The Vancouver Scrum

On the move!

Agh! You’re still here? My new site and weblog, ianking.ca is now up and running; new posts are building up over there, never to be mirrored here. Go! What are you waiting for? All the stuff worth keeping has been migrated over to the new server, and I don’t anticipate making any more posts here.

Bloggers and webmasters: Update your links! Simply replace vancouverscrum.blogspot.com with www.ianking.ca in your blogrolls or bookmarks to point to the new site. Old posts will remain on this server for as long as the people at Blogger/Google allow them to remain; unfortunately, I’m not going to bother to come up with any way of converting permalinks on this blog to their corresponding posts on the new site. Yes, I plead laziness. I also realize the irony of switching away from Blogger just it starts to add features that the demanding blog nerds insist upon.

Thanks for reading and linking, and see you over at ianking.ca!

—Ian King, December 13, 2004

Monday, February 02, 2004

 

Throne Speech 2004

(Damn Google queries leading you here!)

A story or two. No doubt more on the way.

Haven't seen it yet; do I have to?

(Actually, I'll say something after I get home to see the darned thing...)

REAX: Andrew Spicer weighs in on the "new deal" for cities side of things; seems pleased with the promise to exempt municipalities from the GST rebate the GST that they currently pay. Well, if a transfer of fuel tax revenues is too sticky, I guess that the cities will take what they can get. If this move saves the City of Toronto $50-million annually, then it should (based on the size of the city's budget; could be more, maybe a bit less) save Vancouver about $6-million. At least it'll help the city with the recent pay hike for police constables.

ADDENDUM: Savings to the City of Vancouver: $7.5-million.

More when I get the chance to post, plus some fixes and updates to the long-neglected blogroll, and a link to that fancy new Atom feed thingy that Blogger now spits out -- no more scrape-to-RSS syndication here. Real soon! I promise! (Okay, more like after 20:30 or so)

REAX, PART DEUX: James Bow is also pleased, at least at first glance. He points out that the tax rebates will save the Toronto Transit Commission about $12-million annually, which will help the funding crunch. (Besides his own fine blog, James also maintains the Transit Toronto website, which would tell you almost anything you'd want to know about public transit in Metro Toronto. Bus and railfans rejoice.) Good analysis of how and why Martin is manoeuvring the way that he is.

Speaking of which... Vancouver's local transit authority, TransLink, is also pleased with the move. Rebating the GST will save the authority $7-million annually on operating costs -- sounds good so far. But wait (thanks, Ron Popeil!), there's more! TransLink is about to start shelling out a load of cash on a new rapid transit line to YVR and a desperately-needed fleet of electric trolley buses. Total tax saved on the rapid transit project and trolleys: over $50-million. Sweet. Message to TransLink honcho Doug "Jabba" McCallum: How about bringing back all-night bus service every night of the week?
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