Guelph Police Release Crash Stats for 2014

If you thought that things got worse on local roads last year in terms of car accidents and collisions, it turns out that you're right. There were 36 more collisions in 2014 than there were in 2013 according to new statistics released by the Guelph Police Service today. Amongst the statistics released were the worst month on the road, the worst day of the week on the road, the worst time to be on the road and three worst intersections in the city. What's the worst time to play the odds against traffic?

Don't Plough Me In

This sight greeted me on the way to work this morning. Nothing quite like trudging through the wind and the cold and the snow with the additional headache of having to deal with man-made obstacles.

Underpass Coming Soon?

 It's been rather quiet on the development front at the Lafarge site, after years of wrangling and wheeling and dealing, it seemed that something was about to be built on that land. Of course, that breakthrough came around 2008/2009, when most sides agreed to a plan that would see the area between the Hanlon, Paisley and Waterloo roads be developed as a mixed residential, commercial, and park space. And then... Nothing happened.

But is that about to change?

The Good, the Bad and the Points in Between

GO train service started up again this week, in a move that's been greeted by the vast majority as a tremendous next step in securing better intra-city transit options for the City and People of Guelph. My jubilation was somewhat elated though when local media pointed to the one or two dark clouds in an otherwise cloudless sky.

To begin with, the CTV station in Kitchener talked with a transit advocate that said that the new Monday to Friday commuter service would do nothing to help out students, not that it's really supposed to. But he said that one train could do the job of the extra buses GO puts on Friday to ferry university and college students from K-W to Toronto. That's a bit like getting chocolate cake for you birthday, but complaining because it wasn't chocolate fudge, because as a transit advocate, anything that improves transit in your area should be lauded for its existence, not derided for what it doesn't offer.

The other news item was from our own Guelph Mercury, who in covering the first day of GO service, mentioned in the first sentence of the article that the train was three minutes late. In the numerous problems with transit this year, such a statement throws in a problem with the way public transportation is viewed and covered in this city: most people, be it the people in power, city hall, or the mainstream media in Guelph, are people who don't take public transit very often. If they had, they'd realize that a three minute late train is nothing to sneeze at. I don't think I've ever boarded a train at the exact time it was meant to depart. Or put it this way, last week it was announced that American Eagle Airlines will start running flights into the Waterloo Region Airport. Can you imagine the mainstream media reporting that the first plane arrived three minutes late? At least as the lead of the report? Have ever been on a plane that's arrived at its destination at the exact time that was printed on your ticket?