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Epcor started as a municipal power company that expanded into water service. Calgary's electricity generation was private all the way (don't know when distribution changed), but water was public. If I had to guess, Edmonton's need to carry a far larger debt load for electricity generation...

The 789 is the wrong aircraft for this distance. Air Canada is desperately waiting for 78Xs to shift to their long legged routes currently served by 789s to drastically improve route economics by being able to carry appreciable cargo loads that distance. For AC that is also sea level at both ends.

Local government own source revenue is at the lowest point in 25 years in Canada (down to 2.9% of GDP in 2023) mostly because cities refuse to use the tools they have. If they grew taxes at the rate of economic growth to the average revenue from 2009-2019 (3.3% of GDP), they'd have 15% more...

What is old is new again. Bring back the Discotrain!

surface stations don't cost very much.

One can get close to China without becoming 'integrated'. Purchase agreements, debt financing can enable projects without full-on control. Plus any sales benefit from optionality - everything needs to go on the ocean. They felt quite burned by Northern Gateway, the gap between rhetroic and the...

which cuts off cuba from gasoline. which might be the point?

The amount of surface water between 2004, 2005 and today: at least it and the accompanying soil conditions are a known known. Structures likely will need foundation sealing and methane venting. For people who don't want to dig:

Not exactly true. It is just the city has to consider the university facility as an asset to the community, and consider that when allocating grant money from the feds and province. The city of course wants its stuff funded, not things at Canada Olympic Park or the University when funding those...

The city had/has an incentive program to nudge people to low flow fixtures. Then, the city banned driveway car washing, and required car washes to reuse water. They raised prices to reflect costs. watering your lawn is expensive. Plenty of older facilities have their own water licenses and...

Much easier just to sniff up bluetooth data.

Alas, this is just not true. To implement one that works requires accepting tradeoffs that make it barely more useful than paper passes and tickets, or ballooning in scope and complexity to try to implement what people think are basic features but are really hard to do (fare capping, online...

Whether they have it or not, they will think they have it. Iraq recovered to its 1990 level of production this year. The energy literacy at the highest levels likely isn't there. This isn't wildcatting.

Pretty cool! Unfortunately it all comes back around to freight rail being too successful in Canada. The CPKC is pushing 37 trains a day on average through the system, up from 33 or so two decades ago. To add 16+ trains a day (8 round trips) to the line for the stretch just isn't feasible without...

Good thing that project has already been funded, and the project to create resiliency so there isn't a single point of failure which degrades so much capacity.

Calgary had two failed rollouts and other systems have cost hundreds of millions. I think a more likely upgrade is to the terminals on the buses to support credit and debit cards/phones. Apparently the hardware is all there (or it is a relatively simple upgrade). Much more simple than an...

Is a ghost town after 6 pm.

My dream for this is the main hall of the north building of the Telus convention centre. There were concerns about it being even more uneconomic as a convention centre after the BMO expansion was finished. When else do you get a large column free hall that has great loading dock facilities...

Most cities that build airport links find they underperform compared to other parts of their system. Airports are bad trip generators compared to the number of people coming and going proximate to the airport (what we are being told when we hear X people work at the airport, plus passengers).

It aligns to a potentially future 7th and 8th Avenue subway. Built to save a boat load of trouble in the future, not to be used anytime soon.