Four skilled individuals (planning, Engineering, and legal), all of whom live locally, put together this list of comments about the proposed LRT.K-W is a city of 350,000, not a city of 729,000, the number that is always quoted regarding the Regional po…
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Yappa Ding Ding: Lack of credibility, the Region, and LRT reports
Chair Jim Wideman and Members of Planning and Works Committee have released the long-awaited LRT report, titled Preliminary Preferred Rapid Transit Implementation Option and dated April 12, 2011.There is no nice way to say this. The report is another e…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The Region’s LRT ridership estimates: pie in the sky
The figures for other cities are from Wikipedia. This analysis was done by Dave Ramsey. Dave’s conclusions:The estimated daily boardings of 56,000 in 2031 are overstated by at least 40,000.Just like every city in North America with a population of less…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The myth of the successful Calgary LRT
The 30th Anniversary of the C-Train: A Critical Analysis of Calgary’s Light Rail Transit System, by Steve LafleurSome nuggets about the Calgary LRT (dubbed the CTrain) from this report, which was released on March 30, 2011:The conservative estimate h…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Negative impact of LRT on the City of Waterloo
I wrote a little report on some concerns I have about what LRT will do to the city of Waterloo. You can download it here. (Click the file name LRT_impact_on_Waterloo.pdf at the top.)Upate: I expanded the report so that the Waterloo city impacts are jus…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Support for light rail trains gets a boost
During the recent public consultations, the Region distributed a survey that could be filled out on paper or online. It listed 11 options: nine were forms of LRT, one was BRT on dedicated lanes, and one was no rapid transit.The Region has released the …
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The sheep freak out
There seems to be tacit agreement among governments and media that the public must not be panicked by the Japan nuclear reactor fallout. Every step of the way we have been told that certain things can’t happen… and then they do.So we were told this w…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: World of debt
In last month’s “State of the City” address, Waterloo Mayor Brenda Halloran said that “finances remain the city’s biggest challenge, with a $5-million dollar debt over RIM Park still to pay off”, according to local news sources.Not long ago, five milli…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Questions about rail plan go beyond money
My article in the Record today:Questions about rail plan go beyond moneyIn his April 1 community editorial board article, We’re More than a Collection of Taxpayers, Sean Geobey dismisses the community’s objections to light rail transit as a cynical…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Hyperdecantenation
The enitrety of info about hyperdecantenation in Incredible edibles, a recent article about molecular gastronomy in the New Yorker:They also claim to have a way of improving wine by “hyperdecanting” it via sixty seconds in a blender—the idea bein…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Unknown Costs of LRT
We don’t yet know the Region’s preferred option for LRT, so we don’t have final estimates of capital costs or the increases to property taxes. But we know it will result in hundreds of millions in costs to Regional taxpayers.Recently, it has beco…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Downloading LRT Capital Costs
I have heard that the Regional LRT plan includes a lot of downloaded costs to the municipalities where LRT goes – Waterloo and Kitchener. Apparently this came out at a recent meeting of Regional Council. It was one of those situations where staff made …
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Cambridge: Getting Screwed and Dodging a Bullet
On her blog, Regional councillor Jane Mitchell completely poo-poos any concerns of Cambridge residents that LRT won’t extend to their city. She describes Cambridge as a bunch of whiners who had terrible transit when it was their responsibility, who don…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Turmoil in the Middle East
This is just a sidebar, or metacomment, to the coverage of upheaval in the middle east.I don’t trust the coverage we’re getting, because behind it I see a smirk – both from the people in the news rooms, and from our western governments.Since September …
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Rail transit will not solve urban congestion
I have another guest column in the Record today: Public will never give up their cars. It is printed along with an article by Tim Mollison of Tri-Tag: Rail transit an answer to urban congestion.While I thank the Record for airing the debate, I’m not th…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Heritage, Sense of Place, Identity, Culture
This is a picture from today’s Record of a school that was torn down in Cambridge this week:This is where I live (photo from Google Maps):…so you can imagine why the loss of the school in Cambridge is very sad for me.A decade ago, my building was sav…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: Galactic Ruler Xenu Hires a Lawyer
There once was a guy who wrote sci-fi short stories for pulp magazines. Then one day he wrote this story:75 million years ago, the earth was over-populated with 186 billion people, so its ruler rounded up most of the people and put them in volcanoes an…
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The "New" Rapid Transit Proposal, Part 2
The proposal is here: Region releases report on Rapid Transit Implementation Options.A few weeks ago, Regional Council voted to instruct staff to consider a bus rapid transit (BRT) option. The report presents 11 options, nine of which are LRT and only …
Continue readingYappa Ding Ding: The "New" Rapid Transit Proposal
Only a few weeks after regional council voted to reconsider the BRT option, the Region has released its “new” transit proposal: Rapid transit implementation options.Is it new? No. The report provides a dizzying array of 11 options, nine of which are LR…
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