Lots of need for parking at old Times 91原创 location
Re: “12-storey rental building planned behind former Times 91原创 site,” March 7.
Ross Place Seniors Residence is adjacent to the proposed new structure. Many of the residents living there have family and friends who visit and park along Ross Lane, and wherever there is a space.
Some part-time staff and visiting nurses etc. also have to park close to the entrance.
So where will the renters in the new building and their visitors park? The Burnside Gorge Community Association has been asked for feedback.
Will renters and the businesses around that site be asked as well?
Judith Hodgson
Victoria
The high cost of shipping air here and there
I was at the post office last week to send a paperback to Ontario. The postal worker’s first pitch was for a flat rate box, indeed the lowest-priced option.
I paid a few dollars more for flexible packaging, making the tightly-wrapped parcel that was once preferred by the system. It occurred that Canada Post must be shipping a lot of air around, as does the dominant online retailer to maddening effect.
The clerk said a standard box size makes for easier packing of postal vehicles. Perhaps so, but much of that boxed space will be empty.
Maybe the fuel surcharge is looking so good on the books, it’s motivating the service to roll more trucks carrying more air, less weight. It will take many more trucks to move our parcels this way.
I wish Canada Post would not copy the environmentally destructive practices of its global competitor.
Steve Ireland
Denman Island
Don’t worry about potholes in new Victoria
Without fail, each day I wake to read the Times 91原创, and discover a new bend on comedy … and thanks for that.
Regarding our need for an “automated pothole hunter” service it’s important to remember that it will only benefit those in cars who pay road tax via fuel purchases.
As we aim to reduce vehicles, or places to park and shop, and all run for our bikes, I can’t see the need to fill potholes in any way shape or form — plus it’s labour intensive.
Bikes can simply steer around potholes.
If we thought of the holes as recycling bins, we could fill them with cigarette butts, gum and needles — kinda like a surgical rebar. No need to pressure city workers as they have enough to avoid.
Perhaps that’s how the city streets of Beirut, over time, have become such a popular tourist destination once again. We need to think long-term gain.
Let’s stay creative.
S.K. McGrath
Victoria
P.S. If Victoria wants to send the machine to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, I’ll pay for the camouflage paint.
Want to find potholes? Ask the city’s fleet
Here’s a suggestion on finding potholes in Victoria.
Since the city has a few hundred trucks roaming the city daily, how about each vehicle that sees a pothole fills out an easy form with the location and turns it in at the end of the day.
Steve Harvey
Victoria
Thanks, but we already have pothole finders
Automated pothole hunters? Really? Victoria already has hundreds and maybe thousands of pothole finders. They are called motorists. They often find potholes that nobody knew existed!
William Jesse
Victoria
Government won’t give back the savings
Re: “It’s time to raise fares for handyDART,” letter, March 7.
The writer seems to be suggesting that if B.C. Transit were to raise the fare for a ride on handyDART by one dollar (from $2.50 to $3.50), then we taxpayers would somehow benefit from not having to subsidize the rides on that system by quite so much as what happens now.
My question is: when did any government ever lower taxes because of anything saved from within the system?
If the user fares on handyDART were raised by one dollar, then the government would not give that savings back to us taxpayers; they would simply find something else to spend our tax money on.
So nothing would be saved, or gained.
Richard Silver
Colwood
Rail service essential to our climate goals
“In 2021, French lawmakers voted to prohibit short-haul domestic flights when a train can provide the same connection in 2½ hours or less. The prohibition was approved by the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, in December of 2022.”
In the face of accelerating climate change, countries around the world are spending time, energy and money fine tuning their public and goods transportation networks with a view to increased sustainability, availability and efficiency.
Canada’s rail systems need immediate revitalization. Should any level of government be truly serious about climate action and mitigation, then the transportation of people and goods by rail needs to swing to the top of the priority list.
Not so long ago, rail travel in B.C. was useful and reasonable. This is no longer the case.
On 91原创 Island the one rail line languishes. Most bus lines are no longer in operation.
With no other way to transport goods and people, cars and trucks increasingly take up the load of an ever-growing population.
There are many innovative train technologies now such as HSR, electric and hydrogen models.
Time to put words into action and align with the Clean B.C. Act and federal climate goals.
There can be no cogent defence for inaction on revitalizing the island rail line, or indeed any rail lines. The principle of greater good is paramount here as viewed both through the lens of climate change resilience and as a common sense benefit for all parties including our beleaguered planet. The time for prevarication is past.
Stepping into the future, indeed recrafting a new way forward, requires vision, tax dollars and commitment. Now is the time for Island rail to roll again.
Leslie Gillett
Victoria
Don’t give Strauss credit for Golden Gate Bridge
Dave Obee’s review of Incredible Crossings, Derek Hayes’s book on the history of B.C. bridges (March 5) repeated an oft-told fairy tale.
The fairy tale was key to the campaign to save the old Johnson Street Bridge, now, mercifully, preserved in history and photos only.
Many of those who treasured the old bridge claimed that our bridge, designed by Joseph Strauss, was worthy because Strauss had also designed San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge.
To this day that myth persists, but truth be told, the principal designer of the Golden Gate was Charles Alton Ellis, an engineer (Strauss was not so well trained), who discarded Strauss’s fantasy and, with Irving Foster Morrow as architect, designed the beautiful span that today straddles San Francisco Bay.
Strauss was merely the contractor whose company did the construction work. His concept for the Golden Gate was horrendous and unworkable, even as he persisted in claiming Ellis’s design as his own.
San Francisco has a treasure to be sure, and Victoria has a new and graceful crossing, better adapted to our own transportation needs, that will in time become an icon on its own merit, not so much for who, or who did not, render such beautiful work.
John Luton
Victoria
Investigation needed into China’s election role
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confidently insists that China’s interference in our elections had no material impact on the outcomes.
In the 2021 election, the Liberals won 155. To form a majority government a party needs 170 seats. The Liberals remained in power with a little help from some of their NDP friends.
It has been estimated that the Conservatives would have won nine additional seats if not for the Chinese Communist Party supporting the Liberals. If you take nine seats from the Liberals 155, you get 146, needing the help of all 24 of their NDP friends to remain in power.
That Liberal/NDP pack would have fallen if just one MP from either of those two parties withheld their support for the government.
That is material to many 91原创s, and therefore we should have an independent criminal investigation of this matter.
Democracy counts.
Patrick Hunt
Victoria
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