Why, why, why??? (Calgary road rant)

[Super-Rye]

Originally Posted by Claeren

McIver would be a HORRIBLE mayor.

It would be like Al Duerr but worse. Everyone would think things are fine for 10 years because he would proclaim taxes are not going up, and then all of the sudden the next boom hits and (surprise surprise) we are already 10 years behind on getting things done!

Then we can blame that next mayor when he has to play catch-up for 10 more years by spending all the money that McIver SHOULD have been spending.

Not surrprised that you would be a McIver fan though given your stated political leanings....





Claeren.

While McIver would proably be a pretty bad mayor for the city Bronco has been absolutely horrible. He wastes money re-doing projects that had been done recently (He re-paves paigen then a year later rips it all up to re-do the turn off when and extetion of the merge lane would have done the trick) and now they are ripping up the road that litterally just finished to dig up trolly tracks? Should have been done the first time and it is a waste of tax payer money...like that million dollar painting in the water treatment plant.

Bronco has been one of the worst mayors in recent memory. He is unorganized and he has been spending more money than we need to spend. He took the cap off the city limit and let his corperate sponsers throw up shoddy slap stick housing all over the south. The man should be run out of the city.

[DESS]

Originally Posted by First Lady

Not sure if this directed at me or someone else. Regardless of who you had in mind, do you think everyone has to be an expert at something before you can have an opinion? If that is the case there must be 100's of hockey coasches posting on this forum....

Beyond that, if one never poses questions how do we learn and expand our knowledge of things that we have limited knowledge on?

OP means original poster so yeah that comment was directed at you.

[Super-Rye]

Originally Posted by fotze

I'm not a bronco fan either but I would hope he isn't involved in the day to day decisions of how to pave certain roads, if he is that much of a micromanager then that would be really disturbing.

I doubt he is but a mayor you think he would not let tax payer money go to waste like that. Seriously, if they were going to dig up the road they should have done it all the first time and they didn't. At the end of the day he is the one not doing anything to protect our money, he's just letting his people piss it down the drain.

[First Lady]

Originally Posted by DESS

OP means original poster so yeah that comment was directed at you.

I thought it could also mean other person or other poster.

Thanks for clarifying that.

[ryangb]

Originally Posted by Super-Rye

I doubt he is but a mayor you think he would not let tax payer money go to waste like that. Seriously, if they were going to dig up the road they should have done it all the first time and they didn't. At the end of the day he is the one not doing anything to protect our money, he's just letting his people piss it down the drain.

They had to widen it first. They needed the two new lanes for traffic, while they dug up the four existing lanes that had track under them. If they dug up the tracks at the beginning, they would have had to close 16th Ave completely.

[Ducay]

Originally Posted by Super-Rye

While McIver would proably be a pretty bad mayor for the city Bronco has been absolutely horrible. He wastes money re-doing projects that had been done recently (He re-paves paigen then a year later rips it all up to re-do the turn off when and extetion of the merge lane would have done the trick) and now they are ripping up the road that litterally just finished to dig up trolly tracks? Should have been done the first time and it is a waste of tax payer money...like that million dollar painting in the water treatment plant.

Bronco has been one of the worst mayors in recent memory. He is unorganized and he has been spending more money than we need to spend. He took the cap off the city limit and let his corperate sponsers throw up shoddy slap stick housing all over the south. The man should be run out of the city.

And you sir, are why I hate municipal politics. Its a lose-lose situation.

And yes, Bronco himself decided to pave paigan and then rip it up. Genius. Don't get me started on your spelling.

[frege64]

Originally Posted by HotHotHeat

Calgary is used in urban planning text books / other learning tools as a perfect example of how not to build a city.

Urban legend, and a ridiculous one at that. Compare Calgary- on any dimension- to any other post WWII city in North America with respect to planning, diversity, transit, anything that makes urbanity "urban," and then ask what cities should count as planning disasters.

Calgary has the sixth-highest rate of transit usage in North America, and that rate is fully ten times-- that's 1000%- higher than Dallas' (16% here, 1.6% there), a city to which Calgary is too often compared. I can think of too many examples to counter stereotypes about Calgary, but there's one. And as to sprawl- Calgary is merely average on that measure (taking residential density as its proxy) in North America. But it's miraculous that Calgary sprawls as little as it does. Calgary could have been Phoenix. It's not Phoenix; it's not even Minneapolis.

[Super-Rye]

Originally Posted by Ducay

And you sir, are why I hate municipal politics. Its a lose-lose situation.

And yes, Bronco himself decided to pave paigan and then rip it up. Genius. Don't get me started on your spelling.

I never said he himself decided to do it all. However sh*t rolls up hill and at the moment he is at the top of the hill.

And don't get me started on your sentence fragment...

[V]

Originally Posted by First Lady

Not sure if this directed at me or someone else. Regardless of who you had in mind, do you think everyone has to be an expert at something before you can have an opinion? If that is the case there must be 100's of hockey coasches posting on this forum....

Beyond that, if one never poses questions how do we learn and expand our knowledge of things that we have limited knowledge on?

I'm sorry, but there's a significant difference between posing an opinion, and going off on your little rant there. The problem with your post is not that you have an opinion, we all do, but the fact that you seem to be completely outraged over something you don't even know a little bit about. I don't know, maybe try asking a question, as opposed to condemning the actions of something completely out of your realm.

And this isn't only directed towards you, you were just the easiest and most handy example to draw from. You are no different than the million people in this city that love to bitch and whine and complain out of ignorance.

[Jedi Ninja]

When discussing this on CBC radio yesterday, they seemed to imply that digging up the lines was not part of the original plan, but that they were forced to do it because of issues related to settlement or water infiltration and heaving over the winter. That was the impression I got from what was said, anyway.

Rather than accusing everyone of spreading misinformation, perhaps someone could post a link to actual news articles. Couldn't find anything myself except for this gloss piece:

http://www.calgaryherald.com/Travel/...083/story.html

[Bob]

Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja

OK, I'm calling you on this one... proof? Other than that fluff-piece called "Radiant City."

Yeah, I've heard of this as well, but never seen any proof. Memorial @ Deerfoot used as an example of terrible interchange design? The Calf-robe Bridge used an example of how and where not to build a bridge (sloped into the sun, immediately downstream of a sewage treatment plant pumping millions of liters of warm water into the river every day)?

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by V

And this isn't only directed towards you, you were just the easiest and most handy example to draw from. You are no different than the million people in this city that love to bitch and whine and complain out of ignorance.

Okay, now we have some evidence that it is true that they are digging up the road to get the trolley tracks out.

Am I now allowed to say that this is really stupid, or would you still consider that whining and complaining out of ignorance?

[Shazam]

Why pay for one when you can get three at triple the price?

[Ozy_Flame]

For those posters who loathe municipal politics and think it's a bunch of jackholes working there, please keep in mind that those making decisions at the City are not some public-sector raised heathens blinded by tax revenues. Most, if not all, came from the private sector, and have at least an understanding of management in general.

I understand the grief with particular people, but someone has to run the City as best as they can, and trying to run a place like Calgary given it's abnormal economic growth is a tough challenge. And when you use a democratic process, you can't expect everyone on Council or any other group to agree with each other. Everyone comes from different opinions and backgrounds, and frankly, good things emerge when ideas challenge each other, even if some people would love to see consensus.

I bet there's just as many people in the big corporate offices downtown who could barely do a better job.

[ken0042]

I was under the impression that these tracks have been paved over time and time again without issue, so there was no forseeable need to rip them up this time. However this last batch of construction has caused some additional settlement, and the tracks are finally causing grief.

So basically every time there has been contruction on 16th ave over the last 30 years, the city decided to save money by not ripping up the tracks. Now it looks like it will be a problem, so they are fixing it.

People complain about spending, so rather than doubling the cost of every construction project they do it cheaply, with the hopes that only 10% will need to be re-done. It's a lot cheaper to re-do 10% of the jobs than all of them, right?

[V]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

Okay, now we have some evidence that it is true that they are digging up the road to get the trolley tracks out.

Am I now allowed to say that this is really stupid, or would you still consider that whining and complaining out of ignorance?

Well of course it's out of ignorance. If you aren't willing to consider the risk, time and cost management these project managers need to consider, you're only going to have the slightest of pictures. So complain away, but at the end of the day you don't know what you're talking about. It's not that complicated.

Someone (I don't recall who was the project manager for this project) decided that the benefits of paving over the trolley tracks were worth the risk. That's the way risk works, sometimes an incident occurs and you hope the project manager has a built in risk mitigation plan so that the least amount of money is spent to take care of the problem. To be completely honest, the project managers with Transportation Infrastructure are actually quite good at what they do.

So complain away, if you will, but don't pretend that you're not ignorant of the facts.

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by V

Well of course it's out of ignorance. If you aren't willing to consider the risk, time and cost management these project managers need to consider, you're only going to have the slightest of pictures. So complain away, but at the end of the day you don't know what you're talking about. It's not that complicated.

Someone (I don't recall who was the project manager for this project) decided that the benefits of paving over the trolley tracks were worth the risk. That's the way risk works, sometimes an incident occurs and you hope the project manager has a built in risk mitigation plan so that the least amount of money is spent to take care of the problem. To be completely honest, the project managers with Transportation Infrastructure are actually quite good at what they do.

So complain away, if you will, but don't pretend that you're not ignorant of the facts.

I'm not ignorant of the fact that they've paved a road and now torn it up to remove the tracks.

Do you think this is a success? A wise decision? A good way to spend money?

I don't.

Now it's true, I'm not a personal friend of the goddamn project manager, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake.

[ken0042]

Rouge, also see my post. Like V and I both said, every project comes with some risk/reward scenarios. This was one that in hindsight would have been better to take care of the risk. However if every project did that, every project would cost more, and fewer would get done.

[Shazam]

Originally Posted by V

Well of course it's out of ignorance. If you aren't willing to consider the risk, time and cost management these project managers need to consider, you're only going to have the slightest of pictures. So complain away, but at the end of the day you don't know what you're talking about. It's not that complicated.

Oh man, you mean PMs have to think? My goodness.

[V]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

I'm not ignorant of the fact that they've paved a road and now torn it up to remove the tracks.

Do you think this is a success? A wise decision? A good way to spend money?

I don't.

Now it's true, I'm not a personal friend of the goddamn project manager, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake.

Congratulations. You are able to use the very slim amount of information in front of your nose, and turn it into an indictment on the city. Well done. Again, you're entitled to your opinion, as ignorant as it is.

I'm not even sure it was a mistake. Based on my knowledge of the situation, which isn't as encompassing on this project as it is on some others, this was an acceptable risk to take. But that's because I can see this as more than one isolated incident. If the city is not willing to take risks comparable to this on all other projects you would be screaming because we would be 10 years behind on projects. This is not an exaggeration.

Was this a mistake? I'm not convinced that it was. But grab your pitchforks and lynch away based upon your minimal information.