Revenue Sharing

Crackdown on transit crime.

KFalc visited Europe and soiled his pants when he saw turnstiles at transit stations. After returning to British Columbia and changing his pants, he started talking about it. He's also jazzed about SmartCards. They're like regular cards, except they're smart, so they're much better and they create efficiencies.

Turnstiles have been priced at $100 million plus, but Falcon hopes to find a private partner to build and operate the system on a revenue-sharing basis.

I'm confused; why does this have to be some kind of revenue-sharing agreement with a private partner? Ignoring for the moment the fact that the stations were not designed with turnstiles in mind (which makes retro-fitting them difficult?), can't we just buy the turnstiles from somebody, and pay them to install them, and maybe buy a service contract? Somehow we managed to install fare machines and ticket validators without having to enter into a long term revenue-sharing agreement with the manufacturers. If that's not true, please correct me. Maybe some company in Ohio or Manitoba gets two tenths of a penny every time I stick a two-zone ticket into one of those blue boxes (one tenth for one-zone, three-tenths for three-zone?).

Falcon said turnstiles weed out the hang-arounds and reduce the chance of an act of terrorism.

I included that quote because I wanted to tag this post with terrorism. Also, I'm amused by the thought of terrorists whose plans are thwarted because they're too cheap to cough up $2.25 for a skytrain ticket.

Ahead of the curve, Leading the way

The NDP is not messing around. The Conservatives have been talking about Senate reform. Elected senate and term limits, and so on. The NDP is way ahead of the curve on this.

NDP wants referendum on Senate

The NDP has called for a referendum so Canadians can vote on whether the Senate should be abolished.

Abolish!

I can imagine the No side producing a television commercial featuring highlights of Senator Frank Mahovlich scoring goals for Team Canada in the 1972 Canada-Russia summit series. The Big M wants to continue serving Canada as he did in this historic series.