This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Ben Chu reports on the conclusion from the chief economist of the Bank of England that decreased unionization in the UK is responsible for reducing wages for all workers by .75% per year over the past 30 years. – Hassan Yussuff warns
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Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Charles Smith writes about the importance of a living wage as a matter of fairness and justice. But Stephanie Taylor reports on Regina City Council’s lamentable vote against ensuring that the people who make the city function are able to earn enough
Continue readingThings Are Good: Free Public Transit Throughout Estonia
We provide access to roads for free to car drivers so why don’t we match free access to movement to people who don’t drive cars? That’s part of the rationale for Estonia providing free public transit for the entire nation – the first country to do so. Estonia is a
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Larry Elliott discusses how the stock market is reacting with disgust against rare good economic news for workers and the general public. Asher Schechter interviews Angus Deaton about the connection between monopolies, rent-seeking and burgeoning inequality. And Bill Kerry writes that we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Evening Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Aditya Chakrabortty comments on the stunning turnaround experienced by the UK city of Preston after it started making a concerted effort to use public money to benefit citizens and local development. – Meanwhile, CNN Wires notes that in contrast, massize Amazon warehouses
Continue readingIn-Sights: TransLink, another victim of inertia
Malcolm Johnston, a private citizen, has studied and written about rail transit for years. He does not have a lucrative consulting contract to promote Sky Train, the ourdated and costly beast that has for decades been rejected by transit experts around the world. Nor is he paid to promote any
Continue readingIn-Sights: Transit
Malcolm Johnston is a near perfect example of a citizen activist (sorry Keith Baldrey) who wants to see public money spent with maximum efficiency. He is convinced that legitimate transit planners are pushed aside by spin doctors, consultants and other lobbyists working for vested interests, like the discredited briber, SNC-Lavalin,
Continue readingThings Are Good: Breathe Easy Thanks to Public Transit
Traffic congested cities suffer not just people stressed out in cars but the exhaust their cars toss into the air. As a result of the use of automobiles asthma and other respiratory issues increase in urban areas, leading to increased health costs and harder lives. This means that if we
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Karl Nerenberg writes about Bill Morneau’s conflicts of interest – with particular attention to the NDP’s justified criticism of legislation aimed at privatizing pension management to benefit forms like Morneau’s. And Brent Patterson discusses a push back against the Manitoba PCs’ plan
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Edward Harrison comments on the business-backed push to rebrand corporate control and crony capitalism as freedom. And Ryan Cooper points out that the concept of deregulation ultimately serves only to concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy few: Government regulations can be
Continue readingThings Are Good: Good Health Stems from Walking, Biking, and Transit
Regularly walking and biking are good for one’s health, but did you know taking public transit is too? That’s right just by not taking a car to work like most North Americans you can be healthier. A simple life change can have a large impact on your life, plus by
Continue readingThings Are Good: How the Shape of Cities Impact Public Transportation
Cities contain the majority of the worlds population and moving that many people is a challenge, to say the least. Each city has its own design and plan for public transportation and some are clearly better than others. Wendover Productions tackles this question and provides some nice insights into what
Continue readingThings Are Good: Improve Transportation by Ending Subsidies for Automobiles
Many drivers think that gas tax (or their car-related taxes in general) more than cover the costs of infrastructure of cars. The reality is quite the opposite. People who don’t drive subsidize those who do. In terms of infrastructure itself we have spent more money on roads than on other
Continue readingThings Are Good: Public Transit Makes Cities Safer
Obviously public transit is great for getting people around cities and is a very scalable traffic solution. One spinoff of a good public transit system is that the streets get safer. In Canada he number of collisions increases every year with the vast majority of these collisions the result of
Continue readingThings Are Good: Drivers Need to Learn to Share
Bicycles are an amazingly fast way to get around cities and countries, as a cyclist I often roll past cars idling in bumper to bumper traffic. The cars (and their single occupants) aren’t getting anywhere anytime soon yet drivers as a group demand more and more infrastructure when really they should learn to share. In […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Supporting Bicycles is a Good Idea for Cities
Torontoist is a blog focused on, you guessed it, Toronto and they recently ran a series of posts about bike lanes. It’s not all about Toronto as they pull data from New York and tout Strasbourg as an inspiration that Toronto ought to follow. The success of cycling infrastructure in Strasbourg is a result of […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: The Century of the Car Was a Mistake, Let’s Move on
North America was built around the car instead of people and that was mistake that needs to be acknowledged. In some places it is. The insane support the automobile gets in urban centres is starting to change, we’re seeing more bike lanes and places for people to walk. In order to make changse last and […]
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Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: The real costs of fossil fuel-powered vehicles – and the alternatives to them
There is some rising concern, and at times vitriol, about electric car drivers not paying their fair share, because they buy no gas, and therefore do not pay gas taxes, which go to maintaining roads. While this is true, it is only a sliver of th…
Continue readingcartoon life: How about a transit-run AI self-driving smart car system for #ldnont?
Hmmm, maybe a crazy idea. My retro future fantasy brain on a spree. The city transit service could run a small fleet of AI Smart, small self-driving cars. Electric. We know they’re coming. A kind of car share system managed by a transit authority. You could hire one over the phone or through an app […]
Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your weekend reading. – Thomas Walkom takes a broad look at the problems with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, while noting that the Trudeau Libs don’t seem inclined to address them at all. Deirdre Fulton sees the final text as being worse than anybody suspected based even on the
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