Didn't take long

The feds came through with $600 million last week for LRT and the jury decided on the winning design from the International Design Competition for Lansdowne. You would think that there would be universal cheers from City Hall (Doucet excepted because he only cheers when he wins) but no.

Morality Mayoralty candidate Cullen has decided that the transportation study for the Lansdowne project is wrong.  Surprise, surprise.

For ten days every year, says the study, the traffic around Lansdowne will increase by 120 vehicles, each way, per hour. Not possible says Cullen. I suppose that he will tell us that it is more like 120 million vehicle per hour, or something.

Lansdowne Live

Well the first hurdle for this project is past.  I have a few random thoughts on the process I thought I would share with you.

The first is that, if someone with the verbal bombastic penchant of Alex Cullen ever became mayor of Ottawa the Dark Ages would be upon us.

The second is that I am please that for once Councilor Doucette was put in his place when the mayor cut off his remarks when his time was up.  The crocodile tears, the wavering voice and the mild tantrum that he exhibited was a telling thing.  Doucette is a spoiled child in a man's body.  He is the kid who took his ball and ran home when he wasn't the centre of attention on the playground.

There appeared to be many councilors that were absent even while they were in the room.  I am thinking specifically of Councilor Desroche.  Unless he snuck in a question while was out of the room, he did not even take part in the final debate.  Oh, he made a fine speech in the closing but where was his questioning otherwise?

I mentioned at the outset that the project was past the first hurdle.  The next hurdle is the design panel headed by George Dark.  Who, you may ask, is George Dark?

He has a resume overflowing with projects and kudos.  During the final stages of he first hurdle process he was handed a series of documents on the project and wrote a report, of which I have a copy, that made all sorts of statements and assertions on how to improve the space at Lansdowne.   In general the document is good, however, in his General comments, on page 19, he makes a somewhat strange observation that makes me wonder.  He notes: "The schematic design drawings are too site plan like for public use.  The problem is they look very precise and final … like a site plan application and do not convey the conceptual ideas well.."

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the whole idea of a "schematic drawing" to look as precise as possible?


All in all the project is moving forward.  That is a good thing.  Let's just hope that it doesn't get bogged down in deciding on the colour of the drapes and making sure that they complement the sham.

That would be a sham(e).

Ottawa goes Schizo

The citizens of the City of Ottawa had better sit down for a bit and figure where they live. Is it the City of Ottawa or Ottawa, the capital of Canada?

If it is the Nation's Capital, then they had better realize that two of the major tasks of the government of Canada is security and defense. Once they realize that, then maybe they will allow the defense folks to demonstrate and sell defense products to the defense department and the CSIS and to the RCMP and to the many police force across the country who attend major defense trade show.

And if they finally figure out the Ottawa is the nation's capital then they picket defense trade shows to their heart's content but they will not ban them.

But hey, this is a democracy. If Ottawans decide that this is just another pretty city on a river, rather than the nation's capital, then they will not gripe if the Defense Department moves to Kingston where they can be all that they can be; taking thousands of jobs and millions in taxes with them. It would follow. for the same reasons, that the RCMP and CSIS would follow them out of Ottawa.

And just in case you miss the point, I am talking to you, Alex Cullen.

Consequences to every action

I have tried to instill in my kids that there are consequences to every action that you take. For example, if you stay out past curfew you lose a privilege. There is nothing sinister here, nothing to take me before a Human Right Commission; the kids knew the consequences before they committed the deed. Just to be clear, there was no hitting, verbal or physical abuse. So don't report me.

The reason for this entry in the blog is to point out that politicians do not seem interested in looking long term for consequences to their actions. Their focus is now until the next election. If consequences happen between now and then, they go into damage control mode and look for someone else to blame it on.

Case in point #1: The city of Ottawa city has a master plan for transportation that includes a plan to widen a current two lane road to four lanes. The idea is to move traffic more efficiently from the southern parts of the city toward the city core. Sounds like a good plan until you look at the consequences of the plan. The four lane section of the roadway will terminate before you get downtown. Regardless of which way you go from there, you end up back on two lane roads. All you have done is moved the congestion, not solved the problem. A second consequence is that you are streaming four lanes of traffic past one high school and 3 primary schools. Kids as young six are going to have to cross 4 lanes of arterial traffic. Can you say DANGER?

Case in point #2: The federal government is pushing forward a bill to update the Copyright Act. The Act will make criminals out of most of the population and I am not talking about illegally copying movies. According to the revised Act, you can record a TV program on one of those Personal Video Recorders (PVR) that you can rent or buy; but if you copy the program onto a VCR tape, as is one of the options on the PVR menu, you get to join Paul Bernardo in Kingston. Consequences!

Case in point #3: The city of Ottawa has a screwed up financial picture. Spending is out of control; ideas to save money flounder with the partisan attitudes of some Councillors; the Mayor is under indictment for a crime but refuses to relinquish his post until he is cleared of the issue; Councillors and the Mayor are constantly taking potshots at each other thus poisoning the atmosphere at city hall; and the civil servants are milking the system for every advantage they can get. What to do? Oh, what to do? I know, says Councillor Cullen, let's blame in on the province!! The province is not clean on the issue (see case in point #4) but the city's mess is the city's mess.

Case in point #4: The Province of Ontario is, I believe, the only province left that forces the municipalities to live only on the taxes they raise from property owners. That system is broken and has led to major hassles for fast growing cities and towns with ageing infrastructure. The system needs to be fixed and not just ignored.

There are literally thousands of examples to illustrate my premise. You have any?

Select 1,2 or 3, unless you don't want to

I attended a consultation on Ottawa's Transportation Master Plan last night. The TMP, as it is called, is the blueprint that will carry (literally) Ottawans into 2031. That's well after I am dead and my body blown up by my kids.

There were questions about Light Rail (LRT) versus Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). There were questions about traffic congestion, how to clear it and, more importantly, how to pay for it.

But was I the only person in the room to roll their eyes at the way this consultation was carried out?

The session deteriorated from the very beginning. Two, count them, two City Councillors left the budget consultations to glad hand the crowd and tell us what great work they were doing. I would have preferred that Maria and Alex had stayed at the budget consult. It was also quite obvious, from the number of people that Maria recognized in the crowd of 77 or so, that this was not a random sampling of Ottawans.

Then on to the questions. An earnest pollster gave a bit of background to each question and then asked the assembled group to press 1,2 or 3 on our wireless keypads to give our choice.

It started with one guy who asked "what if I don't like the options you propose?" He wanted to answer the poll question with another question. Rather than the moderator saying "suck it up buddy and answer the question", she allowed the whole blessed two hours to turn into a criticism of everything from whether or not biodiesel fumes were safe to breathe to "we need a new poll question to determine if people think that this whole poll was comparing one fruit to another or not". What a waste of time.

One good "extra" question that was posed was "where do you live... urban or rural?" The answer to this was the most revealing of the whole tawdry affair and it was absolutely amazing to me that the pollsters did not have it on their list before they were nudged by an audience member. The majority of the attendees, who live in the core of the city, want commuters from outside the core to pay extra taxes and tolls for the right to drive to work or shop downtown. They could give a tinker's damn for the needs or realities of suburban and rural residents. I wonder what they would think if the Canadian government moved all of their offices to Barrhaven, Munster and Orleans and they, the cool and sophisticated core dwellers, had to commute to the burbs? Want to bet that the poll results would be different.

The city might also want to take a second look at Pace Consulting, the company that was hired to run this "consultation". They covered themselves by saying that this was a first of its kind consultation in Ottawa but does that mean that we have to pay them to test out their techniques? According to their web site, www.paceconsulting.ca, they are very experienced strategic planners with clients like: Ontario Hydro, Medtronic, TD Securities and many other names familiar to this blogger. I suggest that Pace regroup to get their message together before the next consultation.