Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Racession

I was reading wikipedia, and about how Japan’s economy took a nose dive in the 90’s thanks to the bursting of their housing bubble. This created a domino effect on the economy and cause a decade of stagnation in Japan.

I was also reading that the current US sub-prime crisis was triggered by the bursting of the US housing bubble…

I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

More "Bus VS Car"

A certain CTV news report tells us that a panel has recommended taking cars out of downtown. According to the news story:

One of the ideas proposed by Dr. David Pearson was to ban private cars on busy downtown roadways. "We need to very quickly begin thinking about banning cars downtown

Personally my favorite part of the article is where they quote dear Dr.David as saying “You have an excellent subway system”. LOL! I wish. I’d rate our current subway system though the downtown as “adequate”, far from excellent. Regardless, this brings up the important point; is it even possible to get all the cars off the road? And if not why not? I’ll leave this one (for now) open ended, but will add three anecdotes regarding this very issue.

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My job is 17 miles away...I have to drive - either that or take 6 buses and hope none are late!

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My commute by car... usually takes between 10 & 15 minutes to get to work. Public transit would greatly increase my short commute... My commute would go to about 45-60 minutes

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Even if I had a choice (which I don't) I would still drive. Many times, on my way home I run errands and have to be able to go somewhere or change plans on a moment's notice. Going from suburb to suburb does not lend itself to mass transit.