Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda
doesn't matter if you like it or not, having no available cabs on weekends is pretty much guaranteed to lead to an increase in drunk driving. if you have someone visiting the city, just moved here, or just plain forgot about the abysmal taxi service, do you want to take the chance on them making the right decision after they're 6 pints deep and wanting to head home? it's a situation that can be avoided entirely if the city just gets their #### together and solves this issue. i'm honestly surprised that groups like MADD haven't been pressuring Calgary on this
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Bigtime's and MADD's logic are a lot like expecting the problems of HIV infection, STI rates, and teen pregnancy to be solved by draconian laws based on abstenence. Ultimately drunk driving usually isn't a crime that occurs intentionally but rather a by-product of a lack of transportation options, and poor decision making on the margin. The people who actually plan to drink and drive can't be stopped by zero tolerance laws as they are consciously choosing to live outside of the law. Transportation is part of the solution every bit as much as legislation. Ultimately if the city has excellent non-car transportation, naturally drunk driving deaths will go down in addition to many other positive externalities. I don't understand why we have to exclusively focus on punishing people who drink responsibly in hopes of nipping the odd person at the border of drinking responsibly.
Moving back to city issues. Why TF is it that difficult to run C-Trains 24 hours or at the very least until 4 or 5 AM on New Year's Eve/Day? For one day it shouldn't be that much of a budget breaker to pay for a few hours of Overtime/Stat pay to do this. We already run the trains 24/7 for Stampede, why not do this on New Year's as well? This has got to be the low hanging fruit of cost/road casualties saved.