[I know my blog is NOT usually about politics, but Paul is worth a brief digression!]
If I lived in Surrey, I'd be voting for Paul today on the basis of his transport policy alone! Not only that my friend Paul is an articulate, passionate man who knows his stuff and I've been lucky enough to meet him at TransitCamp, Transport Hero Camp and many other transit related events in the city.
One thing that Paul is passionate about is transit and he’s outlined an ambitious yet extremely responsible and practical proposal with his Transit for Tomorrow plan.
“The detailed plan is quite simple: shift $1.1 billion provincial dollars from 6 km of SkyTrain in Surrey to funding a 43.4 km light rail network across Surrey and Langley.”
In fact, transportation is one of the main reasons Paul has even considered a career in politics. “It was a matter of timing,” he noted “I decided to run and bring this to everyone’s attention.” However he’s also branching out and you’ll find his name in two places on your ballot this Saturday.
Random observations (some of which you can see in image format above):
As a national event, it would have been great to have simultaneous English/French translation.
Paul and Karen did a great thing (they made the difficult look impossible); this was an excellent gathering with savvy youth!
I am still energized by Gil Penalosa's presentation last Wed (my 10 minute N95 video which is embedded below) to go beyond baby steps in bicycling. How's this for a non-baby step? Bike sharing and secure bike parking at every major transit node in every metropolitan city in Canada (Metro Vancouver, Calgary, Monrtreal, Toronto, Ottwaw, Hamliton, etc!
Can I vote for Paul! Oops I can't because he is running in Surrey!
Open Source Bike Sharing?!? why does it have to be monolithic? why does it have to be funded by ads?
[crossposted from the Northern Voice 2008 Website]
New to Vancouver or just not into figuring out the bus system? And need to get to the NV08 Opening Party? Then join me at Blenz at 508 West Hastings (at Richards, in front of SFU Harbour Centre).
WHEN: Thursday Feb 21, 2008 at 5:15p.m.
WHERE: Blenz Coffee at 508 West Hastings (map, pictures)
BRING: $2.50 Cash fare (and another $2.50 to get back)
BUS ROUTES: One of Number 10, 20, etc. (many routes lead to the Waldorf)
In true BarCamp fashion, everybody (from guru to enthusiast to transit user to activist to everything in between) could pitch their session and we collaborated on the TransitCamp Vancouver schedule together.
They are all tagged transitcampvancouver or you can see them below (the original MP4 file is available if you are flash challenged.
Thanks mostly to the hard work of Karen (Karen rocks; thanks for the hard work and great organizing!), today's Vancouver Transit Camp was fab! An atmosphere of respect, lots of great people and lots of insights learned! More later (my videos (200MB of videos take over an hour and half to upload!) are currently uploading to blip.tv and I have 2 flickr sets: one from my N95-1 cameraphone and one from my 20D)
