A bad day for Page 1

Stupid Streets: any excuse will do.

Vincent J. Curtis

4 July 22

RE: Street design changes pitched as deaths spike.  Headline story by Matthew van Dongen.  The Hamilton Spectator 4 July 22.

The streets haven’t changed and traffic volumes are down, but pedestrian deaths are up, 16 last year and a ‘grim’ 9 so far this year.  Obviously, the street is at fault for these rising numbers.

“We can’t rely on people to change their behavior,” reasons a lawyer who represents injured cyclists. “We need infrastructure that helps protect vulnerable road users.”  Since the humans can’t learn, the streets need to get smarter.  At taxpayer expense.

When I visited Hamilton last July, I noticed how much more aggressive Hamilton’s drivers were than I remembered.  Aggression was stimulated in part because of all the construction, mistimed traffic lights, and other obstructions that made getting to where you needed to go so frustrating and time-consuming.  My car got totaled on Garner Road in a rear-end collision while I was stopped at a red light.  Driver inattention.  No matter how smart the street, the drivers have to have the brain in gear.

“Smart streets” is another progressive solution in search of a problem.  Its aim is to choke traffic flow because driving is morally evil and drivers deserve to be punished.

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Net-Zero Nonsense

Vincent J. Curtis

4 July 22

RE: Businesses discuss reaching net zero.  Page 1 below-the-fold story by Ritika Dubey.  The Hamilton Spectator 4 July 22

In Europe, the energy shortage is so bad, the Greens are restarting coal-fired power plants.  In California, unscheduled power black-outs have become so common that Stanford University is shutting down summer classes.  But the ostriches of Hamilton, are talking about net-zero?

In my 30 years of manufacturing, I never encountered another manufacturer that wanted to change for the sake of change.  The risks and costs of being wrong in the slightest way were too great.  It’s fine for paper-shufflers to talk about net-zero because they’re nearly there to start with.  Transforming matter from one form into another takes energy, and capital, and simply to do it differently is fixing something that isn’t broken.

Metaphor mixing Hamilton Mountain MP Lisa Hepfner says, “We’re on the precipice of a seismic shift” in how sustainability is defined.  When we shift over that precipice, why not make the new definition something easy, and then call it a day.  Reaching net-zero may give moral satisfaction, but as a practical matter is a waste of time and economically disastrous for most.

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