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Re: How the Metro Vancouver transit strike could affect you (even if you don’t take the bus)
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I have never forgotten the transit strike of 2001, which lasted more than three months. All buses were absent from streets and highways. The strike disrupted the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people and affected every sector of the local economy, and now it has happened all over again with a repeat of the ripple effects in the Lower Mainland.
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Many people, like myself, can sympathize with employees who want a living wage and better working conditions with much-needed benefits, but when I consider the poverty-level wages many working people earn across the diverse landscape of our provincial infrastructure, as well as the many seniors and people with disabilities who can’t get to appointments and the many students who will be missing classes, it’s insulting to see well-paid transit employees bringing our daily lives to a halt because they are not satisfied with the money they earn to live on.
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If TransLink supervisors ever want to trade income levels with the people who are one late bill, missed paycheque or even a pension cheque away from ending up on the streets while barely being able to feed and house themselves, we would be grateful for what we would earn and the benefits that come with it.
Leslie Benisz, Vancouver
Careful drivers are not the ‘bad guys’
Over the last several weeks I have been hearing of several bad traffic accidents that involve multiple serious injuries and/or deaths, just in the Okanagan area. Two of them, east of Olalla on Highway 3A, were one week apart in the same location — a location where you have to wonder, “How could such accidents even happen?”
I blame it on maniac drivers, of which there are way too many out there. I also believe there are more of them out there because back in the day, when Todd Stone was transportation minister, he brought in the “holding up traffic” offence. The suggestion was that slower drivers cause accidents because people drive erratically to get around them. Do you see a problem here? The slower, law-abiding driver was seen as the problem.
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I understand that when a posted speed limit says “maximum,” that means that is the fastest a person is allowed to drive. It seems some drivers mistake “maximum” for “minimum.” A person should be allowed to drive slower than the maximum speed limit without being penalized, harassed, or bullied. Harassment and bullying are more rampant out on the roads than ever before. I experience it and I’ve witnessed other drivers experience it.
This law needs to be removed and the messaging needs to be put out there to slow down, keep your distance, show patience, and no harassment and bullying. For Pink Shirt Day coming up in February, ICBC should be putting anti-bullying messaging out there for drivers.
Make the dangerous drivers the “bad guys,” not the law-abiding and careful drivers.
Sylvia Krueger, Kaleden
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