butts already.

 

Consumer choice wins in the end.

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It has hardly been a secret in the last few years that the anti-“sprawl” zealots have held a disproportionate degree of sway over Calgary’s city council and planners. Despite the vast majority of the city not being within the barista/hipster city center crowd, city decisions have acted as if most of our populace wanted to live in some sort of expensive, dense Manhattan style of city.

I am not exaggerating when I describe the anti-“sprawl” crowd as zealots either. If you are on twitter, only a short observation of the Calgary bike cult or the armchair city planners on #yycccc will quickly drive home that there is a collection of people who are outright fervent beyond reason when it comes to the idea that our city is growing outward and that people are daring to drive cars. This would be simply laughable if city hall treated these folks as the fringe element that they are but in light of the ridiculous decisions and plans from city hall it is clear that this minority tail is heavily wagging the majority dog here.

The reality is that 97% of Calgary’s growth has been in non-core areas.  People do not want to live in a dense, bike laden hipster’s paradise and they are moving in droves to the suburbs. Despite the infrastructure challenges of a fast growing city, our city council has been focused on idiotic navel-gazing about how to find millions to decorate a new LRT line with art projects and building ugly pedestrian bridges.

One of the great (and sadly plentiful) bizarre plans that our city planners have vomited out has been to remove a lane on Macleod Trail to make room for bike lanes!

This folks is how simply stupid it is getting. Even if that idiotic plan does not actually get implemented, how much did we spend to have these fools design it? They have actually targeted one of the most congested roads in the entire city and are proposing to make it smaller! Do you really think there is a traffic backup of bikes just waiting to use new lanes? Do you really think that people will give up their cars in the tens of thousands to ride bikes to work in January if we simply choke off enough major arteries in our city? Our fanatics in city planning seem to think so.

The hiring of the controversial and extreme city planner Rollin Stanley reflects the mindset of city hall right now.  Ignoring how clearly city residents are voting with their feet and wallets in moving to the suburbs, the city has sought out and found a planner who wants to somehow force upward growth in Calgary. This is a man who actually celebrates parking problems and does not hide his disdain for strip-malls (that service the majority of the city population).

Despite City Hall and it’s hired zealots trying to force-feed us into some utopian urban density, they are failing (though expensively). Citizens are moving from the core in droves and now in a brilliant move, Imperial Oil has decided to relocate their headquarters to the suburbs.

The game is vicious in downtown Calgary as corporate headhunters snipe talented employees from each other. It is critical for every energy company to gain the best people that they can from geologists to production accountants and Imperial has just played a master stroke.

City hall and their density obsessed planners have always worked under the assumption of “if you build it they will come”. These planners have assumed that if they simply force the issue though congestion and zoning that citizens would comply and resign themselves to living in an urban environment. People have put lie to that with their home purchases and now corporate Calgary is following the people.

Every other energy company in Calgary should worry about any of their employees who live in South Calgary right now. Downtown workers have endured years of wasted time due to the purposeful choking of traffic into and out of downtown Calgary by our deluded city managers and planners. Downtown workers have spent countless millions in parking fees and fuel to get downtown. Now with Imperial Oil able to offer employees in the South an extra ten hours a week of their lives along with the parking and fuel savings, they will be very well placed to snipe and retain some prime people.

I have seen some caught up in the density cult already chirping about putting punitive taxes and such on Southern heathens who may dare to live and work within the suburbs. This again demonstrates their total disconnect with the simple and invariable concept of supply and demand.

Okotoks crowed for years about their growth cap as a community outside of Calgary. Reality and consumer demand caught up and Okotoks has rescinded what was an unviable and idealistic policy.  Now should our city be foolish enough (and I fear it may be) to continue to harangue suburban dwellers, all we will see is movement to satellite cities such as Okotoks, Strathmore, Cochrane etc. as corporate offices move to city fringes to follow the people. Sorry kids but in such a circumstance there will not be enough coffee shop facilities and bike rent stations to keep the “vibrant” urban core that some desire. You need real players and real money for that and our city is driving them out.

I feel that the idiot who proposed closing a lane on Macleod Trail for bikes should be fired for complete incompetence and disconnect with reality. On the other hand though, I almost hope that our city council is indeed stupid enough to rip up all six lanes of Macleod with this purpose in mind. That perhaps will finally be the final straw which will encourage voters to get off their butts and vote out the extremists we have on council such as Druh Farrell, Brian Pincott and Gian-Carlo Carra.

I am not sure what else it would take.

Druh Farrell eager to leap into another tax-funded boondoggle.

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 While we still await the final costs for the still delayed disaster that some call the “peace” bridge, Druh Farrell the chief proponent of that embarrassment to the city is already trying to have more tax dollars potentially destroyed through fast-tracking a program where the city will compost our coffee grounds.

 The merit of having government take over composting for us is debatable at best and I will be posting some information on the myth of a landfill crisis and the benefits of recycling below.

 Calgary is to begin a $1.3 million pilot project with 8000 homes where a third bin will be added to their fast growing collection of waste bins. The new bin will be for organic waste that can theoretically be converted into a useful compost. I am happy at least that the city is doing a pilot program rather than jumping neck deep into this notion. This is a responsible way to see if the program needs adjustment or is even worthwhile to pursue as a whole.

 Never one to be bound by responsible actions though, Druh Farrell is furious and is demanding that we fast-track the program into full implementation as soon as possible. Never mind the fact that we don’t even have the facility to deal with the waste (estimated to be $60 million or so). Never mind that we have not tested to see if citizens really like the notion of having a bin full of rotting organic waste sitting in July heat for two weeks at a time. Never mind seeing what a true and total cost estimation of a city-wide program may be. Full speed ahead says Druh!!

 I suspect that Druh realizes that the pilot may expose this program to be a waste and a failure thus her eagerness to rush right into it. I may of course be giving Druh too much credit there.

 We are in a city that constantly claims to be so broke that annual tax hikes are the norm yet our council can’t seem to run out of ways to waste our money. Let’s let this pilot project run it’s entire course, look at the outcomes, and then start to discuss if the entire city needs a third waste bin.

 We rushed into recycling in the first place and ended up with thousands of tonnes of glass that nobody wanted piled in our landfill after having been expensively collected and sorted. Do we have a place for a mountain of compost? How about this Druh, why don’t we store the rotting organics in the middle of your precious Kensington while we try to find a facility to process it. That may take some of the shine from the concept.

 Below is video from Penn and Teller’s series “Bullshit”. I do warn, as the title of the series indicates the show is loaded with expletives. Despite the colorful language, the show is packed with facts and realities of recycling including a live experiment of how gullible well meaning urbanites can be at times. I strongly recommend watching the show in full (not at work and not with kids around).

 

The dark comedy continues and Calgary taxpayers are the punchline.

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 It just goes on and on and on. Yes, this is yet another post on Calgary’s ongoing boondoggle the “peace” bridge. I will not refer to that bridge without putting the word “peace” in quotes because the bridge was never meant to have that name. The “peace” was added by council as public outrage was growing while Calgarians finally began to realize that city council was ripping them off to an estimated tune of $25,000,000 for an ugly pedestrian bridge in a spot where no bride was required. The naming was a crass move to try and tie the bridge into respect for veterans and it took unforgivable gall.

Some members of city council are now calling for a forensic audit now that it has been found that the bridge is going over budget.  Even after cutting $2 million in landscaping costs (that we will still have to pay for eventually), the bridge from hell is still $200,000 over budget. Considering the re-welding of steel and re-pouring of concrete leading to 18 months of delays, I can see the reason for an audit. There is no way that bloody thing is only $200k over budget. I shudder to think how much taxpayers will be raped for when this is all finally over.

 Here is a link to a great timeline put together by Jason Markusoff

Here is another story by Markusoff on the bridge today. He has covered it excellently.

And yet one more today from Jason. The poor guy must see that bridge in his sleep.

Update: The latest story finds evidence that the bridge may come in at closer to $30 million when all is said and done.

 Now enough background and updating on that monument to Calgary City Hall arrogance and waste of tax dollars. What is important is that we as Calgarians finally get up and kick out these freespending fools who use our money for their idiotic vanity projects. Listed below are the remaining Aldermen who supported the “peace” bridge. If they are in your ward, please do all you can in 2013 to put them out of work!!!

Brian Pincott

John Mar

Dale Hodges (went into hiding for the vote and would not comment)

Gord Lowe (went into hiding for the vote and would not comment)

Last but not least by any measure is the prime cheerleader for the bridge:

Druh Farrell

 

 Folks, if nothing else is to be accomplished in the next election, the removal of Druh Farrell from city council will have made the entire election a success for the City of Calgary.  Druh Farrell is the only person who rates their very own category on my blog as the list of follies and foolish leftist things she supports appears to be nearly endless.

 Despite the exhaustion with the issue and clearly growing rage with that wretched bridge, we still see Druh vapidly tweeting and celebrating the anticipated opening of this slap in the face to taxpayers. While most civic politicians will be wisely finding themselves on the other side of the city for the ribbon cutting on the finger-trap, Druh will be grinning ear to ear as she celebrates this boondoggle. She truly sees this mess as some kind of good accomplishment. Even Calatrava won’t come out to the opening. He has cashed his cheque and would not be able to hold back his giggles as he sees what he put over on Calgarians.

 Druh was the inspiration for one of my first youtube videos when she spearheaded idiotically closing Memorial drive on Sundays in August in order to thumb her nose at Calgary drivers. She really has to go.

Please Calgary, watch the news on this bridge as it develops and don’t forget it when you go to the polls. We need to stop overlooking this kind of behaviour by our elected officials. It is bad enough that we will have to look at that ugly bridge for decades. We can at least stop having to look at the proponents of it in council chambers if we kick them out.

Bring on the geeks! Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo shows us how to draw people to Calgary.

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One of the defenses often spat out by our illuminated proponents of all things tax-funded is claiming that every crackpot project from city hall will somehow help promote tourism to our city. It is rather hard to believe that there is a subculture of globetrotters out there who will come to Calgary to see the art work at our water treatment plant, to walk on a closed major city artery on a hot summer day, to look at our hideously ugly and massively overpriced bridge that is under permanent construction or to ride some smelly bike in a tax funded foolish bike share program. I don’t see planes becoming overbooked in the future as people scramble to hear a live reading from our future official Poet Laureate either.

There is a small but clearly influential subset of people who unfortunately and clearly have a strong impact in Calgary’s city council in that these endless, stupid, tax-funded ventures keep surfacing and actually getting approved. Step back a few feet folks and look at some of the aforementioned initiatives and try to think of how much positive impact they have on our tourist economy.

Even if those idiotic things do manage to draw a few people to Calgary, what kind of people are these and what kind of spending are we talking?

How much will we get out of a bunch of bike riding hippies who likely will try to squat in our parks anyway? Set aside an acre downwind of the city with a hotel built from hemp if they really need a destination. The smell of patchouli will drive away good tourists if we keep them around.

Calgary draws many visitors on it’s own merit as a city. I am sick and tired of these self-loathing fools who feel we must somehow try to transform Calgary into some sort of arts utopia while using models like Paris and Venice for a comparison.

It must be kept in mind that European cities have existed for millennia which has allowed them to slowly build and acquire their stunning architecture and art pieces. Calgary is barely over 100 years old.

It is Calgary’s youth as a city that is her strength. We have untouched prairie and mountain environments on our very doorstep and we have the energy and vigour that only a modern and fast growing city can demonstrate. Yes, our downtown is full of modern skyscrapers. Instead of whining about them, admire them. The Bow building is a striking building that represents our city and will remain in the memory of visitors. The river-spanning fingertrap while perhaps memorable is out of place and only detracts from our city.

We should be embracing what what we have and what we are as a city while ignoring the detractors who think we should be something else. Let’s celebrate our ambition and free market ways. Those who really despise this should consider moving to Toronto where entitlement and laziness is more appreciated.

Now, on to the Calgary Expo. This non-profit group worked hard and pulled off a coup in landing the entire principle cast from Star Trek the Next Generation at their coming show.  In the world of Trekkies this is huge. Never has the cast of that entire show been reunited like this and I can assure you fanatical Star Trek fans are booking flights and hotels right now so they can participate in what will be an historical event in their fandom. The event will draw countless people and our city will gain prominent coverage in areas that we had not been very visible in before. The benefits from this event will last for years and we didn’t need to spend a pile of tax dollars or build any ugly new structures.

Now what kind of people will this event draw? As opposed to the Druh Farrell/Brian Pincott sort of affairs that draw hippies who draw tax dollars, the Calgary Expo will draw self-funding dorks and geeks.

 

Lets face it though, nerds are in these days. Look at the success of shows such as the Big Bang Theory and look at the status that folks such as Bill Gates have. Nerds make money and they spend money. When the dorks descend on Calgary motels will be packed, comic sales will explode, hypo-allergenic products will experience a run and escort agencies will not be able to get enough Wonder Woman outfits for their staff. From the exhibitors at the event itself to pretty much every other service industry in the city we will see a hike in business that weekend.

The Calgary Expo has happened every year and it has always been a benefit to the city. They have worked hard to build their profile and have earned the credibility required to draw the celebrities that they have for their show this year. They should be applauded and emulated.

Again, let’s quit pretending that Calgary is something that it is not and work on our strengths. We can and do draw other conventions and events and should focus on more of them. We have the service infrastructure and increased demand will only help it grow. People will come to Calgary for the event and will come back to Calgary in the future for everything else the city has to offer. Honesty and celebrating what we are is what will keep our tourism growing and yes I am speaking of the Calgary Stampede that the arts crowd bitches about every year too.

And hey, if I seem to be a little too hard on geeks let me state that I am one as well though not as stuck on comic books and fandom. I believe that the video of dueling economists below was robbed in not being nominated for a Grammy and would cross the world to see a live debate between Keynes and Hayek were they to be somehow raised from the grave. It is Superbowl Sunday and I am blogging. Geeks come in many forms.

 

Time to move these “occupiers” on.

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I was going to begin by saying something like “alright, these guys have made their point and now it is time to move on.”. I then realized that the “occupy” Edmonton and Calgary squatters haven’t even figured out what their point is much less made one. The bottom line is that they are a bunch of bored, spoiled malcontents trying to seek a sense of purpose through complaining rather than working whether in an employed sense or in the political/activist sense that our great free nation provides. Taxpayers are paying and people who have legitimately booked parks for functions are at risk of being displaced by these squatters. Park maintenance is falling behind and we may see delays in the outdoor skating rink that we pay for as taxpayers.

Appeasement with this small group of squatting complainers is a waste of time. The city graciously set aside and allowed free camping at St. Patrick’s Island for this. The motley group of the entitled turned up their noses at this and began to squat in our Olympic Plaza  instead. Now should people want to spend an afternoon with their kids on the grass in our downtown park, they will have to weave between tents and protest signs. The “occupiers” have demanded condoms by the way so I would suggest not getting too close to those tents.

I find it outright offensive when I see these directionless layabouts comparing themselves to to the revolutionaries participating in the recent “Arab Spring”, Martin Luther King and even Gandhi. These guys live in one of the most prosperous cities in the most prosperous province in one of the most prosperous countries on earth. Canada is not perfect but we have some of the most open and democratic rights as individuals on the planet in living here. For these “occupiers” to liken themselves to those living in third world dictatorships where civil rights are simply a dream is insulting to say the least. I even saw one person vacuously  claiming that medieval peasants have better standards of living than Canadians do.

On twitter and facebook I have seen people try to claim that if we evict these squatters from our parks that we will violate their charter rights. Sorry folks but that is complete, total, unadulterated bullshit. These guys have full free speech. They have been exercising it on the latest apps as they tweet about their trials and tribulations with their Iphones. We have free expression. The protest and march was allowed and demonstrations will continue to be allowed. That covers free assembly too. In most of the other countries in the world this group would have been locked up in the planning stages of their protest and definitely assaulted when the march began. We rightly have and protect all of those rights to assemble and speak here in Canada.

The self-styled occupying stooges however feel that they have a charter right to camp in a city park. Sorry guys, simple by-law enforcement is not a violation of your rights. I used the analogy before in that if I kicked out people squatting in my backyard I have not violated their rights to assembly, speech or expression. They have all of those rights. They just can’t camp in my yard. It is not that complicated.

It is clear that this handful of people truly do have nothing better to do. To appease and wait them out will be to allow them to turn our beautiful city park into a shantytown that city citizens and visitors will avoid. These guys are playing the game that kids would do where they put their finger as close to your nose as possible and repeatedly chant “Im not touching you” until the victim of the annoyance finally slaps the hand away. The child then will claim they have been wronged of course. It is time to give these kiddies a lesson in life and kick them out of our park. They can go to a campground, back to their mom’s basement or even get a job and a home. Playtime in the taxpayers park is over.

This cause and this group has become an outright laughingstock and even folks on the left are distancing themselves from the remnants squatting in parks. Corbella at the Herald went and visited the park and interviewed the squatters in person. They indeed proved themselves to be as vapid and directionless as they appeared on the outside. In a followup Corbella found that they are not learning anything as time passes.

City bylaws exist for a reason. I don’t agree with all of them and I often feel that we have too many of them. That being said, when you are going to have over a million people living in an area, a degree of regulation is required. I can’t  simply ignore parking rules if I feel the federal government did something I disagreed with and my free assembly rights will not be violated if my vehicle gets towed away. I can’t dispose of motor oil in my garbage and I cant open a commercial production facility in a residential area. I can’t camp in city parks as well.

As I said in the beginning, it is time to kick these kiddies out of our park. If we want to simplify it lets just say it is a matter of bylaw enforcement.

Perhaps (though I hold out limited hope), the eviction of these complainers may help inject a dose of reality into their worlds. We have a myriad of democratic and free means to pursue changes to our governance and system. People can form/join political parties and activist groups. Rallies can be held and marches can be organized. Letters can be written and doors can be knocked (all that work terrifies some though). Sitting around in a park complaining is not an effective (or legal) way to get anything done. Perhaps the bylaw boot to the collected bottoms of this bunch of squatters will encourage them to move on to something productive.

Our city council has been unsurprisingly reticent on this issue. With members such as Farrell and Pincott in there this sort of turning a blind eye to our laws is to be expected I guess. Some on council have some common sense though. I strongly encourage everybody to email members of city council and demand that they enforce our park bylaws as vigourously as they do with our parking bylaws.

If we are going to have regulation and laws, they must be evenly enforced.

Edit:: I want to add this fellow’s video. He hits the nail on the head quite well in describing a day in the life of an “occupier”

Back from Calgary’s “Choke the traffic flow event”.

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 Well, it’s a beautiful Sunday and I have been working hard and heavy on the by-election campaign all week. Poor Stewie (pictured below) has been feeling terribly neglected as of late and today felt like a perfect day to head on down and check out Druh Farrell’s anti-car event on Memorial Drive. The pictures taken are not of the best quality as they are vid-caps. I plan to get around to making another Youtube video but as you can understand dear reader, I am pretty tight for time for a bit.

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 Well I have to give it to them, I was actually quite impressed with the “festival” There was a variety of booths and activities and people generally seemed to be having a good time. It was a nice little gathering for people to get out and about on a weekend.

 Why did I put festival in quotes you ask? Well for new arrivals to my blog I will give a bit of background on this one. You see, Druh Farrell bypassed council discussion and arranged to close two lanes of Memorial Drive for every Sunday in August. Druh intended to expand those closures in the future to possibly encompass the entire summer. At that point, there were no plans for any sort of festival or events. The goal was simply closing lanes on a busy road next to the river. Those familiar with Calgary know that Memorial Drive is one of the few major east/west routes through the city and it is always busy.

 When the public rightly became inflamed with this pointless idiocy, Druh was forced to back down and reduce this to simply one day in summer with hopes of expansion to more days in the future. Despite this concession, the public was still rightly revolted by the pointlessness of this move. Next a “festival” was slapped together in the last few weeks to try and justify this. Anybody and everybody was invited to show up and try to promote green things or something.

 Either way, there was a decent turnout of exhibitors and people presenting activities such as facepainting.

 Now, lets get to the important part; the closing of two lanes on a major road.

 It is August and it is hot out there. I am back early as Stewie had consumed 2 litres of water in a couple hours and he simply could not take more of the heat.

 Clearly people felt the same way.

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 You see, all of the activity booths/tents were all set up in the shaded parkway and bike-paths that are right next to the road. While two lanes of important roadway were closed, virtually nobody utilized them. Why walk on blazing hot pavement next to thousands of drivers caught in a traffic-jam when there is a park right next to you? Didn’t we ask this question many months ago?

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 Druh herself had to make an appearance of course. A few from the media were about too. It will be interesting to see Druh’s spin in trying to justify ruining the day of thousands of drivers.

 

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 Yes, I am saying thousands of drivers and I mean it. The traffic jam was horrendous. This too of course was all predicted months ago and was ignored by Druh and a handful of her cronies.

 We all know that the traffic only gets worse as the day progresses. My shots were taken at noon and traffic was at a standstill as far as the eye can see in either direction. Drivers were clearly infuriated as they sat parked on a road in the summer heat while watching two empty but blocked lanes right next to them.

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 An irony in all this is that Druh Farrell is usually front and center in trying to get anti-idling laws passed and banning drive-throughs and such in a misguided effort to curb automotive emissions. Now what sort of carbon footprint did Druh cause by making thousands of vehicles idle for an extra hour with their air-conditioning running at full blast?

 I have read and listened to a few apologists who are trying to frame anybody who opposed this idiotic event as being “anti-festival neanderthals” and such. Many of these people seem to be revolted with our city and constantly try to claim that we have no culture and such.

 Listen folks, there are a few festivals every weekend all summer. Music, food and cultural events are happening constantly and nobody is opposing them. This idiotic road-closure is not in the class of such festivals and anybody with common sense may oppose this free from guilt.

 Across the river we could hear the music of some sort of live band event going on. We also saw acres and acres of empty (and taxpayer funded) green-space that could have hosted this event next to the river without closing any major roads.

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 People, this whole event was simply the actions of anti-vehicle extremists who wanted to thumb their noses at those Alberta heathens who dare utilize the combustion engine. There was no reason for this aside from making a point of delusional principle at the expense of taxpayers, drivers and the residents of this now congested neighborhood.

 You know what? I hope Druh does this again next summer. The next municipal election will be only a couple of months after the “event” and I really would like residents to have a fresh image of what their very well paid elected representative is doing with her time and our money.

Sounds pretty stupid. City council should love it.

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 Ahh yes, the latest initiative from some bored gang of kooks is to lobby Calgary’s city council to allow people to raise chickens within the city.Wisely this gang of wannabe chicken farmers has used the key terms that doubtless will make the granola gang (Pincott, Farrell for example) salivate; “Vancouver does it, New York does it blah blah blah”. In the name of making Calgary more “cosmopolitan” I can see Druh and her gang of dolts rushing out there to approve people raising these little feces machines within the city.

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 I am pretty libertarian leaning. I am not a purist though and I do understand why we need certain restrictions within urban areas. Zoning and limitations of property use are essential when so many people live in proximity. Calgary (among most of the cities on the planet) realized that raising livestock is best left in the abundant rural land around the province.

 Chickens are loud, smell terrible and can transmit disease no matter how carefully they are raised. For those stuck on the free-range thing, we have organic produce available at countless outlets throughout the city. While free-range eggs are more expensive than normally produced ones, they still are infinitely cheaper to purchase than it would be to raise them in your backyard. Feed, cleaning, building and heating a chicken facility will make the economic case made for urban chickens completely unrealistic.

 Because this idea is so profoundly stupid and because so few people actually want this, I am pretty confident that city council will dedicate time to this and very likely will approve it. This council that wants to ban fire-pits that are utilized by tens of thousands, this council that wants to ban pesticides used by hundreds of thousands will scramble to approve the right for people to raise chickens within the city because a couple dozen people may want to do so.

 While the usual fruitcakes like to trot out how “cosmopolitan” such initiatives will make us, they seem to neglect all those other great cities that allow such things. Mogadishu Somalia does not restrict henhouses. San Salvadore, Lima, and Shanghai do not restrict such things. Yes, emulating the undeveloped world makes us “cosmopolitan”.

 Well, should I be one of the unfortunate souls who has an urban chicken farmer next door, you can rest assured that I will be opening my very own weasel farm in my yard. I will make sure these are free-range weasels who will roam somewhat unrestricted. Hey, it’s only the humane way right? Should these weasels inadvertently cross the fence and harvest the odd chicken, I am sure my neighboring organic kook will understand that it is simply nature.

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