For starters today, in case anyone is still thinking fracking might save this province, here is a recent clip with David Letterman's take on the whole issue:
Hmm.
Moving along to today's idea, "Up With Rapid Transit".
In thinking about this idea I thought of the movie Field of Dreams, and the famous line:
"If you build it, he will come"
In the movie "Field of Dreams" Kevin Costner's character, Ray Kinsella, didn't just stand in his cornfield whining, begging and pleading for the ghosts of a bunch of baseball players to show up and play ball. He built them a baseball diamond. And then they showed up. They weren't going to show up to a cornfield with the promise that a baseball diamond was on the way. Kevin built it. And then they showed up.
For another example, let's look at the Voyageur Lakes subdivision in Hammonds Plains, built by Navid Saberi, who, coincidentally was in the Herald this week for being deliquent on property taxes. (He's paid them up now). Swoon is currently located in a house that is leased from Navid, as it is on the edge of the Voyageur Lakes subdivision and came with the land. I was with Swoon's owner when he was given the speech in 2010 about how the subdivision was going to be this great thing, shops, businesses, equestrian park... Well in the spirit of being truthful, this development looks like a flop to me so far. In my opinion they might have had more success if they had taken a page out of Field of Dreams and built the equestrian park FIRST. Given the community and perspective home buyers some bang for their buck, a reason to get excited.
Similarly if the government of Nova Scotia wants people to move here, stay, create businesses and pay taxes to grow the economy, how about instead of giving bags of money to already profitable companies, they should keep that money to build some awesome infrastructure so that people want to come, without having to be bribed here?
Above is the video for one of my favourite Metric songs, "Handshakes". At minute 2:00 comes the most awesome chorus:
Buy this car to drive to work
Drive to work to pay for this car
Because cars are expensive! You have to buy the thing, pay for repairs, insurance, gas... and cars are expensive in a way that we're not even fully paying for yet, air pollution, climate change. Not to mention the fact that driving can be stressful, so they're costly to one's health as well. Since I've moved to the country and have limited how many times I drive from my house, it is amazing how little I spend on vehicle related expenses.
In my opinion Halifax is an awkward size, it is sort of a teenager of a city. Too large to be the cozy town that Regina was when I moved there in 2005, but not quite large enough to have some of the bigger infrastructure like a rapid transit system like the Skytrain in Vancouver or the Metro in Montreal. And for a city as small as it is, the traffic is quite problematic with the bottlenecks created going to and from the peninsula. More people moving to town will mean more cars, more traffic, more parking problems. It doesn't surprise me that IBM is choosing to locate itself in Bedford; I imagine other large companies would similarly look at areas off the peninsula as more favourable locations.
I was a suburban 13 year old when the Skytrain was first introduced to Vancouver in time for Expo 86 - Vancouver's world fair. It started small. So small, that some, like myself, wondered what the point was. Many people were skeptical but the system has since grown into something that I think a lot of Vancouverites and British Columbians are proud of. Living in East Vancouver in my late 20's I'm sure that because of the nearby skytrain link I went downtown a lot more than I would have without it. When I lived in Halifax I lived in Fairview, and would rarely go downtown eventhough it isn't all that far and I have a car; because buses were slow, taxis expensive, and depending on the event, driving and parking would be a hassle.
Imagine if there were links between the universities, downtown, Mumford terminal and the Bayer's road terminal? There'd be so many less cars on the road, and when you would factor in the savings in vehicle maintenance, I think it would improve people's quality of life. The Hammonds Plains Road in particular has a ridiculous amount of traffic, with all the development occurring out there that a commuter train to downtown would be blissful. One of Swoon's downfalls is that due to the lack of bus service, you really can't visit it without a car. I'm sure other businesses along that strip also find that they are limited to only hiring staff who have a vehicle. And every day around rush hour you can watch the backlog of vehicles, slowly creeping along, most with just one passenger. It just seems wrong to me.
Like with the Vancouver Skytrain system I'd be inclined to start small in Halifax: maybe with just one link that would connect Bayer's Road and Mumford to downtown. And then it could be expanded outwards to deal with the most wretched bottlenecks, with 'park and ride' parking lots placed at strategic locations for long distance commuters.
Better yet, though this would be a long way off, would be to have a rail system linking Nova Scotian towns, such that getting to and from these places would be easier. And lets bring the ferry back while we're at it so that it'd be possible to travel all the way from Halifax to the states. People could visit family and friends, commute to work, tourists could get around more easily. A rapid transit system would make the city more attractive to university students. It would make Halifax and Nova scotia look progressive and smart. It would hedge against the forecasted impacts of an increasing population and a depleting supply of oil.
Okay, I realize that a rapid transit system would also cost a truckload of money and the province is already broke and poor, full of people who feel taxed to death. Fortunately I got this awesome idea today from looking on twitter. Crowdfunding! yes it sounds ridiculous but imagine if we crowdfunded part of a new rapid transit system for the province. Everyone could get on board! The example I saw today was this crowd funding campaign by the Brooklyn Warehouse.
In the write up for their campaign, they mention that Obama used crowdfunding to raise $214 million for his campaign. The Brooklyn Warehouse has used the technique successfully in the past, in this campaign they offer various rewards for different donation levels, A few examples of their many donor levels: $50 gets you lunch for 2 and 2 t-shirts, $1500 gets you a four course dinner for 2, twice a year for the life of the restaurant, $2500 gets you a bushel of amazing perks. All are great value.
So how about it, Nova Scotia, we can all get involved with this one! Everyone can sign up! And the call for donations wouldn't have to be limited to residents of the province, it could be cast out to anyone who has had to move away, or has enjoyed a visit here. Just like the 'cake walk' fundraiser that schools have, where people
donate a cake and tickets are sold, this will be on a huge scale! And could include some priceless, once-in-a-lifetime experiences!
$50 would get a donor a lobster dinner for two (good profit margins on this one with the price of lobster this season).
$500 for a polo match with Navid Saberi in his own equestrian village that is Voyageur Lakes.
for $1500 Premier Darrell Dexter comes to your house and cooks lobster supper for you and your family and then cleans your house. Some conservative would pay for that I bet.
we'll get the feds involved, sure,
for $5000 Stephen Harper will come to your house cut your grass. Using a panda from his trip to China.
There's even room for celebrities in this campaign: hockey lessons from Sidney Crosby, lunch with Cathy Jones, or a sailing trip around Ethan Hawke's private island where ever that is.
With all the creative people in Nova Scotia I'm sure someone could hatch a crowdfunding campaign that would get worldwide attention.
Or, if crowdfunding is too ridiculous for a project of this magnitude, how about borrowing from that 25 billion dollars of ship money the feds have put aside; doesn't seem like much is happening with it so far.
Or finally, maybe the thing for the city and province to do would be to plan a rapid transit system, figure out where the stations will be, and before the public finds out, they could buy plenty of property around each hub to flip to developers at a later date when the system is built, to pay back the loan. Before Vancouver's real estate market started to tank, developers in Vancouver were paying outrageous sums of money for houses along the Cambie Street corridor; the latest part of the skytrain to be developed. They would buy a few houses - for around $3 million/house - to create a large enough parcel to knock the houses down for developments that were higher density. With some shrewd planning, the municipal and provincial governments could possibly use real estate investing to help fund this creation of infrastructure.
Anyways, something to think about while idling in commuter traffic.
No comments:
Post a Comment