Roundabouts can be installed at almost any intersection, but they really shine in the following situations:

• intersections where the roads don’t all line up at 90 degree intersections
• intersections with 5 or more roads going into it
• intersections where a lot of the drivers would be making a left turn

Many opponents claim that they are less safe than traditional intersections, but that isn’t actually true.

• The average speed of a roundabout is typically 25 km/h
• You won’t get head-on or t-bone accidents
• Pedestrians are actually safer because they don’t have to worry about turning traffic and they only have to look one way before crossing
• Cyclists have the option of using the crosswalks or entering the circle as regular traffic (but without a bike lane in the circle)

The two biggest hurdles will be:

• Proper design: A badly designed roundabout will cause more accidents and drivers will fear them. An example of a badly designed roundabout is the one on Miramichi/Sobeys/Esso in Oromocto.
• Education.  The CBC interview had the lead traffic engineer stress the importance of driver education. Unfortunately, I don’t see this happening as the “powers that be” don’t seem to have a problem with a large percentage of the local population not knowing how to merge. It will be up to the other drivers to honk at the ones who are doing it wrong. The Government of PEI did quite well on driver education, including a cute little Flash animation:

Hopefully Fredericton City Council won’t resist change and we’ll get to see some roundabouts fairly soon. Hopefully the first one will go at Waterloo/Beaverbrook/Future UNB Entrance/Forest Hill/Lincoln.

Closing a university and turning it into a polytechnic: DUMB
Cancelling Early French Immersion: DUMB
Selling the power company: DUMB

Public consultation can help in some situations, but in many others, you need experts in the relevant fields. And by experts, I mean actual experts, not consulting firms that you paid to come up with a report that supports your pre-determined conclusion.

People move to the suburbs for many reasons, not because there is a 6-lane highway for 7km. They have been doing it in Saint John for over 40 years, well before they widened the Mackay to 4 lanes from 2.

Will cancelling the expansion make the water more drinkable? One could argue that the money could be used for it, but one would have to assume that the city would spend it properly. Can you really trust them to do that considering they spent $23.5 million on a transit garage? (overspending by about $13M by my calculations)

Will cancelling the expansion make the city smell better? The raw sewage will eventually stop going into the harbour, but unless they can make the benzene smell like flowers, the suburbs will still smell better.

Will cancelling the expansion make the fog go away?

Will cancelling the expansion make housing more affordable and of higher quality?

Will cancelling the expansion get a police station built in a proper location? This is a textbook example of the pot calling the kettle black. They go and criticize the provincial government for their highway project, yet they try to build a 2 story police station on a prime piece of land that’s already zoned for a 22 story building.

Saint John has a long history of poor planning decisions: the hospital and university are out in the middle of the woods, the malls are built in a flood zone, there are 4-lane roads in the middle of nowhere, they don’t know where the boundaries of their largest park actually are, etc, etc.  Instead of simply bashing suburbanites, they need to take a long hard look at their own problems and at least make it look like they are trying to fix them.

What most people don’t know is that there are 2 different types of IT companies: Product developers and contractors.

Product developers are ones that make their own product and sell it. There are many of these companies around Fredericton, most of them homegrown. A short list: Caris, Radian6, Q1 Labs, Chalk, Indosoft, Measurand, Remsoft, Virtual Expert Clinics, IVS, EDP, T4G

Contractors are ones that do work for other companies or government agencies. A short list: CGI, XWave, Accreon, PQA, Fujitsu, Unisys, Skillsoft

Most of the product development companies started in Fredericton while most of the contractor companies have head offices elsewhere. I’m not trying to say that contractor companies aren’t worth investing in, but that product development companies are better.

Let’s look at 2 relatively recent failures:

1. FatKat, a contract based animation company – They were given a lot of money, but when the contracts ran out, all economic activity stopped and the government lost their investment. No, it’s not an IT company, but there is very little difference between it and the average IT consulting company.
2. Mathis Instruments, a product development company  – They had a great product but couldn’t sell it. They went under, but their product was bought by C-Vision who continues development and is actually able to sell it. Sure, the government lost money, but C-Therm (as it’s now called) still has an office in Fredericton that employs people.

All we’ve been hearing about is how great it is that Company X is coming in and creating 200 jobs after getting lured in by the government. They get a lot of buzz because they’re big numbers, those 200 jobs come fairly quickly and look good politically. Product development jobs come more slowly and therefore don’t look good for the politicians. As any politician knows, true progress doesn’t get you in the newspapers.

If someone seriously wants to attract the good kind of IT companies, a two-pronged approach must be taken. Rather than simply spending all the effort into luring companies away from other jurisdictions, effort also needs to be spent in establishing home-grown companies. A few hints on how to do that:

• Bring back Incutech, but this time, put some effort into it. Don’t just put it in some old run-down UNB building with cheap rent; put it downtown in a nice building. It needs to be more than just office space, there needs to be assistance with things like creating business plans, marketing and other non technical aspects of running a company.
• Venture capital is what brings products to market quickly. Provide assistance to companies who are looking for VC funding. Market NB as a place for investors to invest. Yes, ACOA exists, but it is more focused on spending money than building companies.
• Tap the potential of the universities. There are many great ideas that are stuck in a lab or a student’s head. Opportunities are being lost as these ideas aren’t able to be commercialized.

Reference (in case you didn’t get it)

• 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.

On a more serious note, urban sprawl is an issue, but it doesn’t need to be as we have plenty of space downtown, we just aren’t using it very well.

Originally built as a grocery store, this eyesore has been vacant for years:

Not much you can do with a single story grocery store, but it does have a large footprint. Compare it to Frederick Square (in blue):

You could build a really nice building here (as long as you don’t mind the occasionally flooded basement). This would be a perfect spot for the rumoured courthouse.

I then imagined myself as a doctor looking to set up shop somewhere. I’m first greeted with a fairly blank page that has the YFC flight status and the weather. I’m happy to see an efficient airport with on-time flights so all the donated organs will arrive nice and fresh.

I read around the site a bit and see that it has all the artsy and cultury stuff that I need to entertain my highly educated brain. Looks like I’ll fit right in. I want to see what my peers have to say so I click on the link titled “what our doctors say” and get this:

Maybe someone should make sure they finish the web site before making the press release for it. Come on, we can do better than this.

Oh well, at least our buses have a nicer paint scheme (anything’s nicer than pink and purple wavy stripes):

Ugh....

Update: Looks like a driver’s a little lost:

Update again: Here’s one that has 3 lost drivers

The broken destination sign has been fixed, however, I saw another one on another bus that was also broken, but I didn’t think to note the fleet number so I don’t know for sure whether it’s fixed or not. From now on, I’ll be more careful about recording the fleet numbers with any maintenance issues I find.

Speaking of fleet numbers, I’ve decoded them. The first number is always 8, the next 2 are the last 2 digits of the year, and the last one is a counter for the year. SO bus 8994 is the 4th bus they bought in 1999. I’m not sure if the year is the model year of the bus, or the year they got it. Some of them have different numbers inside the bus so they may have got them used from other transit systems.

The consultant’s report that they are constantly referring to suggest that trial runs of new routes should be at least 1 year long.  They seem to be ignoring the advice they paid for with the Two Nations Crossing trial by only having it run for a few months. They shouldn’t just be cherry-picking only the options they like out of it.  They are also ignoring the pleas of the box store workers who are asking that the bus run until 10pm so they can finish their shifts and take the bus home. Hopefully they won’t give up too soon and declare the run a failure without giving it a proper trial.

Speaking of the consultant’s report, not much else has been done with it, other than asking other levels of government for more money for a new garage and sub-terminal at the Regent Mall. Where’s the extra advertising, re-branding and route number / schedule simplification?

Speaking of improvements, why aren’t they promising any with the UNB universal pass? The students are going to vote on having to pay an extra $100/year for some vague hints that the transit system will be slightly less useless in the future. For STU, they were given the details of the service improvements before they went to vote.

How long has it been since Aliant transferred their wireless division to Bell? I think it’s been a while, however, there are still Aliant Mobility ads inside the buses. I suspect that they leave them up even after the contract has expired so the ad panel doesn’t look too empty. If you want to save on your advertising budget, just run an ad for a month and Fredericton Transit will leave it up for years.

They repainted some of the buses and they no longer put “Fredericton Transit” across the doors. Now they don’t have to worry about using the right font when replacing the doors.

Why don’t they join forces with other local transit agencies and bulk purchase? Surely there’s a price break when you purchase 20 units at once? It seemed to work with road paint. They could even do something as simple as keep a centralized parts repository.