Width of Scott and Savoline (south of Derry) is now normal, finally! Later this year we should have areas north of Derry and Dymott painted as well. Can’t wait!
Scott and Savoline were painted by Mattamy. All future collector roads will be painted by developers, as per subdivision agreements.
You may have seen temporary markings on Scott Blvd south of Derry already. The developer is getting ready to install all required pavement markings on *Scott Blvd and Savolinve Blvd*, south of Derry Road within the next week (weather permitting).
To facilitate the installation of the required pavement marking, the Engineering Services Department requests that you refrain from parking on Scott and Savoline (south of Derry) during the day and overnight for the next week.
Residents north of Derry have to wait until later this season because streets there still need the top asphalt.
Actually not Science-Fiction, because it’s opening tomorrow (University of Chicago, not Milton)! Personally I think a better approach is to speed up transferring all books to e-Book, so you can get most material right at home. I predict we are less than 10 years away from ePaper being mass produced. What happened to the delivery of music (from CDs to digital) 10 years ago and the delivery of movies (started 5 years ago) is about to happen to books.
I am not ready to get rid of paper books yet (like most people), but I do use our eBook checkout system to borrow eBooks from the Milton Library (right out of the comfort of my home). The problem is, their collection is pretty pathetic right now. Expand that collection and with falling prices of eInk and improving technology, we are just a short few years away from having a complete library collection in our pockets (companies like Amazon, Google etc are rumoured to be getting into the business of lending books).
| Jan | Feb | March | |
| 2010 | 12,214 | 9,427 | 10,472 |
| 2011 | 18,094 | 18,288 | 21,976 |
| % increase | 48% | 94% | 110% |
Basically ridership increased by 82% in Q1 of 2011 (compared to Q1 of 2010). That’s with the same transit net budget as we had in 2010. Since ridership is up higher than expected, net cost in 2011 may actually be less then the net cost in 2010. So we may spend less money and transport substantially more people. Win.
Also, only a third took transit for GO (so that gets rid of the “people only take transit for GO”). A full third of the trips were non-peak mid-day trips. Q1 2011 numbers back up the transit FAQ here.
It’s really four months (December, January, February, March), but I don’t know the word for the 4-month period, so we’ll call it a quarter (does anyone else know what it’s called?)
I’ll do a quarterly report every 3 months from now on. Here’s the first one.
Some of you know that I lived in Washington, DC for a couple of years and still visit it every 3 months. During my last visit I took a day off, rented a bicycle and biked all over the city. Washington, DC only has about 600,000 people (yes, smaller than Mississauga) but it has a lot of character. There are a few things we can learn from DC :-
It’s true, Japan is a developed country. However, a disaster of this magnitude would be devastating to any country, developed or otherwise.
My father just told me my cousins in Japan (they’re half-Japanese) lost their grandmother. Tokyo Electric has lost 27% of it’s electricity generation capacity, leaving it 10 million kW short of demand, forcing almost 2 million households to be without electricity. Death toll may hit 10,000. Over a million households have been without water.
I urge people to donate. Canadian Red Cross is taking donations online. Even a little bit helps because it all adds up.
It’s about time! This traffic calming report will be presented to the Community Services Standing Committee this Monday. Please have a look and let me know what you think.
Two quick points: Implementation requires 51% of residents on a street to agree and it wont start until light timing of major arterial roads are aligned.
There have been some letters in the Champion about transit. I figured I’d clarify some misconceptions. You can read it here. One point I want to mention here is that some people have claimed that 2011 cost of transit rose by 30%. That’s incorrect. Budget increase for net cost is actually 3%, and that’s mainly because a new route in 2010 started in March whereas in 2011 it’ll run for all 12 months. So far we’re noticing a higher ridership than expected (probably because of gas prices), so the net cost may actually be lower.
In addition, I found that people are often confused by how municipal taxes work (they are different from Provincial / Federal taxes). You can read explanation for that here.
I hope you’ll find these helpful.
Everything you ever wanted to know about budget and taxes (and so much more), right here.
This was one of my major pet peeves. After all, how do citizens keep their politicians honest if they can’t even see them doing their jobs?
Well, it was fixed with the January budget. You will be able to see all Council and Standing Committee meetings streamed live right here: http://www.milton.ca/execserv/video2011/live_video.php. These will be archived as well.
I really wanted this to pass unanimously but hey, at least it passed. I have a feeling councillors will no longer “forget” how they voted on different issues :).
Councillor Barkley has a good write-up on her website about snow control policies in Milton. Instead of repeating what she summarized, I’ll just point you to her website.
It’s here: http://www.sharonbarkley.ca/SnowClearing.html.
Do you value realism and common sense, or imagination and innovation?
Common sense tells us that the Earth is flat, imagination gives us the correct answer. Einstein worked out that the speed of light doesn’t change, instead time speeds up or slows down. That’s anything but common sense, even though it has been proven repeatedly since then.
Why is it that when it comes to public policy, we chug imagination out the window and rely exclusively on ‘what has worked before’, even if it didn’t work all that well?
