Bike lanes pay for themselves
A recent letter to the editor claims that if Langford residents elect a council like those in Victoria or Saanich, they will waste money on “progressive pet ideas” like bike lanes instead of making decisions using cost benefit analysis. In fact, the opposite is true.
Bike lanes aren’t “pet projects.” Nearly every major city in North America and Europe has built or is currently building a network of all ages and abilities bike lanes.
They are doing so, not only because they provide residents with more transportation choices, but because the cost-benefit analyses that the letter-writer favours have shown that for every dollar spent on cycling infrastructure, governments save more than one dollar in other areas (mostly from reduced health care costs thanks to fitter citizens, but also from reduced need to expand vastly more expensive road infrastructure for cars).
In other words, bike lanes more than pay for themselves.
The same cannot be said for expanding roads and bridges, which, thanks to induced demand, inevitably leads to even more traffic (and more greenhouse gases) and rarely solves the problem it was meant to solve.
Fuel taxes paid by road users cover only a small fraction of the billions of dollars wasted annually in Canada on such projects.
Rob Maxwell
Victoria
One-time grant won’t change demographics
I watch with interest as the government tries desperately to make up for 40 years of mistakes by their predecessors. To an old retired general practitioner like me, that offer looks pretty good.
When I started out in the 1970s, most new GPs had to purchase an old practice, putting them immediately in six-figure debt. Of course in those days the cost of housing was just a wee bit lower!
There are a multitude of causes of this problem, but one everyone should have seen coming: the baby boomers like me simultaneously aging and retiring from medicine. Throwing a large chunk of one-time money at it will not erase that demographic fact.
But I will be writing Health Minister Adrian Dix to ask if that grant could be retroactive to 1976.
Mike Marshall, retired MD
Nanoose Bay
More info needed on plan for new doctors
Perhaps more information about the proposed “full-time contract” to incentivize new graduates to practise medicine in B.C. could be given. It’s not only about the money; it’s about control.
Please inform us:
1. The length of the contract and its termination and/or “buyout” clause.
2. The limits on the areas and places of employment. For example: Must one work in one of the “underwhelming” and “inefficient clinics” presently under Island Health and Health Minister Adrian Dix “largesse”?
3. Why this “bountiful offering” is to be given beyond the purview of the Doctors of B.C. (formerly The B.C. Medical Association)? This “pre-Christmas package” of goodies certainly has the unmistakable odour of political expediency. Divide and conquer.
Truly another example of government interference and medical bureaucratic incompetence.
A short-term and assuredly temporary fix.
Ron Irish, retired MD
North Saanich
Look of Cadboro Bay about to be changed
Have you ever been to our delightful area of Cadboro Bay? I love it. It is a semi-rural area with green space, great schools and a small village-like atmosphere. That’s why we chose to live here.
The municipality is trying to choke down our throats huge developments with eight- to 10-storey structures. It’s better for the developers to make profits, but no plans are shown for the new schools to accommodate the enormous influx of children nor plans for urgent care centres (ones with staff) probably because there aren’t any.
What is Saanich thinking? Brings to mind the old song: “Pave paradise and put up a parking lot.”
Julia Pollard
Victoria
Lochside Trail bikes pose hazards
I am a frequent traveller on the picturesque Lochside Trail, and happily so. While encountering the very occasional horse rider on my ambles, far more numerous are the bicyclists.
All would be fine in this multi-modal world if only the latter would use their bells or simply call out “on your left” when coming up behind those of us on foot. Alas, this is not the case. In my experience, roughly one of every 20 bike riders announces themselves — ripe conditions for a calamitous collision between unsuspecting pedestrian and bicyclist.
Even more concerning in this regard are the electric bicycles whizzing down the trail at speed. I imagine being accidentally mowed down by one of these motorized vehicles would really ruin one’s day.
Hannah Wells
Cordova Bay
Treat the cause, not just symptoms
A recent letter observed that more people die in the U.S. from cold than from heat, and put forth the notion that the recent heat dome would remain a rare event hereabouts. That is hardly worth mentioning in the context of the global picture, which is how we should also proceed.
We are endanger of becoming so concerned with local adaptation and treating the symptoms of climate change that we forget to bear down heavily on the root cause of our increasing difficulties, which will be magnified as well as reduced by globalization of resources such as food, minerals and migration.
Failures in this province, as in much of the world, to bear down heavily on greenhouse gas emissions, to ameliorate the increasing damage to ourselves and the rest of the world are rightly a crucial concern.
These are all about short-timeframe greed and a failure to appreciate what economists would term “externalities.”
We should not be cutting old growth, replacing plastic with paper, whether single or limited-reuse packaging and containers, exporting or using fossil-derived gas, oil or coal, which will only make matters worse for ourselves as well as those in other locations.
Equitable sharing of a healthy lifestyle with ambition, bling, toys and travel reduced to that of our post Second World War (or less) standard for all but medical and a few other technologies such as geothermal energy and electrification can give us all we need to feel happy and connected.
Glynne Evans
Saanich
Old-growth protesters should try the Amazon
I find it strange these protesters are spending so much time here in B.C., where forest companies actually do replant trees and try to maintain the forests that are their bread and butter. They should try to ply their “skills” where the most harm is being done, down in the Amazon rainforest.
Clear-cutting is the order of the day and nothing gets replanted. And we hear how its rainforest is the most important one on the planet.
These “inspired” people should head down there and see how they get treated. I’d wager “kid gloves” would not be the way.
Doug Hill
Port Alberni
With information, we stand, we don’t fall
Re: “Divided, we are sure to fall,” letter, June 14.
To use the author’s own words, “A column filled with ‘misdirections’.” I would like to clear up one misdirection within his comment.
A quick Google search of “E pluribus unum, united we stand,” reveals the true meaning of the motto: “Out of many, one.”
Although “In God we trust” is the official motto of the United States, “E pluribus unum” has long been acknowledged as a de facto national motto. After all, it is on the Great Seal of the United States, which was adopted in 1782.
The modern motto of the United States of America, as established in a 1956 law signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is “In God We Trust.” The phrase first appeared on U.S. coins in 1864.
A second reading of my Google search provided me with this:
“The Liberty Song by John Dickinson, written in 1768, is the first known modern usage of the phrase “United we stand, divided we fall.” The song was published in two Pennsylvania newspapers during the time sentiment for breaking the colonies away from England was rising.”
With thanks and credit to Google search, although I already knew this.
Stewart Barber
Victoria
Are we really better than the Russians?
91原创s are rightly outraged that Russia has attacked Ukraine in violation of international law, but where was that outrage when Canada and its allies repeatedly disregarded the same law?
I thought we were finished with the colonial mentality that states only other nations commit war crimes, and that the death and destruction we sow is qualitatively different from that of our enemies.
It’s wonderful that most 91原创s can colour in a Ukrainian flag, but shouldn’t we be as familiar with the flags of the countries that we and our allies have attacked; Yugoslavia, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Syria and Venezuela, for example?
I’d like to see 91原创s condemn all wars, not just those of our “enemies,” by withdrawing from NATO and returning to our once-proud role as a nation of peacekeepers.
Mike Ward
Duncan
Langford needs to elect a new council
A recent letter warned that “woke” candidates will be a pitfall if voters pick Langford Now members.
The present mayor does not consult with the community and blithely OKs developments like the six-storey monster that looms over two small cul-de-sac neighbourhoods off Goldstream Avenue. No planning about how to get all these new people on and off the stuffed arterial road, no consideration for longstanding households, no concern about how aggressively high the building is.
All will be renters with no investment in the present neighbourhood. We need a new council that will consider the concerns expressed and not dismiss them out of hand.
Char Manning
Victoria
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