Here are some tips on how to make your child’s 4 and under soccer experience better for everyone:

• Realize that your 3 or 4 year old isn’t going to be good at soccer. If he/she can even just kick the ball, or even participate at all, that’s an accomplishment.
• Not all kids are happy all of the time. If your child is crying, don’t drag them out onto the field and hold them there. Just let them sit it out while things calm down.
• Cleats. Really? What do you think they are going to accomplish? Will cleats make your kid kick the ball towards the opposing teams net instead of his own? Will cleats improve his hand-eye coordination so that he actually makes contact with the ball for every attempt? I don’t think so. Your kid runs around on your lawn all the time and has no problem with it, why would a soccer field be any different? All they are going to do is give puncture wounds to other kids.
• Shin guards. Congratulations at being able to get those on without a lot of screaming and yelling. It’s too bad they aren’t actually going to help much as the shins are the last place that will get hurt. Most of the owies that I’ve seen are from 2 kids running head-on into each other at full speed. That is usually head-to-head contact. The second one is when a kid falls over on the field and gets trampled on by 3 or 4 other kids (some who wear cleats).
• Even though they tell you that parents are allowed on the field at any time, don’t do the drills for your kid, let him do them, that’s the only way he’ll learn.
• All kids are going to get hurt at some point during the season, some of the collisions might actually be quite funny. Try not to let the kids see you laughing or else the other kids will start imitating. We don’t want them to qualify for the Italian team just yet.
• When it comes to snack time, don’t be too picky about what the treats are. Let your kid have the sugary stuff, they will burn off the calories.
• If you see a kid that’s acting hyper, it’s probably because they are excited about being at soccer. They do not have a food allergy that is only diagnosable by a chiropractor pushing down on his arm while reading out things like “Yellow #8″. Yes, I did roll my eyes, but at least I restrained myself from making quacking noises.
• You may have to bring a younger sibling to the practise, however, please keep the toddlers off the field. It may be cute when a 16 month old tries to chase the ball, but it isn’t cute when they get trampled by a bunch of kids wearing cleats.
• Realize that your 3 or 4 year old isn’t going to be good at soccer. Look at what the other kids are doing, they aren’t going well either. In fact, it can be quite funny. Enjoy yourself and your kid will too.

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The building at 355 Queen St. in Fredericton recently got a substantial facelift. It’s a wooden-framed building whose before picture shows a worn-out pressed tin facade.

In the after shot, you’ll see they replaced the tin with stucco. As you can see, they didn’t try to make it a “fake heritage” building, instead, they opted for a clean and uncluttered look. I find that it works really well.

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A brief summary

Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside recently declared war on ties. It all started on Twitter with this post:

Then a few more posts he takes it up a few notches:

Then he changes his picture (to be fair, I was the one who provided him with the picture)

Council July 13th

On July 13th, Mayor Woodside had his first council session with his new no-tie policy:

Yep, he wore the tie. Looks like his war on ties is more bark than bite.  Which is too bad as I spent some time to come up with the list below:

Top 5 new uses for Brad Woodside’s old ties

1. As the rags in the molotov cocktails used to burn down the train station
2. As instant leashes to give out to dogs on the walking trails (much like they provide the bags for the stoop & scoop)
3. Stuff them under the cracks in doors to make the city’s old buildings LEED compliant
4. Weave them into a quilt that can go on display in the council chambers
5. Use them to keep the doors shut on Fredericton Transit’s Mulroney-era crapboxes

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It launched Jul 14^th 2009, but so far has only shown the outside of the transit garage. It is apparently on fleet number 8073, but is probably not on a fixed route.

You can see it by clicking http://www.fredericton.ca/en/TransitWebcam.asp You’ll then need to find the red bus icon and click on it.

Here’s a screenshot in case it doesn’t work for you:

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The rezoning for the move to 150 Woodside Lane was passed, there were a few speeches, Jordan Graham gave an excellent one. Most of the councilors who voted “yes” didn’t actually think that it was a good place for the bus terminal, but that it wasn’t the job of council to tell a business where they should go.

This doesn’t mean that the debate is over, the move to Woodside Lane is not final.  Acadian Lines can still choose to go wherever and whenever it wants to.  The overall message from Council was that they were still interested in keeping the terminal downtown.

One thing that really disappointed me was how the opposition conducted themselves. They were continually interrupting speeches and yelling during the actual reading of the by-law. This behaviour was immature and would only be appropriate at a wrestling match. (To be fair, yelling at wrestlers doesn’t work either as the results of those matches are also predetermined). In fact, they may have doomed their cause as many people who are against the move will not want to be associated with that crowd. Hopefully the organizers of the protest will release a statement distancing themselves from “those people”.

For more on this subject, go see: Summary of Fredericton’s Acadian Lines Bus Station Controversy

**UPDATE** Acadian Lines has decided not to move to Woodside Ln, instead they are moving to Hubbard Rd.

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This building is just run down. It has been renovated many times, badly. They can’t even be bothered to paint the siding, which has been mismatched since the ice storm of 1998. If you look in the windows of the upper floors, you can see that some of them have been boarded up from the inside. There are even remnants of the old King of Donair sign that hasn’t been properly removed. I think this is a perfect example of how Fredericton’s unsightly property by-laws don’t actually work.

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Saw this link today:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/07/09/cellphones-cars.html?ref=rss

At first glance, it would be another law to supposedly keep us safe from bad drivers. As stated many times before on this blog (see below), Fredericton drivers are terrible. I see no enforcement of existing laws other than speeding. Things like obstructing traffic, not knowing the rules of the road and crosswalk violations are overlooked. Now we’d just have another traffic law that won’t be enforced.

For reference:

• Driver’s Handbook: Fredericton Edition
• Facebook group
• The worst traffic engineering failure in Fredericton

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This is an update to this older post: Is the Fredericton Airport (YFC) safe?

On Tuesday July 7th, CBC Fredericton’s Terry Seguin interviewed the principal of the Moncton Flight College and was able to answer 3 of my 4 questions.  I’ll summarize the answers below:

• This occurred on June 2nd. Why was there no media coverage of this incident? It was serious enough to warrant a TSB (Transportation Safety Board) investigation. The media did not cover it because they didn’t know about it. They got scooped.
• The control tower is actually in Moncton. With this amount of air traffic, why isn’t there one here? Is there anyone at all in the Fredericton tower? There is someone there, but they don’t do a whole lot. According to the airport management, the airport will soon have a full service control tower.
• Why were the students in the airspace that belonged to the Air Canada plane? Shouldn’t they have been told to move? Isn’t negotiating air space with air traffic controllers a vital skill that every commercial pilot needs to know about? At airports that don’t have control towers, airspace isn’t reserved. Aircraft in the area are informed of incoming traffic and the other pilots then have some sort of system they use to stay away. At a non-busy airport, this is usually a non-issue as there is so little air traffic. Now that YFC has the flight training school and all it’s air traffic, it’s obvious that this is a genuine safety concern. I would expect a statement from NAV Canada (the crown-corp resposnsible for air traffic control) that would say that the conversion to a control tower was planned long before the incident on June 2nd.

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It’s been a while since I last posted about Fredericton Transit, but I have noticed that a few things have changed, while others haven’t. I’ll tally up a score to see how they’re doing.

New destination signs

They have replaced all their old fabric scroll destination signs with LED signs. These are great as you can now see which bus it is from 2 blocks away. I even saw a bus with the route number on the back of the bus. They have even replaced the signs on the Mulroney era clunkers (I suspect the sign would be worth more than the bus on those).

The new signs may also be compatible with their GPS and route management system which could change the signs automatically at the end of the route. Some systems have a sign inside the bus that displays the address of the next stop. For accessibility purposes, they can also announce the stops with a robotic voice. No idea if Fredericton Transit is getting either of those. 1 bonus point for improving the passenger experience.

Off-peak price reduction

It has been announced that a pilot project will see the bus fare reduced during non-peak times to 50 cents. This pilot will run until October. I could comment on this, but it has already been said much more eloquently at Wreckage Found Floating. The bus is still free on Sundays

Scorecard on other promised and expected changes

I’ve taken a few key points out of the report and some other places that are key to building a better transit service. These changes will either improve the overall system or increase passenger comfort so which will increase ridership. I’ve assigned a point value to each.

Wi-fi

No update on this. Last word was that it’s still in trial phase. It’s too bad they don’t put a sticker on the door to identify which ones have the wi-fi so passengers can test them. 0/1 points.

Webcam

Whenever I walk by a bus, I look to see if I can see the camera. I have yet to see it. I also don’t see it on the city’s web page despite the fact that it has been promised to be there ages ago. I suspect it doesn’t actually exist.  I am only counting this one because they promised it, not that it is actually all that useful. 0/1 points.

Geolocation

Still no sign of it. 0/1 points.

Rebranding

No sign of this either. 0/1 points.

Service Advertising

There has been no new advertising, I suspect they are holding off until the rebranding has been finished. 0/1 points.

Route simplification

Maybe September? The new electronic destination signs will make this easy. 0/1 points.

Old on-board ads

Still there (Obsolete and incorrect “Ambulance is now free” ads specifically) 0/1 points.

Sunday Service

There has been no discussion of this at all. 0/2 points.

North side route

There has been no discussion of this at all. 0/3 points.

Improved evening service

There has been no discussion of this at all. 0/2 points.

Accessible route

The consultant’s report suggested that they designate some routes as being accessible as they now have a significant amount of their fleet that are of the low floor variety. I would assume that they would make the run that goes to the hospital be the one that’s designated as accessible. This will reduce strain on the dial-a-bus service that is subject to many complaints of unavailability. This may be announced for the usual route adjustments in September. 0/2 points.

Score

With little in the way of communication coming from Fredericton Transit, we can’t actually tell what may be going on behind the scenes. I’ll re-visit this scorecard once they announce the route changes for September.

Total: 1/16 = 6% = F

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A Google alert found this incident involving a Fredericton-bound Air Canada Jazz jet and several Moncton Flight College training aircraft.

http://avherald.com/h?article=41b9f166&opt=0

Essentially, there was an airspace clearance issue. The Air Canada plane had clearance to land, but the on-board radar noticed that there were 5 planes “in the way”. There was probably no risk of a collision, but the incident does raise some questions:

• This occurred on June 2nd. Why was there no media coverage of this incident? It was serious enough to warrant a TSB (Transportation Safety Board) investigation.
• The control tower is actually in Moncton. With this amount of air traffic, why isn’t there one here? Is there anyone at all in the Fredericton tower?
• Why were the students in the airspace that belonged to the Air Canada plane? Shouldn’t they have been told to move? Isn’t negotiating air space with air traffic controllers a vital skill that every commercial pilot needs to know about?
• Do the smaller AC Jazz aircraft have collision avoidance systems? What about the Premier’s plane?

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