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et long four years politics monday february 13 2012 photo an old new look back when i was growing up the buses always looked the same they were all gm new look buses from the late 1950s made famous by the one in speed with the bomb in it fifteen years ago they were ubiquitous but as new models came into service the aging fishbowls were gradually pulled out of service barrie transit made heavy use of them in the 1990s and in toronto they puttered on until 2011 when the last of them were retired from service back in 2008 i caught toronto s bus 2250 waiting for the light to change at university and gerrard it s probably in a scrapheap now i the copyright holder of this work hereby release it under the creative commons attribution non commercial share alike 3 0 unported license this means that you are free to share to copy distribute and transmit the work and to remix to adapt the work under the following conditions attribution you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work noncommercial you may not use this work for commercial purposes and share alike if you alter transform or build upon this work you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one posted by phoebe barton at 11 13 no comments labels bus creative commons photo toronto transit sunday february 12 2012 simplicity the writer s friend i may still be a beginning writer but it doesn t take a five time grand master to recognize and point out flaws in the craft something that only someone who s deeply deeply experienced can see is honestly not that much of a problem it s when it s something that anyone can pick up on that you know you ve got a problem in writing brevity is a virtue and one of the highest commandments is thou shalt not waste the reader s time or watcher s or listener s depending on what medium you re writing for while indirectness or extended rambles inevitably make their way into first draft versions part of the revision process is supposed to be the excision of those unnecessary bits removing the superstructure and every other bit that doesn t strictly need to be there in order to make the thing hold together even just thinking about this slightly improved my current work in progress in that way the issue is that the satellite phone connection in the story is scratchy it s irrelevant that it s being caused by higher than normal activity in a gas giant s radiation belts some writers aren t necessarily as quick to pull this sort of unnecessary padding out of their stories and while it s not always to their detriment it frequently is the number one offender in this realm as far as i m concerned is star trek specifically the modern chain of series that aired from 1987 to 2005 the only reason i think why i don t recall it leaping out at me more at the time was because i wasn t actively wrestling with these issues at the time for example i ve acquired a piece of the script from the deep space 9 episode sacrifice of angels the main attraction of which was the massive computer generated space battle the writers on ds9 made a conscious effort to avoid reliance on technobabble of the sort that dominated star trek the next generation but even then some shone through in the form of unnecessary word filler take this example int u s s defiant bridge nog sir i can t get through to anybody communications are down the back half of the bridge explodes in a shower of sparks o brien they re jamming our signal by generating a rotating em pulse sisko can you clear it o brien i m trying the bridge continues to explode time passes starships dart around like fighter aircraft more things explode o brien comms back on line the first time i saw this scene after a long while in which i hadn t o brien s line screeched and groaned like a door with a hundred hinges in need of oil it s simple really why do we as the audience care how the jem hadar are futzing with the radio the fact that they re spamming electromagnetic pulses would be relevant if this was the core issue of the story with the conflict arising from the challenges faced in overcoming it but here it s just verbal wallpaper that adds absolutely nothing to the story there are only two things that need to be addressed in that scene communications are down and they need to be fixed captain sisko is trying to keep his ship from flying apart at the seams it is unnecessary for him to know exactly what is causing this latest issue because he is not the one who will be fixing it were i to rewrite the example scene it would be something like this int u s s defiant bridge nog sir i can t get through to anybody communications are down the bridge shakes and rumbles under heavy weapons fire the consoles do not explode thanks to the robustness you would expect 24th century electronics to exhibit sisko chief o brien on it see that s all we need to know communications are down but chief o brien knows the score because he is good at his job and is already focused on solving it he does not need to explain what the situation is to justify a higher bridge communications rating in his next performance review simplicity is every writer s friend it s not something to hide from or to leave in one s dust doing that only means that you re doing a disservice to the audience posted by phoebe barton at 12 49 no comments labels advice science fiction sf writing saturday february 11 2012 photo skytrain suspended blue sky is a precious commodity in a lower mainland winter but it was there in time for me to watch a mark ii expo line train buzz across the skybridge surrey bound in contrast to the late evening trains to surrey this one doesn t seem to be particularly crushloaded even after midnight i ve known surrey trains to be standing room only all the way to columbia i the copyright holder of this work hereby release it under the creative commons attribution non commercial share alike 3 0 unported license this means that you are free to share to copy distribute and transmit the work and to remix to adapt the work under the following conditions attribution you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work noncommercial you may not use this work for commercial purposes and share alike if you alter transform or build upon this work you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one posted by phoebe barton at 12 27 no comments labels creative commons photo skytrain transit friday february 10 2012 the midnight ride of rob revered i keep encountering people who say they want subways that taxpayers want subways that toronto deserves subways that toronto is a world class city and needs subways just like world class cities like new york and london and madrid and moscow have subways one of the biggest boosters of this want is hizzoner da mayor of toronto rob ford but the titan of december 2010 is now flailing like a windsock in a hurricane after toronto city council voted against his monomaniacally obsessive obsession with a completely underground 8 2 billion eglinton light rail line because he seems to be personally offended by the idea of public transit taking up his precious precious road lanes for metro vancouver this would be comparable to the evergreen line being built underground and thus to only a fraction of the length it ll actually go once it s done because people in charge find the skytrain aesthetically displeasing even after council repudiated his plan though ford wasn t beat he did what he s always done and took his case straight to the people that is the people who happened to be riding the scarborough rt at midnight and afterward the 34 eglinton east bus trying to convince as many scarboroughnians as he could of the rightness of his plan note though that he confined his midnight ride to the area that the spin machine has decided will be hard done by in this even though council s plan calls for an extension of the rt once it s converted to lrt he didn t take his case to the riders of the 36 finch west bus which is probably all the best for him because there he would have had to explain why they didn t deserve rapid transit even so ford still has his boosters in council and comment threads though to be honest i can t rightly apprehend the sort of world that some of them are evidently living in world class cities have subways not lrts which would freeze in winter and create an eye sore like scarborough has look to the future wrote avroe105 because cities like calgary and buffalo and edmonton are well known for their warm temperatures year round taxpayers want subways ford says taxpayers want subways we don t want streetcars screwing up our roads all the councillors who don t understand this and voted against our mayor should resign in disgrace go get em rob you know your right says last real canadian ignoring that the honest debate was never about lrt versus subways it was about lrt versus nothing people may want subways sure but when that question is posed it usually seems to be posed in a vacuum never honestly never in consideration of how much things cost given his midnight ride i guess ford is clinging to the notion of his subway because he thinks costs like council is irrelevant in that respect rob as a member of the torontonian diaspora here s what i would want if i still hung my hat south of steeles lrt subway no to both i want a helicopter you heard me i want a helicopter to land outside my apartment every day to fly me to work and then once my shift is over to pick me up from downtown and fly me back home can you imagine how short my commute would be as for costs who cares i want a helicopter taxpayers want helicopters i knew all those photos of helicopters would come in handy someday i imagine the ordinary person on the street realistic enough to know that no one s getting a helicopter but somehow that skepticism breaks down when it comes to subways perhaps it s because unlike helicopter commuting subways in toronto are already a familiar part of the urban fabric and have been done before perhaps they only have a vague idea of what s being done regarding subways in the rest of the world here s a hint new york is the only city in north america that s building a new subway line right now and los angeles is the only other one that has such a thing on the books but la is focusing more on its light rail network shock horror aside from a handful of outliers if the question was posed honestly in terms of cost people served and so on i have to wonder how many people would still prefer a subway given the alternative much of the political storm now is being kicked up by the ford loyalists what sort of person would invest so much of their self worth in being on the winning team politically when that team is led by rob ford posted by phoebe barton at 12 04 1 comment labels light rail politics toronto transit thursday february 9 2012 photo back on the rails schadenfreude it was more like schaden ford when i heard the news yesterday rob ford once seen as the invincible titan of toronto municipal politics had to watch while his plans crumbled around him as city council voted 25 18 to reverse his ill conceived ideologically focused money pit that was the 8 2 billion completely underground eglinton crosstown light rail line and to reinstate a significant chunk of the transit city program that he unilaterally declared dead on his first day in the mayor s chair because as the right wing spin machine has been trying to push for weeks now rob ford campaigned and won on subway building when it comes to all that stuff about stopping the gravy train or respect for taxpayers that was actually front and center during his campaign just forget about that ford zealots and worthless rags like the toronto sun already have a long time ago here s a photo of a light rail train in phoenix arizona which is known to be a hotbed of liberalism i mean they ve got light rail don t they i the copyright holder of this work hereby release it under the creative commons attribution non commercial share alike 3 0 unported license this means that you are free to share to copy distribute and transmit the work and to remix to adapt the work under the following conditions attribution you must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work noncommercial you may not use this work for commercial purposes and share alike if you alter transform or build upon this work you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one posted by phoebe barton at 11 25 no comments labels creative commons light rail photo transit wednesday february 8 2012 standing room only i ve been a regular skytrain rider for long enough now i think to start picking up on some patterns enough that i can tell there seems to have been a definite upswing in ridership since late 2010 in keeping with that massive wall ad in granville station that crows about how metro has experienced a 9 increase in transit usage since the olympics incidentally i think the olympics might be a good year zero for a vancouver specific calendar before the olympics and after the olympics much like a civilization arising after a nuclear war might divide their calendar into before the apocalypse and after the apocalypse one thing i ve noticed in particular is that when i m travelling during the week it s becoming more and more difficult to avoid trains that are already packed to the rafters even when you re boarding at granville it happens to me fairly regularly on my usual trips into and away from downtown vancouver partially because i seem to have a particular knack for arriving on the platform when the next train is an expo line train to surrey though the lines aren t signed when trains are westbound it s always blindingly obvious when an expo line train pulls into columbia station it s the one that s already full presumably it had been full ever since pulling out of surrey central station where more than twenty bus routes pulling in riders from across the southland converge by the same token when i arrive on the granville platform shortly after my 9 30 clockout not only is the platform packed once the train arrives but it s almost always an expo line train that s packed as well nine times out of ten it seems to be a mark i train on top of that which only makes the ensuing ride even more fun even if it s not crammed then if it s a game day there ll be a hundred or so people shoving aboard at stadium chinatown on the whole if you considered the ridership figures of the skytrain in conjunction with the capacity of its rolling stock i wouldn t be surprised if in that respect it proved to be busier than the toronto subwa...