On Blue 22

My comment on this article:

Arguments against Blue 22 tend to be specious, and those made in this article [are] no exception.

- “only 17 percent of travellers departing from Pearson originate in the downtown area” — I’m not sure where you got those numbers, so I can’t look it up myself, but I’ll bet that downtown is by far the largest single origin/destination for Pearson passengers. It’s also home to an increasing number of people, myself included.

- “SNC-Lavalin intended to charge $20 for a one-way ticket, which would price many out of the market” — First, an air ticket is a premium luxury good, usually purchased by the (relatively) affluent; it makes no sense to give flyers a government subsidy on their transit trip to the airport, and I’m happy to make them pay. Second, if you hang around the airport a lot, you will observe that families (who would not benefit from Blue 22) make up a small minority of flyers. Third, I’m sure the executives of SNC-Lavalin are smart enough to lower the price if they can’t fill trains at $20, or offer family passes if need be.

- “There are several options that should be studied instead of Blue 22″ — Have you ever used Chicago’s blue line? Or London’s Picadilly line? In each case it takes about an hour to get downtown (not including wait times), which is wearying after a long flight, and frustrating after a short one; this is not a compelling option for business travelers, who will simply take taxi. Further, light rail is already going to the airport, via the Eglinton TransitCity line.

- “The advantages of [a rail shuttle] solution include providing a station at Woodbine Racetrack where VIA trains from London, Kitchener and Guelph could gain direct access to the airport” — If your objective is to provide connections with VIA and GO, why not do that at Union? It’s already the largest transportation hub in the region, and it makes no sense to duplicate that function at the airport — especially since the arguments in favor of London, Kitchener, and Guelph ignore points east and south of Toronto, such as Oshawa, Kingston, Hamilton, and the Niagara region.

- Finally, and most importantly, there’s no reason why your suggested routes — which, as you point out, complement an express route rather than replace it — can’t also be built. You talk of “putting the cart before the horse”, whereas it is more like sticking your thumb in the eye of the cart vendor, because you don’t have a horse yet. Given the progress of transit construction in this city, the alternatives are decades away at best, while Blue 22 is ready to go right now and has the backing of government. Rail to the airport is a major missing piece of transportation infrastructure, and it’s time to take the solution that is available. One can turn your argument on its head: if regional, non-express services are still needed, they can be built later.

The weather on Mars

At the site of the Phoenix lander, anyway: Sunny, with a high of -26 C.

[CSA via Environment Canada Weather Office]

Memo to arXiv cs.IT users

Hey guys. I realize that you're all brilliant and have so much to share, but do you think you could possibly condense your ideas a bit? I read interesting abstracts, and download the paper to find -- every damn time -- a 40-page horse pill that I don't have time to read, and that feels like a waste to print if I'm just going to skim it.

The next station is St. George. Repent your sins.

There are a few transit routes I can take to work -- all are about equally fast -- but one of them has me connect from the Bloor-Danforth line to the Yonge-University line at St. George station. In the midst of an unusual number of transit backups and delays (though happily none in my direction), I got off at the B-D platform to make the switch ... only to find that it was impossible to make it up the stairs to my next train. There were so many people waiting on the Y-U platform that the crowd was backing up down the stairs and onto the B-D platform.

It took me a moment to realize that, to get to any exit, I would also have to go through the Y-U platform. So in an emergency, everyone on the B-D platform would have been stuck. I guess we could have made our way down the tunnel, but that doesn't sound like a key to a long and prosperous life -- especially if the problem (like a fire) were in the tunnel in the first place.

Which reminds me of another St. George experience. A few months ago, I was making the same connection -- this time I got up to the Y-U platform all right, but there was a stalled train on the southbound track and a building crowd, as well as an acrid smell of smoke. I actually saw a firefighter make his way down the platform and head into the tunnel ahead of the stalled train, and noticed the smoke getting worse ... but, happily, just then my northbound train arrived and I left the problem behind (I don't know what happened, but it wasn't on the news so it must have worked out).

The CDS and RMC

Lt.-Gen. Walter Natynczyk, the government's pick as the next CDS, received his bachelor's degree from CMR in St-Jean. That makes him the fourth CDS in a row who did not graduate from the Royal Military College, Kingston.

The last RMC grad to get the top job was Jean Boyle, who resigned amid scandal 12 years ago.

The new guy is also the first graduate from any Canadian military college to get the top job since Boyle: Baril did his degree at Ottawa, Henault went to Manitoba, and Hillier went to MUN.

A stirring "dunt-da-DUNT-da-dunt"

What's that you may ask? The mating song of the sea elephant? A sofa falling down the stairs?

Neither. It's the Hockey Night in Canada theme song, according to the Globe and Mail.

Good versus best

I'm creating a presentation and ended up looking for some particular clip art. After a brief look around the web, I came across Open Clip Art, which features a huge library of free clip art under a permissive license.

The problem? The clip art is in scalable vector graphics (SVG) format, which can't be used with the most popular free office suite in the world, OpenOffice.org.

Does it matter if you're creating a collection of clip art in the "best" format, if nobody can use it (or at least not without a significant hassle)?