PaulHillsdon.com - Latest Comments

Re: Update on my 2010 resolutions

Como Hablar En Público — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 07:41:57 -0000

Felicitaciones por el trabajo desarrollado. Saludos desde Argentina

Matías Gasparrini - Periodista y Conferencista

Asesoramiento Profesional con las Mejores Técnicas para Hablar en Público

http://comohablarenpublico.jim...

Re: $2.50 bridge tolls would raise $450M each year

billly — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 00:35:07 -0000

Amen indeed. I'd throw my support behind bridge tolling and downtown congestion pricing for sure. There is net economic benefit to receive from capturing externalities and single occupancy vehicles definitely jams up streets at the cost of other everyone else. I have a feeling this won't be approved in democratic Canada though.

Re: Interurban Timetable

Bruce — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:05:48 -0000

Who ever let the Interurban or a modern version of it get away was very short sighted. The Interurban roadbed still exists through most of the Fraser Valley. Keeping that service going and up-to-date would have created a very effective transportation system. s

BRuce

Re: Vancouver New Year’s Eve Concept

Namezerro — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:25:23 -0000

nice idea look like so famous and pleasure

Re: Why Surrey needs to catch up to Mississauga

perth web design — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 11:28:54 -0000

I need to do some more research regarding this conflicts and this issue.

Re: SkyTrain to UBC would cut travel time by over 50%!

Robert Moore — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:54:31 -0000

I think it'll come down to the economics and the realities of construction. Tunneling is so expensive, cut and cover is very disruptive. I doubt the city will entertain that option along Broadway. An overhead Skytrain is also expensive and this option does not seem make any sense for Broadway. Therefore I think LRT is really the only viable solution. Reasonably fast and quiet trains running on a dedicated track are a better option than noisey buses that run one after the other during peak traffic periods.

Re: Why Surrey needs to catch up to Mississauga

Naples web design — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:23:23 -0000

By the way what are the issues and problems in Mississauga?

Re: SkyTrain to UBC would cut travel time by over 50%!

Tim — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:14:58 -0000

thats it, time to take down the Alex Fraser, Patullo, the 1908 Rail Bridge, Lions Gate, Iron Workers etc. They should of never been built. We should of relied on ferries to bring the farmers into the city when they needed it. Ok so we should of never had the skytrain go to Surrey or West Coast express? How does this help again compared to all of the other bridges that were built over the last century. I don't get it. Lets face it, sprawl happened because people wanted to live away from the city and have their own piece of country life or a cheaper place to live. But we need to look at the future and densify areas that are built up. This is already happening. All you need to look at are the towers that are being built all around the skytrain stations and in areas that will have future city centres.

Re: Will 2010 be the year of the Interurban?

Creeksidefarms — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:22:29 -0000

To slightly correct your facts the passenger rights were secured due to my uncovering the previously unseen Master Agreement which included free passenger rights under a 21 year agreement for the Pratt Livingston Corridor from Cloverdale through to Trinity. That 21 year agreement was due to expire Aug 29th 2009, 4 months after uncovering the agreement. The agreement was renewed only because I was able to unite all municipalities south of the Fraser to what was at stake. B.C. Hydro for that matter was not aware of the agreement until we informed them. CP Rail are not happy at all as they came within 4 months of gaining ownership forever with no passenger traffic to look after. We are moving forward with an intense communication campaign this fall. Stay tuned. If you would like to be involved contact my office.
Rick Green
Mayor
Township of Langley
Chair
South of Fraser Community Rail Task Force.
604 533-6000

Re: Donate your car, get a lifetime Zipcar membership!

Car Loans — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:38:52 -0000

Having a car is not a necessity for everyone in America. If you live in the burbs of a smaller city or a rural area, then yes it's a necessity.

Re: SkyTrain to UBC would cut travel time by over 50%!

Andy — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:34:21 -0000

there is a better way by a man name Doug Malewicki there the website
http://www.skytran.net/phpsite...

Re: Donate your car, get a lifetime Zipcar membership!

gigurdjieff — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:44:20 -0000

At least for U.S. residents having a car is a necessity and, if you have an old car that you're thinking of selling, you might want to consider Car Donation to benefit the United States Veterans or other people in need. It's a very noble cause.

Re: Why Surrey needs to catch up to Mississauga

Web Design — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 17:39:47 -0000

I'm in Surrey, UK and stumbled across your post. Weirdly, the same comments could apply here!

Re: Reburbia contest or ‘how tech solves it all’

modular homes — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 06:11:58 -0000

All good solutions at the scale of the building types common to suburbia. .... It just seems to delay the decay and doesn't solve the sustainability!

Re: Down memory lane: Chretien and Romanow saved ’82 Constitution

Guesty — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:08:00 -0000

I really think that the last thing we need in Canada is only two political parties on either end of the spectrum, it seems to reduce politics to a back and forth game of knee-jerk reactions and policies based on ideological talking-points -just look at the futility of trying to do-right in the US with the Democrats/Republicans. I like minority governments, they keep power in check.

Re: Why Light Rail is not appropriate for Broadway

Bregalad — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:05:16 -0000

Calling 20,000 people per hour slightly higher than the 4500 the B-Line moves is badly misleading your readers Paul.

And your statement "If we are going to shell out billions of dollars to build rapid transit along Broadway..." assumes such funding is available and that pouring billions into Broadway makes sense.

The billions you and Mr. Campbell suggest spending on Broadway would put LRT on FIVE corridors across Vancouver and serve vastly more people.

Currently the provincial government and all opposition parties know that fully funding urban transit at the expense of suburban and rural highways is political suicide. Instead they insist on getting huge shares from the federal government and from local taxpayers. So UBC SkyTrain is actually dependent on getting at least $1B from TransLink to fund construction and then TransLink is supposed to magically find the funding to operate the new system all with no new revenue sources. Sounds like massive property tax increases to me.

Other cities in Canada figure that ridership of just 35,000 per day is enough to cover LRT costs so Broadway should be able to turn a hefty profit which, combined with the savings from not running the #99, would provide operating funds for better bus service throughout the region.

Grade separation is only the answer if moving the most cars and trucks is the question. It's hard to take you seriously as a transit advocate when you write pieces that are so anti transit passenger in nature.

Re: Why Light Rail is not appropriate for Broadway

Bregalad — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:39:55 -0000

You couldn't be more wrong Jim. Light rail would INCREASE the capacity of Broadway by 400% by replacing a lane of mostly single occupancy vehicles with a system capable of moving 20,000 people per hour in each direction.

There are probably one hundred LRT systems, some even operating in mixed traffic, carrying 100,000 people per day. There are streets in Germany where LRT moves 40,000 people in just one hour!

Merchants all over the world report sales INCREASES when LRT is added to existing streets. Why would things be different in Vancouver? Small business has nothing to fear from LRT done properly. Talk of removing parking lanes must be coming from people who don't want to do LRT properly and just want to scare people.

Why is one lane in each direction not enough for local traffic? Oh I see, you're not talking about local traffic, you're talking about keeping the road wide to accommodate through traffic, the type that doesn't do a damn bit of good for neighbourhoods.

I'm sick and tired of always catering to through traffic. I'm tired of people looking at time savings for the journey from Commercial to UBC when only a small fraction of people are actually making that trip. Any economic calculations based on time savings need to consider the Commercial to Heather trip and the Balsam to UBC trip. On those segments the amount of time gained by a "fast" train is lost walking to a station.

Shoving transit users underground or soaring over the buildings they want to get to says "you're not important, the people in the cars and trucks are". It also says that small business isn't important, only the major ones who can afford to build around the new stations.

Finally we have a city council willing to block traffic so bicycles can have faster and safer trips. Isn't it time we extend the same courtesy to transit?

Re: Down memory lane: Chretien and Romanow saved ’82 Constitution

Tessa — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:59:54 -0000

Good little find. Might be worth digging through there myself. But I doubt Douglas would have felt the two major parties had more to contrast their platforms with today than they did in the 1960's, when I would argue they had many more fundamental disagreements as to policy.

Re: The Liberal Democrats: it’s doable, so let’s do it

Tessa — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:01:04 -0000

You ask why not? Yet you answered it:

"They are the ones who have pushed for neo-liberal economic policies of the 90’s, for better or for worse." - Those Liberals (including their Quebec wing and, at the time, Quebec Prime Minister and Finance Minister), are not a leftist party exactly. They are socially progressive and economically conservative. Some of their members now propose to merge them with a party that still, in its constitution, espouses socialism. It's a combining of the party that brought us medicare with the party that, through 90's budget cuts, did the most to damage that system.

In order for any merger to take place, the NDP would be forced to disavow socialism of any kind, which would absolutely turn off a huge portion of their voters and mean that Canada, in reality, has two economically conservative parties, with the liberals a little closer to the centre. How is that progressive?

As for encouraging people to vote, I don't see how we can do that by eliminating choices. If you're an NDP voter because you support their economic policies as well as their social policies, why would you be more inclined to vote when there's no party that represents that viewpoint anymore? You would really have two choices: hold your nose and vote for a party you don't like, don't vote, or find a new third party to park your vote in. All this talk of mergers is a blow to democracy, just as the unite the right movement was a blow to democracy.

And electorally, it's important to remember that most of the NDP seats are seats where the conservatives are a fairly distint third party (i.e. Hamilton, East Vancouver, New Westminster, Victoria, etc.), or where the Liberals have no hope in hell (southern interior or Skeena Bulkley Valley, where the Liberals got just 5.5 per cent). I'm not convinced that a combined party would do much better electorally, wheras it would likely hurt them in seats like Skeena.

Now, a coalition is another matter. It's a perfectly legitimate choice, and I think it's something that should be encouraged now that we have a permanent minority government in Ottawa. As well, some form of proportional representation is, I believe, absolutely necessary for a functioning democracy. But another merger will, in my opinion, make things a lot worse.

Re: How do Canadians get to work? [stats]

whalleyboy — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:16:01 -0000

any clue what Vancouver vs Victoria is like?

Re: Marijuana and Canada

remi — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 15:08:11 -0000

Well written, bud.

Re: The Liberal Democrats: it’s doable, so let’s do it

paulhillsdon — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 17:13:20 -0000

Of course it wouldn't guarantee anything and I certainly agree that the last thing Canada should have is a two-party system. I do think the philosophy of progressive parties working together is needed through to move the country forward. I personally think a pre or post electoral coalition is the best option as a merger between two pretty different parties would be messy.

Re: Here comes the tolling backlash

Robert — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:31:51 -0000

I know I can't believe that Transit wants to find ways to get more people to drive across the bridge. Shouldn't this be seen as a success and that people are thinking twice before driving across a bridge!

Re: Here comes the tolling backlash

Eu05ro — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 12:23:59 -0000

Hey Paul,

Nice little piece. I have always been one of those people that said the BC government should have started by putting a toll on the bridge and see after a year if the issues of congestions still remained. I know that the government has a policy of not tolling existing bridges but it could have been just a trial. I bet the congestion would have disappeared and instead of putting 3 billion on a new bridge and highway we could have took that 3 billion plus the toll money and put that all into building and expanding the Broadway, Evergreen, Surrey extentions of Skytrain and even build that bus rapid transit you drew up which I quite like. In addition we could have added other lines through out Vancouver such as down on Main, Victoria and others which are heavyly transit corridors that with new lines would mean we could re allocate buses on those routes to other and allow more bus/trolley service in other parts of the region thus increasing frequency where needed.

Re: The Liberal Democrats: it’s doable, so let’s do it

Chris — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 20:30:27 -0000

"When over 40% of the population doesn’t vote in an election, I think it’s a tell tale sign that the status quo isn’t working out too well."
Merging the parties and creating a 2-party system like the United States has would only make things work and wouldn't guarantee the end of Stephen Harper. You should read http://democraticspace.com/blo...