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.

Red areas are to be modified

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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