To be fair, it isn’t really an engineering issue; it’s a simple case of plans that look good on paper, but may not work out so well once implemented.

The plan is to turn a single oversized lot and split it up into seven. That, in its self isn’t a bad thing; the problem is where the driveways will go.

You’ll have two going onto the Lincoln Rd. and five going onto Adams.

The worst will be the two driveways on the Lincoln Rd. Due to the small size of the lots, drivers would have to either back into, or out of those driveways. If you’ve ever been on the Lincoln Rd, you’ll know that backing out onto it isn’t the smartest of ideas.  A quick survey using Google Maps found that out of 69 driveways on that stretch of Lincoln Rd (from the Experimental Farm to the Vanier Industrial Dr intersection), 63 had an area on the property for cars to turn around. Only 6, or less than 9% did not have a turn-around. 63 out of 69 (91%) is a higher ratio than most dentists give to a brand of toothpaste. Canada Post also recently removed the roadside mailboxes with a community box as they considered stopping along the Lincoln Rd to be too dangerous.

Adams St has a history of problems, at the other end of it, there is a park with insufficient parking, which means it gets plugged up with cars parked on the side of the road. Many of these are minivans and SUVs that are parked a few feet away from the curb (I hate to use stereotypes, but this one is actually true). There’s also a badly built traffic-calming circle in the middle that only slows traffic going away from the Lincoln Rd. The intersection at the Lincoln Rd end has a steep hill, blind curve and a tall hedge that blocks your view. There’s also a blind hill and a blind curve that you have to deal with while pulling out into the Lincoln Rd.  Adding five driveways would just complicate this.  If one of those five houses decides to throw a party, there won’t be enough driveway space to accommodate all the guests.  This means they’ll have to park on the street, which if they park on both sides will plug it up just like at the other end. Since there’s a hedge blocking your view as you pull in from the Lincoln Rd, you’ll get quite a surprise to find only enough room for a single lane and a bus coming the other way.

View Larger Map- You can’t see what’s behind that hedge

Hopefully the developers will change their plans and allow for shared driveways or a space to turn around. They may have to reduce the number of lots, but they’ll be able to sell the ones on the Lincoln Rd for more as not having to back out of the driveway will make them more desirable.

The real solution is to block off Adams St. and build another exit by expropriating some of the experimental farm and making Lonewater go down to Lincoln.  There, you won’t have the blind hill, curve or hedge. This plan probably wouldn’t be popular with the people who live on Lonewater though.

View Adams Fix in a larger map

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UPDATE: Mar 8 2010 -
According to this article, the zoning request was denied and a failure was prevented. It is assumed that the developer will try again with a different (and presumably better) site plan.

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For some reason, ADI Group insists that buses must stop directly in front of Fredericton’s new convention centre. Do people actually take the bus to a convention? I don’t really know the answer to that, however, as Queen St. is one way, the doors of any bus would open on the wrong side. What’s the proposed solution? Make Queen St go two way for a block.

Needless to say, I have a few problems with this:

• It isn’t just the case of painting a few lines on the road, the Queen/Regent and Queen/St. John intersections will have to be redesigned to allow for the wide right turns that a bus will make.
• You know that people won’t pay attention and will keep going past St. John and go the wrong way all the way until University.
• Would people really take a bus to get there? There is a perfectly good hotel across the street, and they are also planning to build a new one next door to the convention centre.
• If on the odd chance they do take the bus, does it really have to go right to the front door? Couldn’t it just pull up beside the Playhouse and have the conventioneers walk to the doors? It’s only 300 feet.

That’s not really that far to walk, even for a small city.  For an even shorter walk, the bus could stop across the street and they could add a crosswalk so people can easily get across the street.

The cost to modify Queen St. probably won’t be small, and could be better spent on other traffic projects. Hopefully they don’t go through with this.

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In case you aren’t on Twitter, Rick Miles  has pre-announced that Research in Motion will be adding 50 new jobs to its Fredericton operation. This will be in addition to the unknown number of employees it got when it purchased Chalk Media.

There is good reason to be excited as these will be high-paying product development jobs.

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Here we go again. The City of Fredericton announces something and puts absolutely no information about it on their web site. This time, it’s a plan to redevelop the run-down exhibition grounds. The only information about the project is a newspaper article with a vague description and a low resolution image. How can they expect any decent comments with that?

I’d also like to note this article which outlines the need for high density urban environments. Hopefully they took that into consideration when coming up with this plan. We’ll never know as they don’t have any details available on-line.

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The debate about NBPower is a fast-moving one. In today’s age, information travels quickly. I’ll review how well each of the parties did.

The CBC – A+ Again, the CBC does a bang-up job. Not only have they been on top of the deal, they’re also using social media in the two way format that it was designed for. It’s good to see a local news source well ahead of the curve.

Twitter user @JoeFitzIII – A+ From what I can tell, Joe FitzPatrick is a Fredericton based lawyer. It almost looks like he is planning to enter politics. Of all the knowledgeable people in the group, he is the only one that is actually responding and interacting to concerns and questions (excluding the CBC). If he is going into politics, he’s on the right track.

The Liberals – F – They use Twitter and Facebook, but they fail at actually using it to engage. Many people have posted valid questions on Twitter, but have received nothing but silence from the Liberals. In fact, rahter than use the established hashtag of #nbpower4sale, they went ahead and started using #lowerrates. That actually leads to less discussion.

The Conservatives – F – They seem to be very disorganized.  Shortly after the deal was announced, they made some noise on Twitter, but it was closer to the quips yelled on the Legislature floor rather than anything of any actual substance. They had a great opportunity to engage and come up with a strong opposition front to the deal, but they missed the boat. They didn’t even respond or attempt to defend this disastrous video of their leader refusing to answer a question.

“NO to Sale of NB Power” Facebook group – B – Doing a great job, but they seem to be having some problems separating the loons from the valid concerns. Despite that, they’re actually having productive discussions and getting things organized to protest the sale.

For A Better Tomorrow, Sell NB Power – F – Another example of failing to engage. The Facebook group has been renamed several times, gone to invite-only and then gone back to being public. This makes it hard for anyone to join. Their loon-control policy is to delete everything that opposes the deal. This also removed a lot of legitimate debate. Most of the activity has been from the admins. Many of the legitimate complaints aren’t actually getting addressed, they are just being ignored.

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I’m not going to go into much detail as that’s already been covered before. There are a few points that I feel are important and are getting drowned out in the noise:

• There really isn’t much to gain in the long term. The value of the assets is about the same as the amount of the debt. Sure it erases the debt, but you lose assets that have potential to generate revenue.
• The 5 year rate freeze won’t be free. The loss of revenue for the frozen rates will have to be made up somehow. Presumably it will be made up from the revenues generated from exporting power to the US over NB’s transmission lines.
• Outside of the rate freeze, there appears to be little long-term benefit to NB. NB Power’s debt does not affect the borrowing capabilities or the interest rate for any other debt.
• In the long term, there will be no choice but to close down the thermal plants. Building replacement power plants will be expensive and difficult as they will have to be non-carbon plants (like nuclear). The easiest option is to purchase power from Quebec. In fact, they are currently supplying the power to replace the power that would have been generated by Pt. Lepreau.

NB Power’s reputation has been tainted recently due to some high-profile blunders. Rather than solving the real problem of incompetent executives that got their jobs through patronage appointments, Shawn Graham has opted to walk away from it.

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You keep hearing of more “progressive” cities getting hybrid transit buses. Maybe Fredericton should get some too? Let’s first run some numbers:

Cost of a bus: $400,000 for a regular one, $600,000 for a hybrid.

As with hybrid cars, you need to change the batteries every 6 years. As Fredericton keeps its buses until they are about 24 years old, that means 3 battery replacements (at 6, 12 and 18 years) 3x$66,000 = 200,000

That essentially makes it double the cost over the 24 year lifespan of the bus.  Now, don’t forget that there would be some fuel savings. Unfortunately, under real-world testing, a hybrid bus only got 15% more mileage. (3.86 vs 4.58 mpg).

With a limited budget, that means Fredericton Transit would be able to buy fewer buses if they switched to Hybrids. To compensate, they would need to keep older buses for longer, which won’t be as fuel efficient as a newer conventional bus. They also wouldn”t be able to expand service, which would mean more cars on the road.

The truth of the matter is that hybrid transit buses are just for greenwashing and serve no actual purpose other than scoring political points.

Reference: http://www.fta.dot.gov/documents/WVU_FTA_LCC_Final_Report_07-23-2007.pdf

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Recently there has been a lot of talk about broadcast reform in Canada.  Here’s another argument as to why we need legislation to be more consumer-friendly:

A Personal Video Recorder (PVR, also known as a DVR) can be rented from $20-25/month, depending on your provider (Rogers $24.95, BellTV $20).  In the US, they cost $6 (Comcast, DirectTV).  Why so different? In the US, the FCC has consumer-friendly regulations in place that bring the cost of the PVR down to what it’s actually worth. In Canada, TV providers use the lack of regulation to force customers to pay exorbitant PVR rental fees.

Firewire ports are currently disabled on Rogers and Shaw cable boxes. Rogers may currently have it enabled on some boxes in Ontario only, it was enabled on boxes in New Brunswick until March 2009. BellTV and Shaw Direct receivers don’t even have Firewire outputs. Firewire allows for a digital HD (or SD) signal to be sent to a 3rd party PVR. Firewire can also allow your cable box to be connected to a computer so you can burn copies of your favourite shows to DVD. This is actually legal in Canada and covered under fair use rights. In the US, providers are required by the FCC to provide Firewire outputs on their HD cable boxes.

Another dirty trick is to encrypt the digital signal on the cable lines. In the US, they are required to keep the local channels unencrypted. In many places, all basic cable channels are unencrypted. This removes the need to rent a cable box completely; you can just plug your TV into the cable outlet and receive HD channels (as long as your TV has a QAM tuner). Here, we don’t even get the HD preview channel without a cable box.

The cable companies are using their near-monopoly position to shut out any competition for their PVRs. Unfortunately, government regulation is there to protect Canadian companies from foreign competition, not actually help keep Canadian companies from ripping off their customers. The only alternative is an antenna, but only if you’re lucky enough to be in an area that is required to have digital over-the-air service. Maybe it’s time to dissolve the CRTC.

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Q:What’s worse than not having information posted on a website?
A:Having it up on the site, but not linking to it so it can’t be found.

Last week, I posted an article about how the City of Fredericton doesn’t post a lot of information on its website. Imagine my surprise when I Googled something completely unrelated and find this:

http://www.fredericton.ca/en/transportation/resources/2009_ConstructionMap.pdf

It’s exactly what’s needed, but it isn’t linked from anywhere on the main www.fredericton.ca site. The file properties show that it was created on Sept 9th, which was well before my blog post criticizing them for not having it.

It’s really sad that they have this information compiled and ready to go, but they are unwilling to release it. It’s time to tear down the wall between City Hall and the people. It’s 2009, there is no excuse for this.

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The Dillon Consulting Transit Report suggested a new garage for Fredericton Transit as the current one isn’t big enough and is no longer suitable. Last week, city council agreed to spend $5.2 million on a new one.

Some might think that $5.2 million is a lot, but compare it to Saint John who recently spent $23.5 million. Saint John’s will be twice the size so divide by 2 and compare to $11.75 million. That’s only 44% of the cost compared to what they built in Saint John. By building it in an industrial area, a lot of money can be saved by going cheap on the appearance.

I was disappointed with this line though: “It’s also proposing to redirect $423,000 from an anticipated bus purchase in 2010 to the construction of the transit garage.” That means the poor riders of Fredericton Transit will have to endure riding on a rickety old Mulroney era piece of junk that won’t be replaced for another year.

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