Citizens are currently being asked to join an effort to reduce pollution over a period of three days. They will be encouraged to walk, cycle or use other than a combustible engine to get to where they are going. Is combustible the right term or am I giving my vastly superior and condescending correspondents another switch to flail me. Why can't we just have a civil conversation for a change?
The building on Wellington Street is under construction. There's no going back now.
Land on the other hand, is not under production.I don't understand why the in-filling going on in the town in the last three or four years has escaped your attention.
Yes,it's a good thing for the environment that people take the train to work. It's also very expensive.
That's a good reason to think of other ways to get them to the station.
I don't even need to talk about the impact of cars pouring in to the station to sit idle in free space for ten hours a day, five days a week. The station is in the centre of our small down-town The effect on traffic at the worst time of the day will be seen soon enough.
My point will prove itself.
It would be nice to think surrounding streets will be free of parked cars. I don't think that's going to happen. I've been at a couple of stations with parking lots when the commuters come off the trains at the end of their day in the city. There's a mindless madness in their eyes. They have to get to their cars first so they don't have to wait fifteen minutes in line to get out of the parking lot.It's a collective frenzy.
I think we should be looking for ways to encourage people to leave their cars at home.
Would it not make more sense to provide free bus transportation to the station.
It's a serious bone of contention with taxpayers to see York Region Transit buses trundling around the streets empty for great parts of the day. How much more sensible would it be to have those buses on the street during morning and evening rush hours when they could be filled with commuters who don't have to pay an extra fare.
How many years of free transit would $27million have covered.
Picture the station platform; on one side the train pulls in; on the other rows of empty buses waiting to scoop up the weary travellers and carry them off home.
Why is that not feasible?
And why do you think you can come into my space and speak to me in that disrespectful tone. My children were never allowed to speak to me like that and I'll be damned if I let it happen here either.
A feisty argument about something that matters is one thing. Demeaning,insulting language just doesn't cut it.
So cut it.
Just as a point, it takes more energy to make a car that it will ever use in its engine in its lifetime, especially if it is used to drive a few kilometers a day back and forth to be left at the train station in the early morning and then left to sit until the evening.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, unless business can be intensified in our part of York Region, people from Aurora will continue to commute to distant jobs.
No one will hop on a bike for a long ride to work and few will bike to the train station through difficult morning traffic for an early-morning ride to the city.
I can't blame them. I don't have to commute on a regular basis, but when I do have to get somewhere, I look to the car in the drive unless the place I'm going is served by VIVA or GO trains.
The public transit companies have tried to integrate their fares so that using two or more kinds of public transit makes sense for regular commuters.
I think it is time for those of us who are "irregular" commuters to ask for help to get to our destinations.
Speaking of disrespectful, I'm starting to feel like I'm a second-class citizen in this town because I'm a commuter!
ReplyDeleteI have lived in Aurora for 7 years, and love to call it home. Is it my fault that my employment is in Toronto? Give me another opportunity here, I'll gladly take it!
Anonymous 4:13, I commuted via GO bus and train and VIVA for 7+ years. I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteStill, you have to look at the facts of commuting. They are two-fold. First, commuters use a lot of energy even on public transit, and the cost of providing all transit is a taxed cost through many levels of government. Gas taxes are huge, but they are not always applied specifically to the costs of accomdating commuting.
Second, under the current system of property taxes, a town like Aurora is expected to allow land that would normally be slated for business to be used for a provincial facility that doesn't pay taxes.
In general, business taxes are higher than residential property taxes. Higher taxes mean more money for services in the town.
So, provision of both public transit and a parking facility is costly in terms of tax dollars.
On the other hand... and it's a big hand... towns like Aurora have developed partly because of the transit system. Residential taxes are being paid because people can live here and go there.
The question is: does having the transit system cost us more or less than not having it?
I see some costs that are social as well as economic when I look at commuting. I, personally, am a much better citizen now that my time is mostly devoted to activities in Aurora. Good citizens have their eyes on many different goals, though, and they each have to find their own way.
However, with a town of 48,000 people served by two newspapers, a municipal website, and two local political blogs (as well as other blogs that address provincial and federal politics), they can't say they don't have a way of voicing an opinion.