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pooette

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Posts posted by pooette

  1. wow. service spread accross that many networks.... i don't know. how specialized will they make it? there's only so many hours of curling i can handle. but i can tell you there won't be much olympic footage being watched by yours truly unless something changes. i don't get CTV. or anything besides global and CBC. meh.

    i can just watch them for real i guess.

  2. **** the military. the reason the NDP is against the war in afghanistan has nothing to do with it 'getting hard'. it is NDP policy, officially i guess since only a month ago, but the the large majority of the members are pacifist and against the occupations of iraq and afghanistan. aswell as bush's "war on terror"

    so ya, the stereotype that NDPers are a bunch of pot smoking hippies is totally true.

  3. <h1 class="headline">Tories find small cuts to reduce spending by $1B</h1> <h4 class="lastupdated">Last Updated Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:50:48 EDT</h4> <h5 class="byline"> CBC News </h5> The federal government is cutting research into medical uses of marijuana to save $4 million, as part of $1 billion in savings it expects to make over the next two years.

    baird060925.jpg
    Treasury Board president John Baird will cut $1 billion from government spending. (CBC)

    Treasury Board president John Baird mentioned the cut as one example of about $20 million in specific savings he described in a short briefing on Monday. The savings will total nearly $1.1 billion over the next two years according to the Department of Finance website.

    what a tool. the rest of the article can be seen here

    1% decrease in spending for what? a few fucking ideological differences (mary-jane), pure assholeness (pine beetle and women center stuff.) and a bunch of tooling (no gst refunds to visitors. gee. that's 'pro-business'...)

    stephen harper doesn't have a real agenda. he got into power on the vague promise of cleaning up government corruption. if this is all he's got, cutting into a few progressive programs and ones that might help save 1000's of jobs (pine bettle), shaving off a mear 1%, he should be ashamed. i don't think that even wal-mart would bother with this if it ment a saving of 1% on your fucking shampoo. yay mom! shampoo now costs $6.76 instead of $6.84! HOLY ****.

    **** 1% changes. gst and spending can lick my balls.

  4. ahhh finally, i was getting sick of all those fucking airbus/boeing arguments. i have been fond of trains in general since a very young boy, and have an extensive Brio train set (if anyone knows about it. i would think so, it seems pretty international). I'm always disappointed and distressed when polititions in BC come up with billions upon billions of dollars to fund new highway projects AND privitize and sell off rail assets. the expensive sea to sky, to whistler, would have been quite suited for a TGV style train.

    now, on to the trains in question.

    i have never ridden a high speed train. which is sad. i have always wanted to. i'm impressed with the technology and the willingness to put them in place. there are significant advantages over planes, especially for moderate distances (ie. 500 km). the extra time for security and the fact that airports are more often then not located far outside the city centre make trains very competitive.

    take for example, going from Kelowna (where i live) to vancouver. it is aproximately 420 km from YKL to YVR, and the flying time is approximately 45 minutes. driving distances are similar, about 450km, and almost the entirety is interstate quality freeway, and, when not blocked with snow, takes approximately 4.5 hours to drive to vancouver. Train route would be significantly longer as there are mountains directly in the way that would be difficult for a train to tackle. the distance would be closer to 550km.

    total time - downtown to downtown (estimate)

    air: 45 minute flight + 2 hour check in +15min to YLW + 20 minute bags, etc. at YVR + 35+ minutes from YVR to downtown vancouver

    total time: 3h50m+

    driving: 4.5h (up to 5.5h with rush hour traffic)

    train: 20 minute check in + 2h train ride + 20 minute out

    total time: 2h 40 minutes.

    ~~~~~~~

    anyways, now that i have bored you with fake numbers...

    i don't really know which is my favourite train, though the ICE trains look the most modern. TGV trains look rather... dated.

    Ice3_station.jpg

    ICE train

  5. vancouver should go even further and implement congestion charging in the downtown core as well. the parking stall tax should be expanded, and they should bring back the on street parking tax. ahhh screw the car owners finally.

    but don't just leave them out to dry, expand bus service on all routes to 15 minute minimum peak frequency and 30 minute minimum frequency all othertimes, and run most routes all night. that would get people out of their cars as well. (of coures, this can be exceeded... 7 minute frequency on vancouver routes at 4 pm is not rare...)

    expensive, but worth it. no more mega road projects and the maintainance of them.

  6. it really won't be that big of a deal. i would assume that it would be all on colour, since i am also assuming there will be direct YVR-downtown trains as well as richmond-downtown trains (judging by the frequency numbers...)

    but then, i guess that is the same thing that happens on the shared expo/millenium line track. but the millenium line was branded as something different, while RAV is all one. meh.

  7. i think gastown should stay open to cars, but on street parking should be reduced. Downtown Eastside should definately become more mixed. with social, co-op and market housing as well as lowrises behind exsisting facades and a few tack on high rises (over top of exsisting facades/buildings). Gastown should stay lowrise.

  8. Further more, on the subject of ground vs. elevated, it has to do with what kind of atmosphere you want to create in the process; LRT with a slower, more local atmosphere or skytrain purely for urban efficency.

    With LRT, the streetscape will be visibly more public, with public transit overtaking much of the street, previously limited to private cars only. This will open up the street to more interaction and probably a slower speed of traffic, especially in Port Moody.

    With Skytrain, though you would probably gain more riders and a quicker trip, two very important items to keep in consideration. But the overhead concrete guidways are not very neighbourhood friendly, and lets face it, they are pretty ugly.

    so, don't dismiss the project for you dislike for the format. regardless, either way it will be a great help to the area.

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