Pie Palace

I’m back from a two-week holiday in France, sightseeing in Paris and snowboarding in the Three Valleys. Paris was fantastic, although it gave me a certain “capital envy” with its wide boulevards, beautiful buildings, and walkable core. The snowboarding was decent – it was definite spring skiing (slush on the bottom of the mountain, with a 15 degree difference between mountain top and bottom), but the size of the rideable area made up for that.

I’ve added Standard Issue to Blogawa‘s blog roll. Some of James’ pictures are amazing. Just browse through his archive for some fantastic photos.

World War Z is an “oral history of the zombie war,” telling the story of how humanity was almost annihilated at the groping hands of the undead. The story arc is pretty simple: a mysterious virus breaks out in China, and quickly spreads around the world. The tale is told in after-the-fact interviews with survivors.

It’s a great read. I picked it up from the library on Saturday and was done by Sunday night. The writing is vivid, with each character telling us a little about the catastrophe, while exposing a little bit of their personality.

There are some fun twists: who knew that Cuba would fare so well in the post-undead world? that zombies can survive underwater for years? that winter would offer a reprieve to the survivors? The cameos by Howard Dean, Nelson Mandela, and Zatōichi are fun as well.

My only complaints: the United States spearheading the anti-zombie fight was a bit of a let down, but South African, Cuban, Japanese, and Russian experiences almost made up for that. Since humanity was almost destroyed, I hoped for a greater sense of dread in the early and middle chapters. There was a definite sense of sacrifice, but some more emotional stories of what people lost would have added to the drama.

Addendum: The audio book features Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, and Henry Rollins.

You haven’t lived until you’ve been on an OC Transpo bus as it fishtails around corner after corner after corner.

Ottawa’s been buried under 30 centimeters of snow this weekend, with the possibility of more on the way. I live downtown and things weren’t bad: side streets were buried, but the main roads and sidewalks had been cleared. Busy stretches of sidewalk that weren’t cleared were quickly trampled into a walkable state. Wandering down Bank Street this afternoon the it seemed like an ordinary Sunday: stores were open, people were walking to and fro with their coffee, groceries, and other sundry goods. When you’re walking, a foot of snow isn’t a problem (unless you have mobility problems).

Then I hopped on a bus and headed to the ‘burbs, and witnessed a completely different story. Only the main roads had been plowed. Sidewalks were doubly buried – first under mountains of snow that had been pushed off the roads, then under a dumping of natural snow. The only way to get around was to walk on the road. Fortunately most drivers were polite enough to give pedestrians a wide berth.

I won’t say there’s a moral to this story. Those living in the ‘burbs are used to getting around by car, so after digging out their vehicles, it was probably an ordinary Sunday for them as well. But it seemed pretty clear that squeezing people into walkable neighbourhoods lessened the load on city snow clearing infrastructure.

Image by preciouskhyatt.

I’ve put together a new version of Miniposts2. It’s now WordPress 2.5 compatible, and supports filtering miniposts from feeds. Along the way I found the migration doc useful. And I came to discover that WordPress doesn’t really maintain any kind of backward compatibility between minor revisions.

So what would make a good transit plan? I’m not an urban planner, but I can make a few ill-informed guesses:

1. The plan shouldn’t be based on streeters that ask people what they think of their current transit system – that model is too easily biased. Instead, they should do a survey of where people actually go. Ask them for their home and work/school addresses, for example. Build a map that shows where people go and when, then build transit to service their needs, not what you think they may want.
2. The plan shouldn’t just have a “vision”, it should also explain how the goal will be met. The existing plan states that they want to see 30% – in 2001, it was around 16%¹, but they provide no indication of how those goals will be achieved.
3. Include city growth as part of the plan. Ottawa is all crawling with new condos downtown and new subdivisions in the ‘burbs. The plan should serve existing population centres and plan for new growth.
4. The transit plan should include zoning amendments to encourage growth and in-fill around transit lines. The old 2020 plan alluded to that, but the new napkin sketch doesn’t even raise the possibility.
5. The plan should provide a basic breakdown of costs. We’re told that laying track from Baseline station to Blair, and from the Rideau Centre past the airport is only $660 million more expensive than upgrading the transitway? And that a fleet of a few dozen trains won’t cost much more to buy than the 690 buses that OC Transpo runs? That may be true, but it’s hard to believe without knowing where the numbers came from.

The proposed plan is fine – if we want to pay around three billion dollars to get the same service we have today.

1. The site says
   

   It is estimated that in 2001, about 250,000 person-trips were made in a typical weekday afternoon peak hour. Of these, about 74% were by automobile, 15% by transit, almost 10% by walking and just under 2% by cycling

   If we add up the automotive trips, then divide by total number of bus trips, we get 16.67%. (back)

As others have mentioned, the City of Ottawa has put together four possible plans for public transit in 2031. The four plans cover the same ground, they

• follow the current east/west arterials running parallel to the Ottawa river;
• head south as far as Bowesville and Barrhaven Town Centre;
• go north into Gatineau;
• feature a tunnel though the downtown.

The only difference is the mode: the first plan is entirely bus, with each of the other three plans phasing in gradually more light rail. Plan four has the most track, featuring rail lines from the current Baseline station to Blair with a dogleg down to Bowesville and the airport.

If I sound unexcited about the plans, it’s because they’re all pretty much the same. Swap tracks for Transitway, and add a few percentage points of capitol and ongoing costs, and they’re basically the same plan: what we have now. Even the growth projections for transit trips downtown are ho-hum: they project an overall rise of transit use (heading into the downtown core) of 10%.

Tomorrow: suggestions for what a transit plan should include.

The Red Apron is an Ottawa-baesd food subscription service. You pay their not-too-cheap fee, and then they deliver meals to your work or home. If my food budget wasn’t already maxed, I’d give it a shot.

I kinda messed up the comments. If you’ve commented on anything in the past week or two, it may have been attached to the wrong post. It should be fixed now.

I don’t have anything against breast implants per se, but I find the entire idea kinda trashy. By “kinda” I mean “excessively.” Boobs are fun to look at and, um, enjoy, but implants are risky. Very, very risky. Which is why I find a website called MyFreeImplants.com¹ a bad idea.

As far as I can tell, the site is basically a bounty system. “Benefactors” (ie, boob oglers) sign up and are provided with a mechanism to communicate with women who want boob jobs. The benefactors request favours (custom videos/photos) of specific women, and, in return, the “gents” can put donate cash for the women to have their breasts augmented.

I’m all for consenting adults exchanging naughty pictures and movies. If they want to involve money in the equation, that’s fine too. But if the end product is a surgical procedure that can lead to nasty complications, I hope that the women are aware of the risks.

1. Please note the use of rel=”nofollow” tag in this post. (back)