City should end wasteful `feel-good' spending
Ridiculous road initiatives should be scrapped, writes Greg Weatherdon.
They say when you find yourself in a hole, you should quit digging. The City of Ottawa should take this to heart, especially after Mayor Mark Sutcliffe's statements that the citizens of this city may face significant tax increases to offset budget shortfalls such as OC Transpo's $120-million deficit.
The LRT aside, our public transit institution needs a reality check. From the early days of the pandemic, when ridership went to almost zero, I watched workers tear up numerous bus stops in Kanata Lakes (and I assume elsewhere in the city) to expand the platforms from their shorter length to 30 feet, stating it was the new standard. It may be the new standard, but was it mandatory? I can't imagine how many millions this cost.
Recently, I've seen new wrought-iron park benches being installed on these same pads, yet never see anyone sitting on them. How many more millions were spent installing these?
What about the added cost and difficulty to perform snow removal? How many will be damaged by plows? Given Transpo's shortfall, someone should have just said no to these upgrades.
Another item that requires culling is the senseless amount of money being wasted on road safety initiatives. Of course, the city will argue that the funding for these initiatives is supported by the revenue from speed cameras, which is projected to be in excess of $60 million per year.
However, responsible fiscal oversight would dictate that these funds should be redirected to offset existing shortfalls. Instead, these new cameras have become catnip for council to justify new spending on excessive safety activities.
What is overlooked is that these safety initiatives, aside from the questionable effectiveness of many, is that they have become structural costs to the city. By that I mean, the costs are recurring and permanent.
For example, the excessive deployment of those vertical floppy lane restricters, formerly known as “edgeline bollards” and colloquially called flexi-boards, along with the “centreline signs,” need to be installed every spring, removed every fall and stored for the winter. No doubt millions are spent on this exercise every single year. Let's not forget the cost to replace the thousands that are damaged.
Other examples of ridiculous spending include excessive street-painting. For instance, on Goldridge Drive there are road markings indicating a stop sign 100 metres ahead.
Why is this even needed? In 14 years, I've yet to see any accident at this intersection.
The most recent spending addition I've seen is a big red stop sign painted on a road to indicate an upcoming stop sign. Why? And what about the fluorescent green intersection paint that never seems to last more than a season?
Once implemented, most of these items need to be maintained every year — at what cost?
Another clear waste of tax dollars is the “speed limit reduction” signage installed on residential streets.
One sign notifies that the speed is reduced, but the logic escapes me as to why there is another sign at the opposite end stating that it “ends,” placed approximately 10 metres from a stop sign.
A little overkill, don't you think? And what did each of these “end” signs cost to install? No doubt more millions.
These are just some examples of the ridiculous and wasteful spending undertaken by a city that can't afford it.
The writer Antoine de Saint-exupéry said, “Perfection is achieved not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.”
Maybe it's time for this city to get back to basics and cut spending on feel-good initiatives and give our wallets a break.