Edmonton City Council: they really can't get anything right

Take a look at how the City of Edmonton is contemplating bringing in a new transit system:

The City of Edmonton appears ready to jump into new technology for its transit system.

It deals with how you pay to ride the bus or LRT.

City council will be asked later this year to approve spending big bucks on a smart card system.

It's a lot of money up front -- more than $22 million -- to pay for the technology. But, a report going to council's transportation and public works committee next week justifies the investment.

Long-term costs will be down and revenue up, generating nearly $7 million a year or more. But, it will take almost a decade or more for the pay off.

Costs will be down administratively. For instance, they will not have to print tickets, and fare evasion will, in theory, be reduced as well.

On top of that, revenue should be up because the smart card system can change fares in off-peak hours. It can also create a rider loyalty program, which should increase the number of passengers taking the bus or train.

Wait wait, hold on here. The system costs $22 million to implement. It will generate $7 million a year. So how can it take [almost] ten years to pay off? 22/7 is not 10 [depending where you go it is, in fact, pi. -ed]

Meanwhile the city says that the smart card system can make fares higher during peak hours (to discourage ridership) and also have a loyalty program (to increase ridership). Is there a particular reason Edmonton City Council feels the need to do both simultaneously?


Bonus content: This isn't the first rip on Edmonton City Council I've delivered today: I've delivered the following on Twitter: Big surprise, #yegcc learns they were lied to...

Also from #yeg idiocy file, #yegcc shocked to learn

Do You Know Your Enemy?

Now that my computer is back up and running, I can finally post-produce and show the video project that I started last summer, long before the Tea Party protests made it to full swing and the comparisons became even more apt:

Say it with me now...

The poison filling the theatre is revealed in real-world records. Arctic ice sheets are collapsing and their collapse accelerating. Rivers on the Prairies, in Asia and Latin America, have dwindled along with mountain glaciers. The most violent rainstorms, persistent droughts and powerful storms are all increasing. Plants and animals are migrating away from the equator and up to higher elevations. Diseases are appearing in new places. Established seasons are becoming irregular. Extreme weather has blighted food harvests from salmon to wheat.

"One more time...weather isn't climate."

So none of those examples mean anything.

Shaken and Stirred, Java style

Finally, after much searching, I've found a guide to the amazing boat chase that starts off The World is Not Enough, the best of the modern Bond era:

CANARY WHARF AND ISLE OF DOGS
MOVIE MAP
Continue east along the dockside and then turn right following the signs to South Quay DLR station. When you get to the station, cross over the road to reach Millwall Inner Dock. This is the scene of much of the amazing boat chase in the opening sequence of the James Bond film The World is Not Enough (1999). James Bond (Pierce Brosnan), in his jet-boat, is chasing the Cigar Girl, an assassin played by Maria Grazia Cucinotta, in her Sunseeker powerboat.

Walking about 200m along the eastern dock-side you reach the old London Arena site, and a floating Chinese restaurant. The dock was the scene for the stunt where Bond jumps over a stationary boat, corkscrews through the air and knocks the machine gun off the back of the Cigar Girl’s boat.

A little further along, you will reach the Glengall lifting bridge. This bridge was used for another clever stunt – the Cigar Girl notices that the bridge is closing and speeds underneath, so as Bond reaches it he is too late to get under. He spots a lever marked “dive” in his boat and pulls it, the boat disappears under the bridge and pops back to the surface on the other side. In typical Bond fashion he takes time to straighten his tie while underwater.

For continuity geeks, the route of the boat chase is an odd one – it starts at Vauxhall Cross, the HQ of the real MI5, and within a minute reaches Tower Bridge (in reality this would take at least 5 minutes even for a jet boat). Then they turn south into Java Wharf, which is a dead end off the Thames in Southwark just east of Tower Bridge.

Luckily, by the magic of film, this gets them here to Millwall Inner dock on the Isle of Dogs – in reality another dead end. There is then a gas bottle explosion which is actually in the Blackwall Basin just east of Canary Wharf.

His route blocked by the explosion, Bond appears to be back on the River Thames west of Canary Wharf pier – his on-board computer is offering him two alternative routes using either the North or South Docks to speed through the Isle of Dogs. In fact, Bond's route takes him through Wapping (a mile west), Billingsgate Market and through
the Royals. He pops up onto land and drives through the market using his boat’s jet engines for power. Then he appears to pop out of a restaurant window at Trinity Buoy Wharf and back into the Thames in time to catch the Cigar Girl and force her boat
aground at the Dome.

And now, of course, the chase itself:


And just for fun, the ski chase too:

Post #1600, baby!

Wow, can you believe it? Third Edge of the Sword is now one-thousand-and-six-hundred posts long. This overuse-of-hyphen style of blogposting has now been going on for 1,600 entries. How does this compare with some other milestones?

• Width of a human hair: 75 μm
• Number of towns in Luxembourg with a population over 1,000: 79
• Number of countries in the United Nations: 192
• Noah's age when he built the ark: 480
• Number of blogposts at Third Edge of the Sword: 1,600
• Number of Tim Hortons in Canada: 2,971
• Longest term for a U.S. President: 4,441 days
• Age of the universe: 14,000,000,000 years.
• Projected size of President Monkey's 2010 deficit: $1,170,000,000,000 (US dollars)

Not bad, not bad...

Two exciting stories over the weekend

Greetings all, sit and listen to thrilling accounts of neat events you may have missed over the weekend:

First off, thousands of Edmonton Oiler fans packed Rexall Place to forget about the team's recent woes in the regular season to catch the annual Skills Competition. I didn't go, but I heard it was pretty entertaining. There was a bit of an odd moment though, and I'm seeing it didn't get well reported in the media, but everybody I know was talking about it: an old man (probably suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's) actually managed to accidentally wander onto the ice during the Fastest Skate competition. It took the Oilers players sixteen minutes to catch him.

Secondly, and this is admittedly a long way from Edmonton, but there was a bit of a tense moment in a Chicago jury selection process when a woman tried to appeal to be removed from jury duty for reasons of bias. "Your Honor," she told the [American spelling] judge, "I'm prejudiced against the defendant: I can't consider myself a neutral open-minded arbiter of the case! As soon as I looked at him and saw that evil sneer and those beady eyes, I just knew he had to be guilty." The judge however, would have none of it: "sit down ma'am, you aren't going to be excused: that's the President."

Responsibility

Found in an old article about Silvio Berlusconi:

All eyes are on Gianfranco Fini, the suave former neo-Fascist and co-founder of the ruling People of Liberty party who, as Speaker of the Lower House, has quietly carved out a reputation for responsible and sober leadership.

Suave neo-fascists are the responsible ones? How does Italy define irresponsible?

Oh yeah, I forgot.

For @dominianpundit

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