MY NEW BLOG ADDRESS IS http://DrivingDenver.blogspot.com/

I will archive all the old stuff as I go...

Sitting around the Rock Pile at work, the smokers believe we are being discriminated against.

The Rock Pile is what we called the smoking place in High School. It was at the end of the North Wing at Thomas Jefferson High School, by the Industrial Arts classes. In my Senior Year, we had Senior Hall where you could smoke inside. In college, we would make an ash tray out of the silver lining of the cigarette pack, smoke in class. When I started working, most of the problems were solved over a cigarette. My father died at an early age, probably because of smoking (Camels).

Habits are hard to break. I have tried to quit many times, I was fairly successful several times. Most recently I started again because I missed that socializing, but also because I rebelled at the anti-smoking campaigns. It makes me want to wear neither my seat-belt nor my motorcycle helmet. It seems that we are rejecting our history. Smoking in bars, and especially in Casinos, seems like it should be the last bastion of the evil curse of smoking. Let us die with dignity! Let smoking die with dignity!

Rocky Mountain News Rocky Talk Live recently had a contributor who said, "I have said many times that the 80 percent of us who don't smoke will triumph over the 20 percent of you who do. That's the way it works in a democracy. If you don't like it, you know where the door is." Wow, isn't that the same argument they used for Segregation not too long ago? Why do we need to control the lives of others?

I PITY THOSE POOR CAB DRIVERS.

Cab driving was the only job I ever REALLY had fun at. I did it for some 12 years, and then I worked in the phone room at Yellow for 6 years. (I was fired for Union Duties, but that is another story.)

The taxi drivers need to realize that they have to pay for insurance, dispatching services, gas, car upkeep, even accounting. With the new bill proposed they still will need all that, and even if they omit dispatching (and thus serve no public at all), add the $10,000 plus per year their company needs to pledge for serving the handicapped, they will still make no money to speak of. You need to take in about $30 per hour when driving. Hauling people (handicapped or not) and getting $8.10 for 15 minutes of work will not do it unless you can do 4 trips like that in an hour. It doesn't work! It takes you another 15 minutes to get another call, go and pick them up, etc. Maybe a Car Service like you see in New York City would work: pay a subscription fee and/or $20 minimum for a short trip.

Clearing the Snow in Denver: For Mayor Hickenlooper: I don't know if your advisors have been sheltering you from the truth, or if you have just developed an odd form of snow blindness, but here is reality:

The news says you claim that "only half of the 14,000 blocks in Denver have been cleared of snow," but I have my doubts that ANY streets have been completely cleared. Even major arteries like Colorado Boulevard have lanes in places that are impassible because of ice. If Colorado Boulevard is someone else's responsibility (as a highway), then please tell me a single street that is really completely cleared. Even downtown has blocks of ice that force cars to park somewhere else. Look at Broadway from 18th to Colfax.

Okay, maybe you mean streets that are somewhat cleared. Even around the schools where it was claimed that the streets were cleared after the 2nd week, the streets are cleared to pavement at no more than one lane. The feeder streets around my house (the streets with paint and traffic lights) are Yale and Dahlia. Both those streets have huge piles of old iced snow along both sides. When we get a little warmth, the streets become flooded and then ice over. When we start getting real melting, every single sewer grate will be covered with ice and the flooding will be worse. There is not one single bus stop that has been cleared along those streets to the curb, so even if homeowners could get to the sidewalks, there is no sense in clearing them.

The smallest side streets are just ice-packed, so we can get through them fairly well. The worst streets are secondary streets like Dartmouth, they are streets necessary to get to the small side-streets and so have had tremendous numbers of vehicles driving on them. That is where the ruts come in; my car is rather low, I scrape bottom anywhere along Dartmouth. You should have had those secondary streets cleared long, long ago. You say that Monday you will start putting out contracts to help clear the city blocks. Thank you, we will see how it goes.

If your Starter is Going Out--you know, sometimes it turns over and sometimes it just clicks a little--you might be able to last a year or more while it goes. It works better in warm weather, and better when the engine is warm. I found only one reference on the internet to a possibility of messing up your engine, it didn't sound too likely.

What finally happened was this: one day we started the car and the starter just kept going. You couldn't turn off the engine or the starter. I thought I might disconnect the battery, would that work or not? Before I got to that point, smoke started pouring out of the starter and finally stopped. The engine was apparently not damaged, but I had to replace the battery; it burned up as well as the starter. It was only a couple years old, but I guess I can mark it up to a learning experience. A bus driver told me later that he once had a job keeping generators charged. When one of the starters went out (stuck on), there were explosions, fire, and huge destruction. By the way, my 1994 Camry was made in the U.S.A., and it shows.

CLEARING THE SNOW: Denver has never before had so much snow sitting on the ground for so long (not in my lifetime, anyway). Snow here usually melts and goes away in a few days. I hope we will learn lessons from this snowstorm. We still have neighborhood streets everywhere that are piled with snow causing nearly impossible driving. After no plowing, the streets have become thick rutted ice. Only the highways and main streets are in good condition, and even the main streets still have too much snow to get to the sidewalks and bus stops. The individual cities are responsible for clearing the streets around bus stops, individual property owners are responsible for the sidewalks to the bus stops.

My proposal is to have contractors (as the city does now), but have little contractors with little plows and snow blowers to do the neighborhoods; have them on call to start plowing whenever the snow hits 3 or 4 inches or so. It might have to go through the Department of Transportation rather than through the local governments. Use the big equipment to haul away the snow if necessary.

Give these contractors (and any big equipment doing major streets) instructions to:

1. Do not block any cars.
2. Do not block any bus stops (50 feet clearance would be nice).
3. Do not block any driveways.
4. Do not block any sidewalks.
5. Do not block any sewer grates.

Of course if lots of cars are parked along a street it may not be possible to keep clear of everything, but even the act of moving the snow when only a few inches have fallen will help to keep the piles down. If these contractors have time within their contract, they could also clear sidewalks, especially for the elderly and disabled.

Colorado's Labor Peace Act has made the state a strange place within the labor movement/anti-labor movement. Our newly Democratic Legislature and Governor may move our state closer to either a Right to Work state or a Right to Union state. But I think that it will not really change much at all. It would make it easier to require Union Membership, but the truth is that when a given company has reached the point where a Union is necessary (evil management), they will have no problem getting MORE than 75% of the employees wanting a union anyway.

Some are saying that repeal of the Labor Peace Act will be "unfriendly to business," but that is not true. The Right to Work states are the states that businesses do NOT want to move to (states like Oklahoma and Arizona as opposed to states like Missouri and California, for instance). The Right to Union States have higher quality of life, as well as MUCH higher income.

WHAT IS FAIR Holiday Pay.
On December 22 and December 29, Denver was devastated by snow storms that made it impossible for most people to get to work. State and local officials recommended that people not travel except for an emergency. Because these days were on Fridays, RTD made sure that we would miss our Holiday Pay because we had "an unexcused absence" the day before Christmas and the day before New Years. We missed pay for one day, why take away the holiday as well? That is just mean spirited.

Okay, we are in the Transportation Business, we need to go and help the traveling public. MAYBE we could have gotten to work if RTD had provided a way to get there and get home again. The buses really weren't running very well, the 46 bus where I live did not go down Dahlia very well at all. Why don't we REALLY encourage employees to take public transportation with a guaranteed ride home program of our own, and pay for missed time if it is the bus's fault that we get there late. We could be your ears and eyes to the REAL bus and light rail service, you could make some of the money back with fines given to the sub-contractors (they really are the ones who miss the most!)