On Pride Parade day, take another bike route
As seniors, my spouse and I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Victoria Pride Parade along Government Street opposite the Empress. Next to us was an individual in a wheelchair and on the other side a young family with two toddlers. It was wonderful to be in such a multigenerational crowd celebrating inclusivity.
The only thing that spoiled the atmosphere and event were the numerous thoughtless cyclists who insisted on “using” the bike lane despite the road being closed.
This included weekend warriors on their high performance speed machines, parents with children on their powerful extended cargo bikes, electric bikes, scooters, skateboards and Segway riders as well as pedicabs and rickshaws.
Have they no sense of social responsibility? What would have happened if they had hit a toddler, elder or parade participant handing out candies?
One cyclist protested that the bike lane was not blocked off. Really, the street was full of hundreds of parade participants and thousands of spectators.
Is their sense of individual entitlement so great that people no longer have the common sense to see what is happening and take a different route or walk their transport machines? And thanks to those who did.
Alan Humphries
James Bay
Don’t give in to pressure for more bike lanes
Kudos to Oak Bay for taking a measured, considered and holistic approach to its consideration of the implementation of bicycle infrastructure.
Unlike its neighbour to the east, Victoria took a headlong, fast-tracked approach to its AAA project (better called AAI – All Ages and Inabilities).
Victoria’s former mayor was in such a rush to implement as much bikeways as possible, during her tenure, that she was willing to deliberately (particularly in the case of Richardson Street) truncate public consultation and ignore the results of its own opinion polling.
This polling revealed a 71 per cent opposition and only a 14 per cent support for that project. This was coupled with a campaign to ignore and trivialize legitimate residents’ concerns, to force an unpopular project on the residents of Fairfield/Gonzales.
The Richardson result was 2,500 to 3,000 vehicles sent packing, often down formerly quite, narrow, neighbourhood streets, with particularly destructive results, while a collector street remains stripped of its vital function, in favour of in minor increase in cycle usage.
I walk Richardson, daily, during what should be a busy commuter hour, and this has become quite obvious.
So, Mayor Kevin Murdoch and council, please continue to resist the pressure of a noisy, visible minority group in your deliberations.
Brian Kendrick
Fairfield
Centre or center? Well, that depends
Two recent letters have suggested that the proper spelling of the word centre/center is an either/or situation as far as which is correct. I beg to disagree.
I’m a baby-boomer, and I was taught in school years ago that the word “center” is a geographical definition; such as the center of a circle, or the center of a field, or the “center of gravity” calculation that pilots have to do before safely taking an airplane up into the air.
However, a “centre” is a place; such as “city centre,” or the Memorial Centre, or a local rec centre, and so on.
There are other words which fall into this dual-purpose usage too.
Under the rules of the SI Metric System (available online), the words “metre” and “litre” are correctly spelled in those ways, not with “er” endings.
However, the word “meter,” when spelled that way, refers to a gauge or measuring device; such as a gas meter, or a water meter, or a micrometer as a device that can measure to an accuracy of one micrometre.
English has always been a challenging language to learn and use, regardless of whether it’s a first language or a learned language. However, it has the advantage of being able to use different spellings for some words that can clarify what that word means. All we have to do is learn how to best take advantage of that benefit.
Richard Silver
Colwood
Don’t forget the link to the French language
Centre or center? The issue is not whether one is incorrect or that one is Commonwealth spelling. It is that most of us don’t want to be Americans.
Furthermore, Canada’s traditional spelling maintains a small link with our other official language, French.
Alanne Gibson
Victoria
E&N rail corridor offers great potential
Re: “An economic case for keeping the rail corridor intact,” commentary, July 6.
Rail is an energy efficient way to transport people and goods. Modern technologically savvy countries have recognized this by developing and maintaining their rail systems, including commuter rail networks and long distance systems.
The European Union, Japan, China, and to a lesser extent, the U.S., are good examples. Acquiring the land necessary for a new rail corridor is expensive and often impractical.
The initial cost of developing a modern rail system looks high, but the operating costs, especially the energy and environmental costs, are very much lower than that for road based trucking and other motorized traffic.
The E&N rail corridor has been inactive for about 12 years. It is not an anachronism; rather, it is an opportunity to create a climate friendly transportation system here on Vancouver Island. Let’s get on with it.
Barrie Webster
Victoria
Harrumph! What does a philosopher say?
Upon seeing another letters page filled with endlessly repetitive, mindlessly uncreative, whining missives regarding leashed/unleashed dogs, I am, once again, reminded of what a provincial little backwater Victoria and area is.
It only surprises me that each and every letter is not concluded with the word “Harrumph!”
As for the petition to Saanich council, I can only recall (here I admit that my memory may fail as to the precise wording) an observation by the philosopher and skeptic Michel de Montaigne:
“If, by the people, you mean the masses, ’tis no matter what they think, for they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong. Their judgement is mere lottery.”
Bruce Simmons
Duncan
Saanich council did not ignore will of the people
A July 11 letter-writer speaks to the loss of democracy in Saanich, saying council “ignored the 9,000 petitioners who opposed this needless (off-leash) policy.”
Council did not ignore the will of the people of Saanich. About 9,000 signatures certainly sounds like an impressive number, but it amounts to about 8.25 per cent of the 108,000-plus Saanich population.
This decision appears to have been made based on a much wider survey of a broader set of interested parties, and surprisingly appears to have included residents who may be affected by dogs running free, regardless of how “well behaved” they may be.
In this case, the majority does appear to have ruled, and rightly so.
K.M. Frye
Saanich
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