Last Train to Clarksville?

(With Apologies to the Monkees and to Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart who wrote the tune.)

City council does it again. I think we need to nickname our new Mayor - Mayor Flip Flop (Mayor F/F) Within a week of being sworn in Larry O'Brien has changed his tune on two issues. The first was on taking a raise for himself and his councillors and now the second is on the Light Rail issue.

(As an aside to the first issue - the Mayor and councillors will still get a raise, don't kid yourself, but it just won't be as much as proposed. Mr. O'Brien has repeated the comment that he isn't Mayor for the money (he is a decidedly wealthy man in his own right). Also note that he has turned down the environmentally friendly city-provided car for his own Mercedes-Benz.)

During the campaign Mr. O'Brien came out against the proposed commuter rail project but Wednesday he cast the deciding vote at the council meeting that gave the go ahead to the project. The vote was 12 to 11 for proceeding with the project. One councillor was absent and he has now said that if he had been there he would have voted no which would have killed the plan (a tie vote is counted as a no vote). What's worse than continuing is the fact that they are continuing with a plan that does not have a downtown rail section, it was removed from the final plan.

Now I'm no Einstein (Please don't rush to agree!) But don't you think that if they run a rail link from Barrhaven to Baview/Transitway and succeed in getting ridership up where it should be they'll be pouring people off the trains onto the platform of the Transitway and will need to have lots of buses queued up to move them down Slater Street into the core? Wouldn't it be environmentally more acceptable to continue running the trains downtown to say Ottawa University then loop them back to Bayview, than to have even larger number of buses moving along what is an already crowded corridor?

Mayor F/F and council have decided to look at a tunnel for the downtown portion. This "look" will cost the city millions of dollars and will likely result in the decition not to proceed. Edmonton and another western city (Vancouver I think) have considered tunnels in the past and decided they were not worth the cost.

What council and Mayor Flip Flop have done, in my opinion, is to move forward with a partial solution. This is a handicapped plan which will not serve the commuting public they way it should.

Shame on the Mayor and Councillors for making this city look like the city in that Monkee's song. We'll be the laughing stock of Canada with this solution.

Cheers from the Valley.