Gondola

Wednesday February 17, 2016

2016-02-17Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday February 17, 2016

Hamilton is Hot!

Unsurprisingly, both politicians claimed victory in the Great Sledding Showdown at the Garth Street reservoir this weekend.

By Graeme MacKay, Editorial Cartoonist, The Hamilton Spectator - Friday November 13, 2015 Lobby begins as city to choose tobogganing hills Council has signed off on a plan to identify and make safe at least three city-owned snow hills this winter for sanctioned sledding - despite a long-standing bylaw ban. It could cost close to $40,000 for the city to add signage, hay bales, monitoring and any other required safety features to the as-yet unidentified hills. But the race to add favourite hills to the list has already begun - and the city could end up approving more than three official tobogganing spots. City staff have promised to report back this year on likely locations. (Source: Hamilton Spectator) Hamilton, Ontario, minecraft, children, sedentary, toboggan, tobogganing, winter, sports, fitness, litigation, legal

Friday November 13, 2015

Regardless, tobogganing fans were the clear winners Saturday as the city officially opened one of three sanctioned sledding hills, ending a much-maligned ban that earned unwanted international publicity for Hamilton last year.

“We’ve put the fun back in winter,” declared Mayor Fred Eisenberger before hitting the slope at the popular — and now legal — sledding hill. “And, ah, hopefully we have no more lawsuits … If anyone is thinking about lawsuits, just get back in the car.” (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð Saturday January 9, 2015 Hamilton Harbour becoming giant goldfish bowl Millions of tiny ones are swimming around after a summer that saw weather and water conditions turn Cootes Paradise into a massive breeding ground for the carp-like creatures. The non-native fish species Ñ that people buy as pets and sometimes, ill-advisedly, release into local waterways Ñ have suddenly gone viral in the bay and have become the latest complication in its rehabilitation. It used to be that goldfish in the Ontario outdoors had a very low survival rate and little success at reproducing. But officials at the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada say that's been changing in recent years in the warmer weather we've been experiencing. They've noticed exponential increases in numbers being counted at the Desjardins Canal Fishway Ñ from 20 or less per year in the late 1990s to 2,500 this past spring. And early this winter, millions of five centimetre, young-of-the-year goldfish have been seen swimming in giant schools at various locations in the harbour, including the section of the canal below the railway bridge. "They seem to be heading toward taking over," says Tys Theysmeyer, the head of natural lands for the RBG. Becky Cudmore, an invasive species expert with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, says it's a problem being noticed at numerous locations in the lower great lakes, with Hamilton Harbour being a particular hot spot. "With increased warming trends we're seeing an increased ability of some fish species to survive in areas where we wouldn't think they could survive," she says. Theysmeyer says low water levels in the early summer in Cootes Paradise Ñ where fish tend to reproduce Ñ that suddenly rose later on also assisted goldfish reproduction. Shallow water is good for eggs, slightly deeper water is better as the tiny fish start to swim around. When water levels jumped 50 cms, d

Saturday January 9, 2015

Meanwhile, Hamilton Harbour has a new problem to add to its list of woes — goldfish.

Millions of tiny ones are swimming around after a summer that saw weather and water conditions turn Cootes Paradise into a massive breeding ground for the carp-like creatures.

The non-native fish species — that people buy as pets and sometimes, ill-advisedly, release into local waterways — have suddenly gone viral in the bay and have become the latest complication in its rehabilitation. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Friday December 11, 2015 Payday loan industry comes under microscope The province is moving to protect vulnerable people from cash stores and collections agencies Ñ but a local councillor calls the efforts "half-hearted." If passed, new legislation by the Ontario government promises to increase protections under the Payday Loans Act, Consumer Protection Act and the Collection and Debt Settlement Services Act. The aim is to provide safeguards such as a cap on the rates charged by cheque-cashing services, a grace period for repayment for customers of rent-to-own services and reasonable costs for optional insurance on instalment loans. It would also offer longer repayment periods for repeat payday loan borrowers, and expanded rules against unfair collection practices from businesses that purchase and collect overdue debts. But Ward 3 Coun. Matthew Green says the legislation "doesn't go nearly far enough in terms of really tackling the core elements and the predatory nature of this industry." There are 813 licensed payday lenders in Ontario Ñ more than there are McDonalds restaurants. Roughly 35 of those are in Hamilton, according to the ministry's online database. For starters, Green wants to see the "ridiculous" interest rates on payday loans slashed. Green put forward a motion this summer to limit and regulate these stores at a municipal level, which would have made Hamilton the first city in the province to do so. Staff is now looking into the feasibility of that. In the meantime, he and a working group made up of local agencies, including credit unions, are actively researching a model for a market alternative low-cost loan service. Tom Cooper, director of Hamilton's Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR), says he'd like to see provincial legislation that enables municipalities to license lenders at the local level. He agrees there's more work to do on this. "At the end of the day É these services are predatory by nature and they'll continue to take a

Friday December 11, 2015

Meanwhile, The City of Hamilton is ready to get tough on payday lenders with a triple licensing whammy.

Under proposed new regulations, payday outlets will each have to fork over a $750 licensing fee.

Each outlet will have to display a mandatory poster showing the whopping annualized interest rates of their loans.

And all outlets will be required to display credit counselling information to borrowers.

The staff recommendations are intended to help people understand the financial dangers of using the high interest loan services, which are widely seen as preying upon the desperate and disadvantaged. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Saturday, October 25, 2014Meanwhile, until now, it’s been a pie-in-the-sky idea. But the city wants to take the idea of gondolas into the mainstream.

City officials are intrigued by the notion of gondolas that would go up and down the Niagara Escarpment and have just added the concept to the transportation master plan (TMP) to get public input on the idea.

Transportation officials have been talking about gondolas for “two or three months now,” said Al Kirkpatrick, the city’s manager of transportation planning.

The city is reviewing its TMP to determine how transportation will grow in Hamilton over the next 30 years.

The team is hosting public input sessions in June, Kirkpatrick said. And as it does, it’s asking people about gondolas as a way of moving people between the upper and lower city. (Source: CBC News)

Friday August 28, 2015Friday August 28, 2015Meanwhile, “Hamilton,” the Broadway musical phenomenon, brought its thrillingly diverse hip-hop-infused narrative nationwide — and beyond — on the Grammy Awards on Monday.

As expected the show won for Best Musical Theater album. The award was presented on-air and creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda rapped his acceptance speech.

“We won a Grammy, mothef—ers,” director and star Lin-Manuel Miranda told a live audience — as he raised the award to the air — from inside the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York, the show’s home on Broadway. (Source: NY Daily News)

 

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Saturday, October 25, 2014Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, October 25, 2014

Rising to the challenge: Gondolas belong in Hamilton

(Written by Joseph Sneep) Gondolas, a form of cable-propelled transit perhaps more usually associated with ski resorts, are not a practical addition to every city’s public transportation arsenal. In Hamilton, however, they are an ideal solution to that particular obstacle to urban mobility with which our city has always had to contend: the escarpment.

Last August, at a forum hosted at the Art Gallery of Hamilton called People First City Building: Focus on Sustainable Mobility, this idea received plenty of attention, and with good reason. Since then, interest seems to have waned.

However, with the beginning of the mayoral race in January, public transit will once again become a hot topic in municipal election debates, so I now want to present the case for gondolas as a valuable component worth integrating into any proposed future developments in Hamilton’s transit infrastructure. Whether our considerations be economic, environmental or even cultural, gondolas belong in Hamilton.

Michael McDaniel from Frog (an international innovation and design firm), the man behind a proposal for installing a system of gondolas in Austin, Texas, has calculated construction costs of gondola lines to be around $3 million to $12 million US per mile; this versus $36 million for light rail lines, and $400 million for subways

Considering Hamilton’s escarpment is about 100 metres tall at the three proposed light rail lines going up the escarpment (i.e., the A, S, and T lines of Hamilton’s LRT plan), the math reveals an estimated savings of at least $4.9 million. That alone should get everyone in the city thinking more seriously about cable propelled transit.

A gondola line travels at about 16 km/h, and can move between 6,000 and 8,000 people per hour per direction. According to projected 2031 ridership numbers from Hamilton’s LRT plan, this is more than enough capacity for lots of growth, which means gondola lines will not require any major expensive overhauls to accommodate future increase in usage: they would be a one-time cost.

And, unlike buses and trains, gondolas do not require an operator for every vehicle in service: the city would basically only have to pay one operator per gondola line running. Considering how many people a gondola line can move in a day, that’s great bang for our buck.

Hamilton Mayoral RaceGondolas would also significantly reduce day-to-day maintenance costs of Hamilton’s public transit system. Trains and buses were originally designed for use in flat environments where most of their work would be horizontal transportation, and that’s where they remain most effective. So it’s easy to see how the presence of the escarpment implies costly increases in the upkeep of these conventional forms of transportation: hauling all those passengers up and down so many times every day means that engine and braking systems of any light rail train or conventional city bus will fatigue much faster than those of vehicles travelling in flatter cities.

(Continued: Hamilton Spectator)

Freelance writer Joseph Sneep is working on a collection of short stories inspired by his upbringing in Hamilton. He prides himself more on this urban apprenticeship than his recently acquired MA in philosophy.