Charlie Smith is an asshole even on a very good day. Doesn't he hang up on everyone?

Ian is a good man and journalist.Best of luck to him.

Charlie has been working too hard and needs to avail himself of some of the stress reduction services offered in his mag.

All work and no play makes Charlie a big grumpy chuck.

Charlie has always been nice to me.

There you go.

I agree that Charlie Smith has always been polite and informative when I have talked to him. All two or three times, but what the Hell, I thought that was enough data points to make a trend line!

I am going to be reading his DOWNFALL piece on the way home. I expect it to be truly delicious.

And be advised I don't always agree with Charlie. I think on transit and highways matters he does what too many Vancouverites do, ... they listen to UBC planners and other non-transit users who wax poetic about transit and condemn all highways projects out of hand.

"non-transit users who wax poetic about transit"... hm. Haven't heard that before. Most of the non-transit users I know are scarcely aware that public transit exists.

There are too many transit users who think that as soon as you come out of the womb you should be given a welfare cheque and a bus pass.

Charlie is the best reporter on transit topics in the lower mainland and his in depth knowledge on transit history does him credit. Charlie and the Straight, is the only paper giving the straight goods on the RAV project.

Everyone has a grumpy day, but isn't this really old news as Charlie been the editor now for over one month!

You tell em, sleepswithangels. I guess, in terms of paid services for stress relief, you know wherefore you speak. How was it? Not only can you funckymonckys get paid, you also can't get laid. Except, as you have pointed out, by those getting paid.

"Most of the non-transit users I know are scarcely aware that public transit exists".

Well, obscurantist, I guess you've never had the signal privilege of listening to a stirring anti-Gateway, anti-Port Mann, anti-freeway expansion speech from the David Suzuki Foundation's Jim Fulton, ... who arrives at the meeting is his very fashionable Mercedes Benz.

He'll happily explain to the assembled crowd that transit is the ONLY way to go.

Budd, isn't that a bit of an ad hominem argument?

He is nuts and will take that paper from hip commentary to lunatic fringe

I don't think Lucy will be happy until Canwest Goebels owns every rag in town. Obviously we're all too stupid to form our own POV...we need big brother to point the way.
God forbid that an alternative viewpoint should get mainsteam distribution.

Most people (even those of us without the benefit of an exclusive private school education)use the correct spelling, i.e. "Canwest Goebbels". Two b's. Or not two b's. What was the question?

I don't think The Straight has been "hip commentary" for many, many years.

Charlie's the best! The rest of the Can West/Global - 24 hours crowd take note! Tis is nothing more than a pissing match between Holman, a Charlie Smith wanna be, and the real deal!

gee steve

I bet you can name every one of Hitler's ministers..probably have a pretty nifty collection of nazi paraphernalia too

Can you spell a word that means 'redneck nazi whackjob'? It has seven letters, starts with an H and ends with an s.

BTW: What do rednecks do on Halloween?

Pumpkin

Wow, sleepswithangels, you funcky types really are a bunch of asswads. First you bash unions, now this.

wow

I'd chip in for a brain implant for you if you could show by quotes where I bashed unions..no really...but that's not gonna happen because I didn't do it...and that kinda makes it clear for anybody WITH a brain that you are an insecure reactionary with no ability to comprehend even basic political theories or POV's.

Writing styles and 'states of mind' conveyed in print are like fingerprints so no matter what you call yourself your tiny little intellect betrays you everytime.

swpafwn

"How was it ?"

How badly do you want to know?

Do you have something against high priced (well earned) exotic stress relief?
That could explain your uptight 'tude.

"Budd, isn't that a bit of an ad hominem argument?"

Obscurantist, my education in Latin was cut short by my family's lack of good breeding. Am I to assume that this fancy phrase "ad hominem" means "Mercedes-Benz envy"? If so, ... I plead guilty. Actually, I would really like to have a VW Toureg with a diesel engine.

Jim Fulton really does drive a Benz around town while telling everyone else to use transit, and to oppose Gateway and Port Mann. And yes, I am not just tired by angry of this kind of really odious hypocrisy from people like him and Gordon Price and the rest of that completely phoney crowd of pretenders.

Budd
You and I share a similar lust for the DT. Did you know that it was pulled from the North American VW offerings soon after it was introduced. They have sold thousands of them in Europe since 2002. As expensive as the list price was here..it sells for over $100K there. Used ones start at 40K Euros.
It could be the ultimate vegan vehicle..running on renewable veggy/hemp oil...would sure piss of the oil industry...or it could take the pressure off them to become part of the human race.

Budd, I'll assume you're being honest when you don't know what the term "ad hominem" means. I expect you've heard it before, so you could possibly have looked it up on your own by now. But fair enough, I could've used plain English in the first place.

"Ad hominem" is when you counter an argument by attacking the credibility of the person making it. And I did say a "bit" of an ad hominem argument, by which I meant it isn't entirely unfair of you to make it (assuming that Jim Fulton does actually drive a luxury car and never takes transit, which I will assume to be true for the sake of argument).

Your argument seems to go like this: Jim Fulton and others are saying that solutions to Vancouver's transportation problems should be centred around improving transit rather than adding more lanes for private vehicles. Jim Fulton drives a private vehicle - and, you suggest, so do some or perhaps even most of the other people promoting this viewpoint (although you're a bit fuzzier on the details of what the other people drive and how much they drive. In fact, unless you follow Jim Fulton everywhere around town, I'm not sure how you can know his commuting habits).

The problem with this is that it's at best a very partial rebuttal to the arguments of Fulton et al. If there are people who promote public transit and never use it, sure, that indicates a certain amount of hypocrisy and ignorance on their part, although what they're trying to do is make transit a more convenient option for more people, including for themselves. More likely, some of the people you're criticizing have taken transit on a semi-regular basis, and some of them use it regularly. But never mind those people. And the other question is, even if some transit advocates aren't "walking the talk", what about the independent strength of their argument? They think there's a problem with car-centred planning. Are they right?

Good afternoon, obsurantist. Please don't be unduly angry when I tell you I do know what ad hominem means. It's playing the player, not the ball.

I saw Jim Fulton getting out of his Benz one day a few years ago on Granville Island, and I have never gotten over it. If someone has a Corolla that they use when transit won't do, ... well, ... fine. But when a guy forks out cash for a Benz you'd better believe he's going to be showing it off every chance he gets. To be fair, he had passengers with him, so it wasn't a single occupant vehicle. Still, I put Jim and Burnaby's Mayor Derek "Saab 960" Corrigan in the same boat as hypocrites who advocate transit for the hoi polloi and something a lot nicer for themselves.

Forty years ago in San Francisco they had a local referendum on building the BART, the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. One reason it passed is that some of the supporters were planning to drive their cars once the other guy took the subway and freed up some road space. And that's what happened. When BART was first opened it ran at low capacities for quite some time.

I believe that a city at Greater Vancouver's present stage of development needs much more investment in the road and highway system than in fixed rail rapid transit. I also object strongly to calling Skytrain rapid transit when its top speed is only 50mph. It's a joke, and a multi-billion dollar joke at that. I am kind of darkly hoping that RAV will be such a complete and utter bust, with total costs overuns and P3 "partners" running lilke mad for cover, that it will bring down the entire GVRD house of cards. After all, it's an ill wind that blows no one any good.

Budd probably knows that rising fuel prices will do more to force people out of their cars than any reasoned arguments for the use of transit. The real risk is that opportunistic politicians (e.g. Harper et al.) will bow to pressure from short-sighted owners of gas-guzzlers and either subsidize fuel costs with tax money (just as wasteful and stupid as Skytrain) or intervene in the market by imposing price controls and compensating gasoline producers with tax money. Either way guess who pays? Everyone whether they drive a nice car or none at all. Let the market make fuel economy an imperative, and buy a couple of sweaters instead of more asphalt.

No hard feelings, Budd -- I kind of figured that you knew what "ad hominem" means. I guess you can't knock an ad hominem argument if it works. The reasons you've given are at least a bit more substantive than seeing Jim Fulton get out of his car once, even if I don't agree with them, and we probably agree that RAV was a boondoggle from the start.

Skytrain may only go 50 mph, Budd, but that 50 mph is better than a car or bus at 100 mph. Because that 50 mph is 'grade-separated', ie: running in its own tunnel or overpass, unimpeded by other traffic or red lights etc.

So Skytrain IS 'rapid'transit. 50 mph is plenty enough.