Paul Langan

Everyone knows you should wait 24 hours before voicing your opinion if you are upset. In this case I waited 9 months to comment on perhaps the biggest municipal and regional council self indulgent taxpayer spending in recent memory. I am talking about the decision by 17 local councillors and mayors to attend a conference in Whistler, BC and spend over $50,000. of taxpayer money in June 2009.

The Record newspaper uncovered this spending spree. An editorial on the subject further exposed the callous disregard that some local politicians have for taxpayers money.

I just want to focus in on the City of Cambridge council where an unbelievable 5 of 7 municipal politicians went to Whistler. (Councillor Gary Price, Karl Kiefer, Linda Whetham, Pam Wolf and Mayor Doug Craig) That is for a city of around 100,000 people. Contrast that to Hamilton with a population of around 500,000, where only 4 of 16 councillors attended the same conference.

For Keifer and Price, their spending of taxpayers money is well documented. Go to http://www.hespelernews.com and click on Gary and Karl’s Fiasco for a quick history lesson of their over a decade at the trough.

Linda Whetham, who is running for Mayor of Cambridge, shows she knows where the trough is. Why would anyone vote for her? Most depressing for me is Pam Wolf’s attendance at Whistler. She is the newest councillor in Cambridge who many thought might make a difference. How quickly she turned out like all the rest of them.

For Mayor Craig who attended as regional representative, it would be okay if he was the only regional member of council who went but he was not. 4 other regional councillors went spending over $15,000.00 of our money.

But what can we do about this crass act by the Whister 5 in Cambridge? My suggestion is simple, they should payback the taxpayer’s money they blew. Only one member should have went. Slim chance of that happening as some of these politicians have made a career out of this type of spending. It’s no wonder nobody votes and public apathy towards politicians is at an all time high. Honestly, after living in Cambridge for over 17 years I have come to expect the worst out of our elected officials and this is just one more example to illustrate the point.

Encouraging your children to take the bus is a good initiative. In our case we are fortunate to have the bus stop right across from our Queen Street East house and the bus drops off the kids at Jacob Hespeler Secondary School. The Grand River Transit (GRT) even encourages students to take transit by giving them the Reduced Monthly Pass for $50.00 instead of the normal rate of $60. Sounds too good to be true……….your right.

GRT has misleading advertising regarding the availability of Reduced Monthly Passes for students. Right across the street from Jacob Hespeler Secondary School is the Zehrs that sells the monthly passes. Two of the last three times we have tried to buy the pass we were told they are sold out of the Reduced Monthly Passes for $50.00 and only the Regular Priced Passes were available for $60.00. Both times people selling the passes stated that there are only limited quantities of the Reduced Monthly Passes available.

So we checked out the GRT website . It does not state anything about limited quantities of reduced monthly passes. Come on GRT get your act together and print enough passes to honour your commitment to the taxpayers of this region.

I have volunteered on and off at Hespeler Minor Hockey Association for the last 15 years. I had heard about how fantastic the Valentine Dance the Hespeler Hockey Moms put on and about four years ago my wife and I started to experience the phenomenon…..

Every year the dance is sold out and simply a fantastic party time. The Beehive Room at the arena is a large sterile room but during the Valentine Dance it becomes a place to have fun and loose your mind. The age of the people attending range from in their mid 20s to mid 50s.

It starts at 8pm but nobody really comes to 9:30pm and then the insanity starts. Everyone and I mean all 450 people that come through the door are there for one reason only……. to have a good time. The DJ is incredible and the dance floor is jammed all night. It is almost like its the only night out all year for the attendees and they intend to have a no holds barred endless party.

There are also tons of door prizes and silent auction gifts, but by wife Debra and I are having so much fun I forget to bid on stuff and forget where my tickets are for the door prizes. Interestingly I do not forget where the liquor tickets are.

I do know one person to thank for putting on the dance for at least the last few years. Her name is Sony Cress and she does an amazing job of organizing the dance along with the other Hockey Moms.

My wife and I were among the first to leave. We left through the side door at about half past midnight. We had danced almost all night and were exhausted.

There was about 5 people outside the door having a cigarette. The people were friendly and smiled. As I walked by I heard one person say, “They can’t be the from Hespeler if they are leaving this early.” My wife and I laughed and went home thankful we are again part of the yearly phenomenon known as the Hespeler Minor Hockey Valentine Dance.

It happened on September 8 2007. It was a beautiful fall day. Anyone that knows me, knows I love to go for bike rides especially in Puslinch Township. So it was that Saturday in September I went for my 30km ride. I missed an event that still makes me wonder what the heck happened.

When I returned home a friend of mine, who came to visit while I was away on my ride, was real excited about what he videotaped on the other side of the Mill Pond in the Hespeler part of Cambridge Ontario. He and two young girls claimed they saw an alien. You see the park where he filmed the video is out back of our house.

Now I thought this was pretty funny, so I watched the short video clip on his camera and had to admit something was up. It was loaded on You Tube and the Hespeler News website and 2 years later over 54,000 people have viewed it and 172 people have commented on the video.

I really don’t know what to think about the whole issue as my friend has moved away and will not talk about that day. What I can say is I absolutely love the comments people have made about the video. I have burst out laughing reading them. Enjoy the video and comments it certainly makes for interesting conversation.

The rumours started back around 2001 when a senior VIA Rail manager attended a public meeting in Guelph Ontario. The meeting was to protest the elimination of the new Flexliner train. It was extremely rare for VIA Rail to even agree to show up at a public meeting. The senior manager mentioned his dream that Budd Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) would run up and down this line like they used to.

The senior manager disappeared back into the VIA Rail dark hole and his dream of RDCs running from London, Stratford, Kitchener, Guelph into Toronto went with him. Periodically over the last eight years various passenger rail fantatics, and VIA Rail insiders say it is going to happen. Just maybe this time it will happen.

What is a RDC? The Budd Company in Philadelphia, PA designed and built RDCs starting in 1949. This light-weight, air-conditioned, stainless-steel, twin engined (280 h.p) car. The four standard models available were: RDC-1 – 90 passengers, 2 toilets, RDC-2 – 71 passengers,1 toilet, 17ft. baggage section, RDC-3 – 49 passengers, 1 toilet,15ft. mail section, 17ft. baggage section, RDC-4 – 30ft. mail section and a 31ft. baggage section. They were built to an 85 ft. coupled length.

Operating costs (compared to conventional trains) are reduced due to inherent design features and use of a two man crew for single car operation.

The RDCs began service in 1953 in Canada and were built in Montreal starting in 1957. They used to run on the Canadian National North Main Line from 1953 til the federal government cuts in 1990. As well RDCs ran on the Canadian Pacific rail line from the 1950s til the 1970s through what is now Cambridge. The CP RDCs were called “Dayliners”. I have loaded a short video clip showing the Dayliner RDCs passing by the Galt CPR Station in 1956 to give you and example of what they look like. This is a three car consist, but they could run individually or linked to up to 10 other RDCs.

A Moncton NB rail firm Industrial Rail Services Inc. , which currently does work for VIA Rail, owns a larg number of RDCs and the above picture is an example of an RDC they have completely refurbished after stripping it down to the stainless steel shell. Passenger rail fans say a contract is pending with Industrial Rail to refurbish the RDCS for the NML and the Niagara Falls VIA service.

Why has it taken so long for the RDCs to return? There are the usual excuses. VIA Rail is running on tracks owned by a freight rail operator whose main business is not to promote the pasenger rail service on the line. In this case Goderich-Exeter Railway is a short line that leases tracks from CN. It is unclear why after two years, no agreement as been reached between the two parties. The federal government has made available for improvements along the line.

VIA Rails adds to the problem with no clear vision for passenger rail plan for the future. VIA keeps their plans secretive for reasons unknown. (Compare this to Amtrak in the USA, where Amtraks plans for the future and expansion are publicized and aggressively promoted).

Another excuse given for the delays is that Canadian National has found that the RDCs do not trip the signal switches along the line. This is interesting point since they ran in Ontario for decades and also still run on remote Northern Ontario lines flawlessly.

Will the RDCs be popular if they run on the line? Frequent passenger rail service to and from London into Toronto on the NML will be hughly successful if VIA Rail can solve two fundamental problems they have. 1. The cost to take a VIA Rail train is prohibitive to the average Canadian. and 2. VIA Rail historically does not know how to promote increases in rail service. They typically have an opening day ceremony and then leave it up luck for the public to find out about the new service.

The ultimate solution for the problem is for the government to buy the NML line like GO Transit did on the Toronto-Barrie rail line recently. Consider this fact. If VIA Rail and Go Transit follow through with suggested schedule improvments for the NML there will be a total of approximately 20 passenger trains going to and from Kitchener to Toronto and only 8 freight trains. The primary user, the passenger trains should own the line.

I am hopeful the problems will be solved and I will be among the first on board the RDC at the station.

Minister John Baird called it like it was when he branded Greyhound’s strategy of demanding money for continuing northern bus routes a “shake down and heavy handed.” Greyhound has long been known to put down any attempts by companies trying to provide competition to them.

In 2000, they went to the Ontario Highway Transport Board and won their case to have carpooling company Allo-Stop cease their services. In November 2006, Greyhound went again to the the OHTB and they ruled that Student Transportation of Canada (nicknamed Fed Bus) could not offer what they believed to be a charter service and reasonably priced fares for students.

Ironically Greyhound and other bus company’s route monopolies are supported and promoted in Ontario by the prehistoric Ontario Highway Transport Board Act and equally antiquated Public Vehicles Act.

The application process to the OHTB to obtain a route licence is clearly biased against having competition and for conserving route monopolies. It is ridiculous that only one bus company, Greyhound, is allowed exclusive access to Highway 401 westbound into Toronto to run commuter bus service into downtown Toronto. Why does the public not have a choice of what bus company they want to take on our public highways? Why are other bus companies not allowed to run competitively against each other?.

This bus monopoly transit nightmare reminds me all too much of the Bell Canada fiasco. For decades Bell controlled the phone industry in Ontario and no competition was allowed. Some journalists have suggested no regulation or deregulation of the passenger bus industry.That would be wrong and the public’s safety could be at risk. However it is long overdue to revise, update and renew the Ontario Highway Transport Board Act and Public Vehicles Act.

Immediate changes can be made to the criteria the Ontario Highway Transport Board uses to determine “public necessity and convenience” when issuing bus route licences.

A win recently happened when the Ontario Liberal provincial government changed the definition of carpooling in the Public Vehicles Act by passing Bill118. This was the result of the public lobbying to save PickUpPal, a ride sharing group. Their lobbying showed how outdated the current Public Vehicles Act is. Read Background Document. Thankfully the provincial Liberals ignored the Ontario Highway Transportation Board ruling and changed the legislation. Further substantial change is needed.

On January 17th, 2010, Greyhound will further reduce/eliminate services to small town Ontario, yet still maintain their monoply bus service on the HighWay#401. It is time for change. It is time Greyhound ask their multinational owner Scotland based FirstGroup for the money not the taxpayers of Canada.

It is truly unfortunate that the Record has been promoting 50 year old non-solutions of adding more buses as the answer to our very real transit and planning problems for the Region of Waterloo’s future.

It is hard to understand why improving the quality of life for residents of the Region with a modern sustainable transit plan which includes the Region’s Light Rail system is something the Record does not support.

Choosing what to report and how to report it is a powerful tool. The Record is the only region wide newspaper. The Record made a decision to report on a meeting held by pro-bus zealots on November 5th.but did not cover an October 28th well attended event featuring a movie, talk and question and answer about the history of streetcars in this area and the proposed Region of Waterloo light rail system at the Princess Cinema.

Perhaps most disturbing is the article on November 14th by Mr. Outhit titled, “Size Matters for Local Rail Transit.” That article perpetuated an outdated theme relating to the fact that the Region of Waterloo is not big enough for a light rail system . I would like to explain to the editors and Mr. Outhit that this is simply not true. This is a myth.

Here are 5 recent examples in France with towns with greatly less population than the Region of Waterloo who were putting in light rail systems. They are; Orleans (113,000 population), Mulhouse (110,359 population) ,Valenciennes (41,278 population ),Angers (151,279 population), and Le Mans (146,000). The reason for putting them in when the population is small is to develop a more environmentally sustainable people friendly communities.

The reporter conveniently ignores the facts that study after study around the world has shown that light rail is preferred mode of transit to get people out of their cars. A Steer, Davis, Greaves Study from England showed that 20% of light rail riders during the week were former car users and 50% of light rail riders on weekends were former car users.

Promoting more buses and subsequent road building will only make a bad situation worse. I expected better from our regional paper.

Welcome to my blog. I have been in cyperspace for awhile but seem to have a home now.