Moncton City Council is Waisting my Money!

I've been contemplating running for mayor. The current mayor (I have no idea what his name is) is not running again. No council members are running.

 

So the job is up for grabs. I'm immensely qualified. I'm bilingual and I work in Moncton's primary industry: call centres. More importantly, I've only been in town a few months so I haven't been Monctonofied.

 

Monctonofication is the process where by you start to think that Moncton is a metropolis so it needs four lane boulevards everywhere. It needs big box stores and gigantic malls. It needs it's beloved Wheeler boulevard (a four lane highway around Moncton) that enables people to go nowhere fast.

 

And last night on Rogers Cable, I watched Council approve, with only one objection, useless traffic lights at the cost of $80,000 to "calm" traffic and "slow it down" (words of one councilor). The engineer was clear: "traffic numbers don't warrant the traffic lights".

 

80 grand, of my money, to slow me down on my way to work (I walk or take the bus). The "intersection" in question is located at Betesborough and St-George. The other side of the intersection in the parking lot of a church.

 

80 grand pays for a lot of police surveillance. My other beef is the foolish belief that traffic lights are inherently "safer" than waiting for a clear spot. One of the councilors passioned arguments was that he once waited behind a lady who waited FIVE WHOLE minutes before being able to turn left onto Saint-George during rush hour! Oh the humanity!

 

An expensive four lane boulevard is built to move vehicles efficiently and quickly. Then, expensive traffic lights are installed at little used "intersections" to slow down traffic and make it purposely less efficient.

 

Blind people could successfully jay walk across Saint-George at rush hour. And yet Monctonifed Moncton City Council thinks that the boulevard needs 80 thousand dollar traffic lights at a church parking lot.