Another Reason to DISLIKE London Transit

Mediation efforts between London Transit and bus drivers have failed to achieve an agreement resulting in the union representing drivers and other workers calling for a strike effective Monday, Nov. 16. Currently, drivers are refusing voluntary overtime, resulting in delays and reduced service on key routes at peak times, including those servicing The University of Western Ontario. The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 741 represents about 450 workers, of which more than 300 are drivers. There has not been a bus strike in London since 1980.

In a Nov. 5 statement, London Transit indicated:
“Until November 16, 2009, the Commission will continue in its efforts to provide a safe, secure and reasonably reliable service, given the level of service withdrawal by ATU Local 741. This will mean reduced service levels and customers should expect; buses to be more crowded, service delays and extended travel time, particularly in peak periods.”

From the LTC Website:

Last Reviewed/Updated 4:09 PM Friday, November 6, 2009

Notwithstanding mediation efforts, the ATU Local 741 and the London Transit Commission were unable to come to a Memorandum of Agreement.

ATU Local 741 has advised that it will completely withdraw service effective at the start of service on Monday, November 16, 2009.

The Commission had tabled an offer that it believes to be fair and responsible, particularly in light of the current economy.  The Union did not alter its last position at mediation.  The Commission remains committed to exploring options within the framework of the offer that has been tabled.  At this time, no further talks are scheduled.

Until November 16, 2009, the Commission will continue in its efforts to provide a safe, secure and reasonably reliable service, given the level of service withdrawal by ATU Local 741.  This will mean reduced service levels and customers should expect; buses to be more crowded, service delays and extended travel time, particularly in peak periods.

The Commission does not currently have any plans to lock-out its employees.  Any decision to lock-out employees would become necessary only when the withdrawal of services by ATU Local 741 compromises our ability to provide a safe, secure and reasonably reliable service given the circumstances.

In the event of a strike or lock-out, monthly and semester pass holders should rest assured that the appropriate arrangements will be made in terms of offering a refund/credit.  Further details will be provided once service has been restored.

We thank you for your continued patience and respectfully request that passengers refrain from directing any frustration towards our Operators.

Source(s): Western News & London Transit Commission

GO Bus off to a GO-od Start

During last Saturday’s launch, 210 people stepped aboard the green and white GO buses, with roughly 30 people on each of the seven trips. One GO bus can take as many as 57 passengers, which potentially can take 50 cars off Highway 401 to the GTA.

On weekdays, regular trips will run eastbound and westbound, serving the University of Waterloo, Wilfrid Laurier University, Kitchener Bus Terminal, Cambridge Smart Centre (The GO bus stops at the iXpress bus stops across from The Keg Restaurant in Cambridge SmartCentre, off Pinebush Road.), Aberfoyle GO park-and-ride lot, Milton park-and-ride lot at Hwy. 401 and RR 25, and Mississauga Square One GO bus terminal.

Additional trips during rush hour will offer connecting service at Milton GO Station to GO Train trips to and from Union Station.

The new service will run on weekends and holidays as well, with trips serving the Milton park-and-ride lot and Square One (not Milton GO Station).

A ride from Cambridge to Milton is $8.60, and $11.15 to Mississauga’s Square One. Tickets are available from the bus drivers, at GO transit stations, at the GRT Kitchener bus terminal and at the University of Waterloo’s student life centre. A Cambridge ticket sales location has yet to be announced.

For more information visit the GO Transit website.

Source: CambridgeTimes.ca & GOTransit.com

Peaksaver Neighbourhood Challenge

Wednesday, October 9th, 2009: (From left to right) Hydro presidents Rene Gatien, Waterloo North Hydro Inc., Art Stokman, Guelph Hydro Electric Systems Inc., John Grotheer, Cambridge and North Dumfries Hydro Inc. and Jerry Van Ooteghem, Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro Inc. plant the first tree of the peaksaver Neighbourhood Challenge at Radcliffe Park in Kitchener. 30 more trees are to be planted in Kitchener, 13 in Waterloo and 9 in both Cambridge and Guelph in the coming weeks!

More than 770 area residents enrolled in the peaksaver program during the challenge. As a result, 70 trees will be planted in 25 communities around Waterloo Region and the City of Guelph on behalf of the four local hydro distribution companies, who issued a challenge to local residents to reduce their energy demand this past summer.

The peaksaver Neighbourhood Challenge began on July 15. It encouraged local residents to install a free peaksaver thermostat that cycles down a home’s central air conditioning for short periods during times of peak energy demand. For every 10 installations that occurred within a ward, the peaksaver Neighbourhood Challenge committed to planting a tree.

As well, all residents who enrolled were entered into a draw for a $500 gift card to a local bike shop on behalf of their hydro distribution company.

Residents can still register for the peaksaver program by contacting their local hydro distribution company.

Source(s): CambridgeTimes.ca & PeaksaverNeighbourhoodChallenge

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Olympic Torch will be coming to Cambridge

On Sunday, December 27th, 2009, the City of Cambridge will welcome the Olympic Torch to the city.

The City of Cambridge will be among the prominent Canadian locations on the Olympic Torch Relay route. Residents anxious to catch the Olympic spirit will have a chance to see the Olympic Flame in person on December 27th, 2009 as it passes through our city and makes its way towards the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the citizens of Cambridge and the surrounding communities to witness this ceremonial wonder as it makes its way through our city to the winter games in Vancouver,” says Cambridge Mayor Doug Craig. “We are very proud that the torch will leave its legacy here in Cambridge.”

Residents interested in applying for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to carry the Olympic Flame can apply at iCoke.ca or rbc.com/carrythetorch. Coca-Cola and RBC, the relay’s presenting partners have the exclusive rights for the public to enter the Olympic Torchbearer program and are looking for Canadian applicants who commit to live healthier or are inspired to create a stronger country by volunteering or making sustainable choices.

Visit the Olympic Torch webpage on the City of Cambridge website for more information.

Source: Cambridge.ca

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Queen Street Traffic Study

Queen Street Traffic Study Limits

Queen Street businesses will get the traffic study they want, but they’ll have to put up with confusing parking rules until it’s complete in January. On Monday, Coun. Rick Cowsill called for a traffic and safety review of Queen Street, between Cooper Street and Guelph Avenue. He said business owners are complaining to him after parking was banned from the north side of the street over the summer. It’s created “some major problems” along the narrow section of Queen Street in the heart of the one-time village, he said. “It seems that speeding has increased and a lot of people are driving to the core area, can’t find a parking spot and are taking off.”

Why would you ever remove on-street parking? Isn’t that one of the first things they teach in streetscaping and urban design courses?

Source: TheRecord.com

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New Tunnel in Cambridge

Well for turtles and snakes at least…

As part of the $4-million rebuilding and resurfacing of George Street and Blair Road this summer, an extra $2,200 culvert was installed just west of the Cambridge city limits. It opened for use by reptiles and amphibians a few weeks ago.

John Lee, project manager, and Chris Gosselin. manager of environmental planning for the region, (Left to Right) pose next to a tunnel under Blair Road, created to allow small mammals and reptiles to move across the road without being endangered by traffic.

For about 10 metres on either side of the corrugated pipe is a wall of concrete retaining wall blocks, piled as much as one metre high to funnel animals toward a safe crossing. The money for the 18-metre long, 40-centimetre diameter steel culvert came from a $300,000 “environmental stewardship fund” (*Warning: pdf format*) created last year by regional council. It’s the first money spent from it.

There’s already an eco-tunnel under Can-Amera Parkway, near Townline Road, at the order of the Ministry of Natural Resources. It gives access across that four-lane road between areas of the protected Portuguese Swamp. The bridge carrying Westmount Road over Laurel Creek and a bridge along Laurelwood Drive in Waterloo both have wildlife crossing features.

Source: TheRecord.ca

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Rural Lands to be SAVED!

Waterloo Region is tightening land-use controls to limit urban sprawl.

The affected lands, to the west, north and south of local cities, are already barred from development by current regulations. The new proposal would add more protection by designating the lands as “protected countryside” in the regional official plan. “There’s a strong will to protect those lands,” Regional Chair Ken Seiling said.

Council says the countryside restriction will help protect groundwater recharge, preserve farmland, protect environmental areas, and restrain urban sprawl. It’s part of a larger plan to direct suburban growth east of Kitchener, and put 40 per cent of future homes into existing neighbourhoods.

Environmentalist David Wellhauser is upset that politicians voted against extending the countryside designation to 1,327 vacant hectares in south-west Kitchener. Farmers and developers own the lands, near Fischer-Hallman and New Dundee roads.

Public open houses launch this week to explain the change to affected landowners.

Source: TheRecord.com

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Waterloo Region is a Leader in Roundabouts

We’re leading the way as modern roundabouts sprout across Ontario.

The Bridgeport roundabout opens this fall at Bridge and Lancaster streets in Kitchener. Cambridge has a new roundabout at Pinebush Road and Thompson Drive.

Planners are expanding traffic circles onto local streets. Examples include a mini-roundabout at Margaret Avenue and Union Street in Waterloo, a roundabout to improve circulation at the Conestoga Mall in Waterloo, and a small circle opening this fall on West River Road in Cambridge.

Before 2009 ends, there will be 13 high-volume roundabouts on local commuter roads, plus other circles on quieter streets. More roundabouts are planned.

Source: TheRecord.com

Q & A: Roundabouts in the Region

Here’s a good little interview between local resident Lorraine Green of Kitchener and Steve van De Keere, head of transportation expansion for Region of Waterloo.

Green:

Our roundabouts are too small and have too tight a turning radius. Even in Italy with its small Fiats, I didn’t find them so tight. It means a tendency to overcorrect when coming out of them.

Van De Keere:

Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Research shows that larger roundabouts with “relaxed” geometry tend to experience more injury crashes, primarily because they do not adequately control the speeds of entering vehicles. The region is reviewing the exit geometry for future roundabouts, to make it easier for motorists to exit properly, and to assist snow plow operators.

Green:

The centre circle has been planted in most roundabouts, obscuring the view of what’s coming at you as you want to enter. I’ve been nearly hit twice already as I tried to enter thinking nothing was coming, and then had a car appear from nowhere around the circle.

Van De Keere:

Tree and shrub plantings are necessary to make the central island more visible to drivers, especially at night. This increased visibility helps reduce occurrences where unfamiliar drivers are surprised by the roundabout, and fail to slow adequately. Height restrictions on plantings ensure there’s enough visibility for a driver to make the decision to go or not. Too much visibility can encourage aggressive driving.

Green:

Curbs protrude as you come out of a roundabout, making people tend to swerve into the adjoining lane. The ability to come out of the roundabout should be more gradual, allowing one to exit more smoothly without a drastic slowdown.

Van De Keere:

The region is reviewing the exit geometry for future roundabouts, to make the curvature more gradual.

Green:

The necessity to merge after exiting is too short a distance and too abrupt. As more traffic uses roads like Ira Needles Boulevard, there will be crashes as more people try to merge or wander across a lane.

Van De Keere:

Merging on the exit at a roundabout is actually much easier than on the exit from a traffic signal. But some local drivers are apprehensive. At a roundabout, this merge occurs at a much lower speed. Also, vehicles entering side-by-side at a roundabout tend to stagger as they go through. This creates natural gaps, to allow merges to occur easily. To address local apprehension, the region is reviewing the merge length on the exits for future roundabouts.

Source: TheRecord.com
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Ottawa Street South – Worst Street in the Region

The intersection of Ottawa Street and Homer Watson Boulevard in Kitchener.

Busy Ottawa Street South in Kitchener has been named the most dangerous place to drive — again. Ottawa Street at Homer Watson Boulevard is once again the worst intersection for collisions. It has held this spot for three years. Ottawa Street South appears three times among the 10 most dangerous roads. Other collision-prone intersections are Ottawa at Westmount Road and Ottawa at Fischer-Hallman Road.

Another astonishing fact:

Seven of the 10 most dangerous roads are in Cambridge. They include sections of Franklin Boulevard, Hespeler Road, Eagle Street North, Pinebush Road and King Street.

Huh? Maybe the installation of roundabouts along Franklin Boulevard would be a good thing

Source: TheRecord.com

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Getting Down and Dirty

Regional councillors discussed the good, bad and ugly at a meeting Tuesday.

They winced when told that communities up and down the Grand River spilled raw or partly-treated sewage into the watershed 136 times between 2002 and 2006. Regional facilities were responsible for 42 of these polluting events.

To improve sewage treatment, council plans to spend $29 million on a centrifuge to spin wet sludge around and around in Kitchener. This will help dry it out.

Sewage sludge, called cake, is more compact when dry, and easier to store. Fewer trucks will be needed to haul it to fields where it’s spread as fertilizer. It will also be easier to dump in the local landfill, which the region may start doing.

“It’s not a very sexy project, but a very necessary project,” said Coun. Jim Wideman, of Kitchener.

A similar centrifuge dries sludge in the Galt area of Cambridge. There’s one planned in Waterloo as well.

Why not install a biomass boiler instead of trucking this perfectly good biomass to a landfill?

Source: TheRecord.com

Say “CHEESE!” part deux

Kaufman Lofts and UW School of Pharmacy located in background.

Welcome to Kaufman Lofts

Think we can catch red light runners?

Google Street View launched in Kitchener and Waterloo on Wednesday.

And true to its word, Google has blurred faces (so your smile won’t be seen) and licence plates on the images of every house and condo and lamp post in greater Toronto, Hamilton and the Kitchener area in the “live” images.

Read previous post here.

Source: TheRecord.com

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HydroCity Lecture

November 5, 2009 – 6:30pm
Main Lecture Theatre, UW Architecture Building
Cambridge

The HydroCity Lecture, a Symposium on Hydrology and Urbanism, is presented in conjunction with a Symposium to be held at the University of Toronto on November 6, 2009.

Alan Berger is Associate Professor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he teaches courses in the department of urban studies and planning. He founded and directs P-REX, The Project for Reclamation Excellence at MIT, a trans-disciplinary research effort focusing on the design and reuse of waste landscapes worldwide. By using low-angle aerial photography, maps, and other graphic evidence, Berger visually reveals evidence and trends of landscape waste throughout the world—from public health hazards such as abandoned mine pits, mountains of slag, and pools of cyanide, to vacant land, landfills, military installations, and places associated with high and low-density urbanization. How these sites are cleansed, valued and considered for adaptive reuse at local and regional scales is Berger’s main area of interest. His work emphasizes the link between our consumption of natural resources, and the waste and destruction of landscape, to help us better understand how to proceed with redesigning our wasteful places for future productive uses and more sustainable outcomes. He has coined the term “Systemic Design” to describe the productive integration of disvalued landscapes into our urbanized territories and regional ecologies. Berger currently serves as a consultant to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Brownfield and Superfund site revitalization in the American landscape.

Berger’s award winning books include Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America, and Reclaiming the American West (PAPress 2006, 2002 respectively) His other books include Designing the Reclaimed Landscape, published (Taylor & Francis 2008) and Nansha Coastal City: Landscape and Urbanism in the Pearl River Delta (Harvard Design School 2006).

Prior to coming to MIT he was Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Harvard-GSD, 2002-2008. He has been Distinguished Visiting Professor of Landscape Urbanism at Oslo School of Architecture in Norway, and at Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark. He was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Sustainability at University of Michigan’s Taubman School of Architecture, and Visiting Professor for Landscape Urbanism at Katholike University in Leuven-Belgium. He is a Prince Charitable Trusts Fellow of The American Academy in Rome.