Mr. Dion either is totally ignorant of the world, or just made a huge mistake and should admit he didn't think when he spoke. He probably is not the warmonger he sounded like, but then me being a person who judges based on what people say and their actions I will wait for him to fix this. His handlers today are claiming he made a mistake, whoops well not a mistake he didn't say what all those reporters heard him say ... well at least reporters don't know how to listen to what they heard ..... well you get the idea and this is not 'fixing it'. There is more than enough belligerency in this world without Dion advocating starting another war. The National Post was kind enough to print my thoughts on the matter today, unedited other than to fix a typo and i thought their editorial on the same subject was bang on.
December 30th I had been pointing out how silly the Era Banner is in claiming buses cut down on pollution, of course this is not a popular notion (sometimes the truth hurts a perfectly good idea so many people hold so dear) so it went unpublished; as the concept alwasy has in the past too.
Here is the text of my email, sent under the title "The Car is on It's Way Out?":
You quote Mr. Keil as saying the "the car, as a form of conveyance, just isn't feasible anymore" and "the car is on it's way out".
Perhaps he has been standing too close to those bus diesel fumes? New cars are limited by regulation to extremely low levels of pollution but of course buses remain largely exempt from emissions regulation. While the typical car now emits less than 1% of the pollution it did in the 1960s the buses are still chronic heavy polluters; typically even when accounting for the (utopian) 40:1 passenger ratio. Maybe by doubling the cost and going to hybrid buses they will start to catch up to cars, but given a ticket now pays for only a third of the cost in York Region would it not be logical to have less buses not more? Other than some routes in peak times many buses running in Newmarket have a passenger load that is more suitable to a (low pollution) propane powered taxi than one of these environmentally unfriendly dinosaurs.
Buses are inefficient of people's time as well as of scarce resources, they typically don't go where you want them too and by their route nature they never can. The bygone days Mr. Keil longs for where people work next to where they live are gone. Despite the best efforts of government to stop the introduction of cars they lost that battle years ago, and people will stay with their cars since that is the logical way for most people most of the time to travel.
Perhaps he has been standing too close to those bus diesel fumes? New cars are limited by regulation to extremely low levels of pollution but of course buses remain largely exempt from emissions regulation. While the typical car now emits less than 1% of the pollution it did in the 1960s the buses are still chronic heavy polluters; typically even when accounting for the (utopian) 40:1 passenger ratio. Maybe by doubling the cost and going to hybrid buses they will start to catch up to cars, but given a ticket now pays for only a third of the cost in York Region would it not be logical to have less buses not more? Other than some routes in peak times many buses running in Newmarket have a passenger load that is more suitable to a (low pollution) propane powered taxi than one of these environmentally unfriendly dinosaurs.
Buses are inefficient of people's time as well as of scarce resources, they typically don't go where you want them too and by their route nature they never can. The bygone days Mr. Keil longs for where people work next to where they live are gone. Despite the best efforts of government to stop the introduction of cars they lost that battle years ago, and people will stay with their cars since that is the logical way for most people most of the time to travel.
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