A Trolley For The Forks?

Winnipeg Free Press
April 21, 2007
Page B1

The Forks CEO Jim August said he will start working next week on landscaping and a "green" transportation plan, including whether to locate parking behind the building against the rail line and how to set up some public transit or a people-mover trolley that can link the museum to other downtown attractions. A parking structure is really a last resort, August said.

You're damn right there should be an electric trolley service between The Forks and other parts of downtown, Mr. August!

I spoke on the topic of a downtown trolley/streetcar loop at the May 1999 Council meeting to create CentreVenture:
http://uwto.org/articles/transit_1999streetcar.html

Issues w/ American Satellite-Cable Networks

Arts & Entertainment Cable Network - I really enjoyed A&E in the late 80s and early 90s.Then they changed focus to more recent television police drama and I lost interest in the channel.

Black Entertainment Television - They need to expand the type of programs they offer to include Jazz, and maybe have a positive roll model Black family sitcom show.

CNBC - Why is Mad Money on so much and at a time after work when I want to watch a summary of the day's business news.

CNN -- Good when there's a natural disaster or something like that, but is too Rah Rah for the War in Iraq. Ted Turner shouldn't have sold to AOL Time Warner in 2001.

CNN HeadlineNews - Used to be a great service in the late 80s and through most of the 90s. Then in the early 2000s they changed their forumula and I stopped watching. There's opinion programming where there shouldn't be -- in prime time after a long day at work I want the headlines, not some schmuck telling me his or her opinions on things. HeadlinePrime needs to be focused on delivering the news, not opining about it!

The Golf Channel -- Not interested in golf as much because the commentators forcus too much on Tiger Woods. Well guys, there are other golfers out there besides him.

Speed -- Not interested in the NASCAR channel.

The Learning Channel -- This used to be a great educational channel until the late 90s. Then they started to change the focus to women's lifestyle programming, very similar to HGTv, just what there is already too much programming of.

Issues w/ Canadian Satellite-Cable Networks

The promise of having several satellite-cable networks, called "narrowcasting" is that we would be never far away from the genre of programming that we love. However, the promise has failed to deliver. This blog entry and the next one attempt to review the current status of Canadian, American and International television networks available today.

The CRTC licensed these channels. So they are partly to blame for not keeping the channel owners on their toes when it comes to making sure they have interesting content on most of the time. But it's also a failure of the Canadian Television Fund which helps pay for that Canadian content over all these multitude of channels.

My answer to the problem is to combine some of these channels. For example, do we really need 5 music stations, licensed to play music videos and none of them do, but intead feature reality television crap? Maybe instead of MuchMusic, MuchMoreMusic, MuchVibe, and MuchLOUD, they should consolidate into one MuchMusic station like originally. Also MTV Canada should be allowed to air music videos. In the end we subscribers would pay less for our television service and there would be fewer channels into which better programming could be produced or purchased. Everybody wins.

BNN

BPM:tv - The only music station that still plays music videos, although most of them can be classified in the "soft erotica" category. I find I have to turn off the tv because I find the "tits n ass" in the videos offensive. There is no need for most of it.

Bravo!

Canadian Learning Television - this channel isn't educational at all. It shows too much general interest entertainment programming like Monk, The West Wing, which are not the kind of educational type programming that CLT is licensed for in the first place.

CBC Newsworld - consists of three programs "Morning", "Today", and "The National". The network needs to develop more programs like in the old days of Newsworld.

CMT Canada - I'm not a Country music fan, so this channel is useless to me.

Comedy Channel - don't like 99% of the shows

Country Canada - should combine with The Documentary Channel to create CBC-2.

CP24 - This channel I like.

CPAC

CTV NewsNet - mostly better than CBC Newsworld

Dejaview - sometimes

Discovery Channel Canada - not as good as it was in the 90s. Don't watch anymore.

DriveIn - Watch very rarely.

Encore Avenue - OK. No complaints

G4 TechTv - Call for Help I watch, but the videogame shows are junk to me.

History Television - Nothing on here is interesting to me. It's mostly about various Wars.

iChannel - was good when it first started, but is not interesting anymore. I dumped the channel last year.

IFC Canada - Watch very rarely.

Lonestar - Don't watch.

Movie Central - OK. No complaints

Movieola - has too many 1920s/1930s Mickey Mouse cartoon shows.

MTV Canada - This service cannot play music videos because of the conditions of their current license. So if I want to watch music videos there's YouTube.

MuchMusic - Doesn't play music videos any more. Useless channel that used to be very good in the 1980s.

MuchMoreMusic - Was very good when it first started in October 1998, but also no longer plays music videos. Have to go to YouTube to watch a music video.

Mystery - Useless channel to me.

OLN - Good for the one month in the year that they carry the Tour De France bike race. Otherwise a useless channel. Maybe this channel could fold and TSN could pick up the annual bike race.

ROGERS SportsNet - I watch is sometimes when I'm interested in sports. They have good baseball and basketball coverage.

Showcase Television -

Showcase Action -

Showcase Diva -

Score - Don't watch this channel. I used to watch when it was HeadlineSports in the late 90s.

Scream - Rarely watch.

Space - Rarely watch. I probably need a rest from all those Star Trek series that were on during the 90s, and the other programming doesn't interest me much because it's poorly done.

Telelatino -- would watch more often if they had musical variety programming in Italian & Spanish, but most of the time it features English language American sitcoms. You can't really call this an ethnic station I guess.

The Documentary Channel -- Too many documentaries that focus on the drug trade and prostitution. And when they do have other documentaries, they rerun them too often in the day, so if you saw one doc there is no others to watch.

The Shopping Channel -- Longtime complaint I have is that there are very few items of interest to guys like electronics, gadgets, etc... Too many items for women.

TSN The Sports Network -- Sometimes I'll watch.

The Weather Network -- Way too many frequent interruptions for advertising. And the advertising is for hair care products or cars.

Treehouse -- Nothing of interest to me. Although it looks like Treehouse has lots of Canadian content, most of it is so cheaply produced that it doesn't warrant my time to view.

Tv Land Canada -- Has some interesting programming.

Tropolis -- Nothing of interest to me. This service used to be called Prime, and it had some
magazine programs that were viewable.

YTV Youth Television -- I used to watch alot of YTV in the first 4 or 5 years, then they started to change the programming and it's been downhill since then. I'm not into anime or violent programs like that.

Informal poll shows most Winnipeggers are smart on rapid transit issue

Last January 28th I set up a web poll at NewWinnipeg.com. I wanted to find out for myself what percentage of people want different types of rapid transit (BRT, LRT, subway), those that drive cars and SUVs and don't want any, those that cycle and prefer that mode of commuting.

Well, after more than two months and 43 votes later I can confidently say that Winnipeggers are smarter than the politicians when it comes to the rapid transit issue in Winnipeg.

The question was:

What form of rapid transit should Winnipeg implement?

And the results to now are:

Bus Rapid Transit 9% (4 votes)
Light Rail Transit 44% (19 votes)
Subway/metro 14% (6 votes)
None - my bicycle is my rapid transit 7% (3 votes)
None - my car/SUV is my rapid transit 26% (11 votes)

So even if you just extract the LRT and subway percentages from this poll, 58% of people like the rail option. That's impressive Winnipeg. Thanks.

So there you have it. Though the BRT Hippies like Axworthy (oh my gawd!, Lloyd Axworthy a "hippie"?), Jenny Gerbasi, Donald Benham, and Kaj Hasselriis, can be quite noisy and vocal about their rapid transit preference; in reality most people support rail in the form of LRT or a subway (even if that's just 4-car trains mainly underground) for Winnipeg. The BRT gang are in the minority. And as the climate of our planet is changing for the worse, the BRT Hippies will one day eat their words.

So I firmly believe that TRUWinnipeg is here to stay and we're on the right track. The rail transit advocates just need to make more noise than the BRT people. Soon the politicians will cave in because it'll be that mob like that Free Press article from 1990 predicted will happen if the politicians are not following the people's wishes on this issue.

Keep sending those pro subway e-mails and letters to the politicians people.