‘Never Again’ Cullen Says On Transportation Nightmare
This from former Bay councillor Alex Cullen on the transportation fiasco created by closing the O-Train for two weeks of maintenance, closing Highway 417, closing Scott Street, closing the Kichi Zibi Parkway and closing other city streets … all at once.
Our three levels of government took the word govern out of government on the weekend.
Ridiculously bad performance. Worse than expected beforehand once the National Capital Commission chipped in with its stupidity.
From X:
For You:
Weekend Traffic: Stupidity, Incompetence, Laziness
‘Panic-Induced Chaos At City Hall:’ STANKOVIC
City Considers Taxing Your Car Parking For Transit
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– The Bulldog – News Feed Enter 
None of this would be a problem if we all used active transportation modes don’t you think? Digressing a bit, if active transportation catches on, maybe we’ll need a bicycle levy to make up for the reduced use of public transit. Maybe even a tax on bicycle parking spots in new developments that have no minimum vehicle parking requirements?
I like your sense of humour John, but it is lost on the people who advocate for the physical manifestations of concepts that work in locations that are not sufficiently analogous to Ottawa.
john:
I’m in favour of taxing bicycle parking spots so that cyclists actually start to pay for the infrastructure they use.
cheers
kgray
There is a concept that the City of Ottawa does not seem to understand. In the IT world it’s called Change Management. At the organization in which I worked for 30 years there came a time when we had to update an operating system, add a new development server, and upgrade to the latest version of application X. If we did all 3 at the same time and something went wrong, we had to look at various combinations and permutations to figure out where the problem(s) occurred, all by Monday morning since change management efforts usually took place on the weekend. If we couldn’t find and fix the problem(s) and test the new system then all the changes had to be rolled back (not an option with roadwork). By performing the changes one step at a time we could ensure problems could be isolated and addressed using an industry-wide methodology (i.e. the change management process). This is a simple approach that all companies with an IT department understand. Does the City of Ottawa not have an IT department? Of course it does. Did the City of Ottawa not have representatives from the IT department involved in this most recent troubles? Of course IT representatives participated because someone had to reprogram stoplights, etc. The question in my mind is “Does anyone at city hall know how to communicate with anyone else at city hall?” God only knows what will happen when city hall can excuse all their failures by stating “Well, there be a bug in the AI software”.
Sorry Alex, this is the FIRST ANNUAL 2 WEEK SHUTDOWN, and the conspiracy theorist in me believes that this Quebec company is taking the opportunity which JUST HAPPENS to overlap with Quebec Construction Week, to take vacation at the same time.
C,
I think it’s the other way around, By scheduling the work during the Quebec construction holiday when all major projects in that province shut down, they have access to a supply of workers they can bring in to supplement their regular staff.
I’m glad to see you picked up on the point that this is going to be an annual shutdown for maintenance, not a one-off. Most people seem to have missed that.