Raise the Hammer

Quite right, it works elsewhere, but "it would never work in Hamilton." :-p

In general though, I agree that the problem goes beyond the city, to the province and the federal government, who have little to no long-term sustainable vision for the funcitoning of our cities. I mean, query whether it would have been better to leave the GST at 7% and dole out the extra funds to cities for exclusive use on infrastructure?

It seems to me that cities which people think are doing "well" are just as often a result of "luck" (a confluence of positive factors and timing) as they are of actual planning and leadership.

Apparently some cities just get it. And some can just get money.

The Heathrow price tag is relative. If I’m not mistaken there’s the £2b cost of actually staging the 2012 Games and an additional £11b in spending in the run-up to the Games. I’m sure this is feasible in part not only because London is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the EU (one responsible to generating around a third of the UK's GDP), but also because its planning has created an economic, media and cultural powerhouse, one likely to recoup that investment sooner or later. Hamilton, meanwhile, has an infrastructure gap around the size of the Red Hill Parkway – money that is quite literally going into a hole in the ground. And in the absence of substantial private sector growth, the bill has maily gone to taxpayers.

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/549698--falling-apart-at-the-seams
http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/43623--water-plan-slowed-to-level-off-tax-hike

That said, there is nothing stopping us from reversing decades of decline except absence of a compelling vision and lack of political willpower. Which is unfortunate to say the least. What’s a one-term mayor for if not to effect radical but necessary change?

Seriously? Fred Eisenberger was a good man who was a proponent of urban growth. What does that have to do with left/right politics.

FYI Fred was a big C Conservative. But don't let facts get in the way of your anti "lefty" rant.

It's also what the city had in Mayors Wade and DiIanni. The city has been stuck in the revolving door for the last decade. All the more reason for a little intestinal fortitude from the man in the necklace.

To be totally fair about it, I gather that Hamilton has historically been a city of single-term mayors since its incorporation. Seven of the city's last 10 mayors have been single-termer with the exceptions being Jackson, Copps and Morrow.

Neary writes, "...to construct a high-speed rail line joining London and Birmingham, which would cut travel times on this 190 km journey from 84 to 49 minutes." That makes me, Ontarian, Canadian, jealous. It means that about 118 miles is now covered in LESS than an hour and a half: that means an average speed of nearly 90 mph.---and they want to increase that speed by about 50%. There were real travelling times on the old VIA/CN Turbotrain, Toronto-Montreal in the mid-1970s of 4 1/2 hours, and certain stretches in eastern Ontario were run at close to 100 mph. [The scheduled time had been 4 hours--but still. Yes I know, the Turbo had problems and expensive repairs.]

I had a very good friend, now dead, who was an engineer on the Turbo when it was in service. He had some interesting stories to tell. Investments that could have addressed the trains reliability issues were intentionally not made, suppliers of critical spare parts that were often out of spec. or otherwise unusable "out of the box" for the train were able to retain their contracts, and there were large sections of the route where the tracks would have allowed the train to run 50 miles per hour or more faster than was dictated by "head office". The reason? The government of the day felt that if if the Turbo service was "too good" it would cut into Air Canada's business on that route. He was a man who took pride in his work, and it left him quite bitter for years that he was not able to provide the best service possible to his passengers purely as a result of politics. Such are the perversions that result from Statist monopolies.

What you've written rings true about the commitment of CN/VIA's staff engineers. It was an engineer on board the train who told me that east of Belleville we were running at 100 mph.
You write, "The government of the day felt that if if the Turbo service was "too good" it would cut into Air Canada's business on that route." Maybe ironically, I took the Turbo to Montreal on the day I did because there was an Air Canada strike at the time, as I recall [summer 1976]. Of course I'm glad I had that fast train experience. I don't know whether the conspiracy hypothesis holds or not. There were gripes about winter icing in the turbines, but maybe your friend was right. And much was made about a collision on the Turbo's test run with "press" aboard--as if that was the train's fault. Everything else you write about your friend's train maintenance feelings makes sense.
The rail bed had been greatly improved to handle the at least 100 mph speeds. And, oh, the original and hopeful scheduled time was 3 hrs, 59 minutes [not 4 hours as I said], just as the older Rapido's time [mid-1960s] was shown as 4 hrs, 59 minutes. The Turbo's scheduled time was re-adjusted and then shown as 4hrs 30 min [or 29 min?], as I think I recall. And that was the time that I experienced. At one point we crossed paths with the west-bound Turbo; sitting in the front observation car behind the engine, that made for a very quick swoosh--relative observed speed thus of 200 mph of the two trains moving away from each other.

That point crossed my mind, but I didn't bother spelling it out. Judging from your comment I didn't need to.

Not everyone in England supports the high-speed rail idea. The Queen is upset because it might frighten her horses. No joke. I'd link to an article in the Sunday Times but it's behind a paywall.

The best advertising I've ever seen for high speed rail was nothing but a light-up display on the tops of glass room dividers on a German passenger train (ICE-2 I think). Among other things (time, trip details, weather etc) it had a speedometer. My jaw dropped as it climed, right through 180km/h to a comfortable cruising speed around 230km/h, with more rattle than a morning GO train. Since that one train ride, I've been sold on high speed rail.

Maybe you mean "with *[no]* more rattle than a morning GO train,"-- I think.

Caught that, but then learned that we have only 90 minutes to fix mistakes. Sigh.

I cannot believe that you are comparing Hamilton with London. The two cities have absolutely nothing in common. You might as well compare Hamilton to the colony on Mars.

I would absolutely love to see what some other cities similar in Hamilton in size and importance have done that has worked out well and especially things that did not work out well so we can avoid those mistakes. What London does is of zero relevance to what Hamilton should or should not do.

Here we go again. Hamilton has nothing in common with London. London has an area not much bigger than Hamilton and a population of 8,000,000. Heathrow is perhaps the busiest airport in the world, Hamilton's not so much. Their airport has to much traffic that they are running out of infrastructure, again Hamilton not so much. They are trying to keep people out of downtown again Hamilton not so much, and the list goes on and on and on and on....


Let's try looking at similar cities to Hamilton and see what has and has not worked for them and then we can make some intelligent decisions about our city.

That's right, we forgot, Hamilton is in the heart of the Urban Planning Twilight Zone so none of the things that work anywhere else work here. Everyone knows that, that's why we don't even bother trying them out here.