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General Road and Highway Discussion
Any idea why?
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@tomh009 Or just use household income. Look. I'm not saying there aren't questions. Just that flat fines are discriminatory.
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@ Jamincan I think they're just working their way up along the sides for the widening. Eventually both lanes on the ramp will just carry straight through (they'll become lane 4 and 5 of the expansion). This will be bliss!!!
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Danbrotherston: Actually, what you're proposing is discriminatory. But don't think that I'm implying that's bad: we discriminate based on income all of the time. Our income taxes are in almost all Canadian jurisdictions are discriminatory, and (even though there are often proposals) it's pretty unlikely we remove that form of income discrimination.

That merge onto the eastbound 401 will be much better when that change is made.
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That's the whole point of the project, I think. That, and doing the same thing for the Westbound lanes (that they'll "stay" and lanes 4 and 5 will just continue on to 8).

I have a love/hate thing watching this "ballet" play out every day. In another life I would have gotten a kick out of being a traffic engineer, because I have a really good eye for predicting how people move when driving.
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(03-23-2017, 09:25 AM)MidTowner Wrote: Danbrotherston: Actually, what you're proposing is discriminatory. But don't think that I'm implying that's bad: we discriminate based on income all of the time. Our income taxes are in almost all Canadian jurisdictions are discriminatory, and (even though there are often proposals) it's pretty unlikely we remove that form of income discrimination.

That merge onto the eastbound 401 will be much better when that change is made.

I don't disagree.  What I'm suggesting is "discriminatory" in that it seeks to charge a different amount of money for people who make different amounts of money.

But that does not make what I said wrong.

Flat fees are discriminatory in that the effective punishment a person feels for a specific offence depends on their level of income.

Frankly, I feel the second is a more serious problem than the first, but I realize this is a difficult thing for people to understand.

Although it occurs to me there is an extremely simple and obvious way to solve this whole problem.

Lets phrase fines in terms of docking pay, for running a red light you get a fine which docs you "20 hours of hourly pay".  Where hourly pay = total income / (40 * 52).  Now everyone gets the same "fine", 20 hours of pay.
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No, like I said, I wasn't disagreeing with your idea, I don't have a strong opinion about it (though I'm enjoying the conversation about it). I was just pointing out that the current system is not discriminatory (but might have bad outcomes) as you stated; your idea would be discriminatory (but might have better outcomes).

How would your last idea work for people who, say, don't earn any employment income? If you just live off of dividends, your hourly pay is zero?
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MidTowner - you're using a very specific and subjective (and, imo, incorrect) definition of discrimination where the only thing that matters is the absolute value of the monetary fine and you ignore the actual effects on a person's life.  

It's just as reasonable to define discrimination by ignoring the absolute value of the monetary fine and focus on the actual effects on a person's life (like how Dan suggests looking at "unit of hours worked").

Using a totally different analogy, I'd argue that a building with only stairs and no elevator/ramp is discriminatory to wheelchair bound people.  Even though each person is allowed access to the same physical structures - the way it effects one group of people is significantly worse.
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Or as a tax-based example. Some could argue that a flat tax rate is discriminating against those with more money because they pay (in absolute terms) more money. But I would argue that definition is very flawed and that requiring each individual to pay the same absolute amount in taxes is VERY discriminatory.
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(03-23-2017, 10:05 AM)MidTowner Wrote: No, like I said, I wasn't disagreeing with your idea, I don't have a strong opinion about it (though I'm enjoying the conversation about it). I was just pointing out that the current system is not discriminatory (but might have bad outcomes) as you stated; your idea would be discriminatory (but might have better outcomes).

How would your last idea work for people who, say, don't earn any employment income? If you just live off of dividends, your hourly pay is zero?

Simply, I would define hourly pay by your yearly income divided by 52 * 40 (or 37.5) or one year of work.  Would probably cover the 99%.  But I admit, I haven't run the numbers or really thought too deeply about it.  But this is generally how salaried employees have their wages compared with hourly employees anyway.

Of course, this doesn't even touch on issues of "wealth" vs. "income".  I realize many high income people live paycheque to paycheque as well.  But honestly, we're getting into the weeds of our societal problems.
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(03-23-2017, 11:14 AM)danbrotherston Wrote: Of course, this doesn't even touch on issues of "wealth" vs. "income".  I realize many high income people live paycheque to paycheque as well.  But honestly, we're getting into the weeds of our societal problems.

And certainly, into the weeds of "this is not really about roads and highways anymore".
It seems like a good place to wrap up the topic, at least in this thread.
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Partial list of scheduled road work in 2017 to plan your travels:
http://calendar.regionofwaterloo.ca/Coun...17#page=91
Everyone move to the back of the bus and we all get home faster.
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This is interesting:



I wasn't familiar with the term, and had to Wikipedia it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneckdown
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It seems kind of like desire paths, but for identifying space that can be eliminated from traffic instead of space that should be created for it.

I think one of the reasons we've ended up with such generous intersections is the perceived requirement to accommodate transport trucks (for deliveries, for example), and also to accommodate fire trucks. It kind of seems like the tail wagging the dog, but now that those needs are established, it seems like it will be difficult to reverse them.
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Are those not valid problems though? If the intersection is designed too tight, then what?

I think about things like this when waiting on my bike at Francis/Charles - the stop bar has to be soooooo far back because the buses can't make the turn otherwise.
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