Calgary Transit Thoughts

Members of the Amalgamated Transit Union want to hit Calgary Transit with a strike. Do the members not remember how successful their last strike was? After 50 days or so they had to call in leadership from head office and settled for less than the last offer before the strike. That’s successful bargaining.

The ATA is saying now that a full strike may not happen, but that they may target the Federation of Cdn. Municipalities conference in early June, the ‘big cities mayors conference’ the week before, and the Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators, also the week before – do they really think the mayors and officials coming to the city for a conference take public transit? Shouldn’t they be targeting the city residents, the ones who ultimately pay their salaries? Better yet, shouldn’t they realize that it is not worth striking over 1% or 2%? Lose more than a couple of days of work, and you are behind.

The ATA may also target Stampede Parade day – union president Mike Mahar said it would be a “nasty day” to have mgmt running the LRT (source: Cgy Sun). That’s the sort of mature discourse we expect from union leadership. They are already targeting students with a work to rule campaign that has hit school runs hardest. Now they want to target parents, small children and grandparents? Nice work! Fools.

Apparently they have been working to rule – who can tell? Service is just as bad as always. This week I got the LRT driver from hell, who could only snarl “stand clear of the doors!”, rather than say it nicely.

It is no secret that Calgary is one of the fastest growing cities in Canada. City Council has a deliberate policy of restricting all day parking in the core, to encourage transit use. If this doesn’t make transit an essential service, what does?

More CT:
What is it with people parking cars? Is it really that hard? Today I pull into the parking lot and someone decided that they would park far away from other cars. Apparently their Sunfire is too precious, too special, or something to be near other cars. Except this is transit – the lot fills up eventually. Naturally, they parked too close to someone, and too far away from someone else, so that effectively a space is wasted. Smarten up, idiot! Just park reasonably close next to another vehicle. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so…