Advanced Driving Lessons: Heaps of Snow Edition

I have been driving in ice and snow for not just the fourteen years in Canada but the two years in Vermont and occasional winter conditions elsewhere.  Today's drive from Ottawa to Quebec City reminded me of the basics, but also taught me a thing or two that I had either forgotten or had not quite learned before (grading causes brain damage).

Sure, don't brake but control speed via the gas is fundamental.  Given folks plenty of room so that one has reaction time is key.  One of my faves: if possible, get ahead of the crowd so that their mistakes become irrelevant.

At least five drivers (I lost count) didn't master these basics since I drove past at least that many cars that had slid off the road. 

The new lesson related to passing when only one lane is mostly clear.  The tricky part is that passing trucks do help develop good tracks to follow, so following the passing truck to pass the slow cars makes sense.  But if the truck moves over, then the easy track ends.  Which raises the question of how close to follow the truck?  The answer: not that close. So, I had to be behind overly slow cars (slow is safe, super-slow can actually be dangerous as congestion is very bad---leads to braking and then breaking). 

Twas an interesting drive for the first part of the day, taking twice as long as it should.  Not too much slipping and sliding and skidding, but definitely potential for it.  I am here in Quebec to give two book talks and squeeze in some skiing on my winter break (tis our week-long break this week).  So, I was ambivalent about the snow storm--made driving harder but might improve the ski conditions ... except that there was also freezing rain.

We shall see tomorrow... hopefully I will have some nice skiing pics of me flying almost into the St. Laurence River.

Backing In? The More the Kids Learn

What you lose in sleep, you gain in updates?  Having a kid can mean learning about changes in how people think about things.  For instance, when my daughter took a course in CPR, I learned that the rates of compressing and breathing one is supposed to do are now different than when I learned.

Well, Teen Spew is about to become Driving Menace to Society Spew.  This weekend, she learned that the current recommendation is to back into parking spots and into driveways as it is safer to go forwards out of such spots than to drive forwards and then back out.

This is relatively new to me.  I guess I heard of such arguments, but did not have the weight of the safest driving school in Canada behind it.  I guess I kind of believe it, but I am not sure it is going to change my behavior as much as the lesson that one should use the lane to be closed for as long as one can--the new science of merging.  Why?

• because my two car garage is pretty narrow so backing in is problematic.  Also, far easier to access the trunk if it is pointing towards the street.
• my street does not get that much traffic, so backing out is fine as long as I am watchful for the 60 plus kids on the block.
• because backing in raises the risks of denting another car whereas backing out means that my car is more at risk.  

I do back in a decent amount of the time, but not to get into my driveway.  I do drive through a parking space in a shopping center to get to the next one so that I can head out.  But I think habit here will probably dominate the new lesson for me, unlike the new science of merging.

How about you?

Driving into the Past

Spent today driving to and from Quebec to pick up daughter in between sessions at summer camp.  Had serious deja vu, so I thought my readers should as well: the joy of QC infrastructure.

Random Posts Amidst the Snow

Actually, we have had very little snow thus far in and near Montreal, except for a brief and ill-timed snow storm on the morning we drove south for Thanksgiving.  This has delayed the annual trip to take the skis to the store to get them tuned for the new season.  As I commented on the lack of snow, my daughter said that there is snow up north. I replied: we are up north!  Ah, the joys of Canada in winter.

Anyhow, a few things came up this morning in Canadian politics that I wanted to touch on briefly:

• For Canada, the NAC FM is a NAC DM suddenly.  That is, twice a year, the Foreign Ministers of NATO countries meet to discuss a variety of alliance issues, such as Afghanistan, Libya, enlargement, missile defense, etc.  This is called the NAC FM for North Atlantic Council with Foreign Ministers as the representatives.  The NAC DM is a similar event for Defense Ministers.  The fun story of the day is that Peter MacKay is running off to be Canada's rep at the NAC FM even though he is Canada's Minister of National Defence.  Why?  Because he lied is confused about using a search and rescue helicopter for his own convenience while on vacation.  Yes, this is a misuse of public resources, but this is also the kind of stuff that gets media attention, more so than some of the difficult problems that face Canada's defence community.  
• Canada cannot afford a modern air force, army and navy, so it really needs to pick only one or two services or address the reality that jack of all trades here definitely means master of none.
• The submarine disaster will continue to plague Canada for a while to come despite various denials.  The reality is that the subs Canada bought from the British don't work.  Talk about sunk cost.
• What happened to transformation?  That is, will DND really cut headquarters costs, even if not as LTG (ret.) Leslie advocated?  
• Most importantly, what the hell is going on with the position of Minister of National Defence when it seems likely that MacKay was not consulted (nor was the military) when the Prime Minister planned to send trainers to Afghanistan in the aftermath of pulling out the combat forces out of Kandahar?  That is, no experts were consulted, and the guy who is responsible for the military was not in the room.  So, what does that mean for the quality of defence decision-making?  And yes, I keep going back and forth between defense and defence (holy conflicted identity, Batman!).
• The Parti Quebecois Language Critic (the representative in charge of the party's stances on language) said that he would not be answering questions at press conferences in English.  He felt that there is only one official language in Quebec, and he should not give standing to any other.  Well, since his party is unlikely to get significant votes from Anglophones, he is not sacrificing any votes.  Still, he is as presumptious as all get-out, as he says that France's leaders speak French when they go abroad, why not the leaders of a French state, such as Quebec?  Ah, but Quebec is still part of Canada, for the time being anyway.  It is not the equivalent of France (although we do wish that Quebec's health care was as good as France's....).   
• His party's leader, Pauline Marois, said she will still answer questions in English.  Of course, she has been failing so miserably (her party just lost a by-election in an historically Liberal but largely Francophone district despite her spending a great amount of effort at a time where the Liberals are quite unpopular across the province).  
• This reminds of the time I got stopped for speeding, and asked the police officer if we could do the transaction in English since I didn't want to make any mistakes in this kind of high stakes situation.  He said "I don't have to" and then proceeded to speak to me in English.
• One last language note: when I lectured in French on Tuesday, the students immediately broke into applause.  I guess they appreciated the effort.  Either that or they knew it would be quite entertaining, as in slapstick comedy....
• Construction mess continued.  One of the main stretches of the Turcot interchange (from the city to the bridges across the island) has such significant problems that much money will be wasted with cops being posted to make sure that trucks bypass this area.  Of course, this also means that their detours will mess up traffic patterns throughout key parts of the city.  Driving in this city was never fun, but is becoming increasingly awful.  Indeed, now employers on the West Island are advertising the traffic problems as a reason for folks to take lower wages to work in the suburbs.

I will miss McGill's students, but will not miss the challenges of getting to and from them.

Whose Afraid of Montreal Tunnels?

Me!  I don't need this article to influence how I drive.  I went south this past weekend and drive west off of the Island even though it meant I then had to drive southeast to dodge the broken bridges and tunnel.

Still, tis a bad sign when a newspaper has to ask the public if they are afraid of the repaired (?) tunnel.  Transport Quebec has uttered lost any of its remaining credibility.  Maybe I should get a boat and make $$ by ferrying people?

Pardonnez-moi, Où Va L'argent Arrêter?

I thought maybe the folks in Transport Quebec might understand it better in French, but:

Where does the buck stop?

Apparently not with the Minister.  The latest in Infrastructure Collapsing Watch 2011™ has Transport Minister Sam Hamad blaming the contractors.  That might be believable if this event were not part of a systematic pattern and a systemic breakdown.  Check just today's top stories on the Montreal Gazette's website:

• Which Routes Worry You? 
• Sinkhole closes street in east-central Montreal Note--one of the streets is supposed to be one of the alternatives to the highway that has a collapsing tunnel.  
• Dorval Circle cost soars, work extended:55% increase; Project won't be finished until 2017 Note that this is the main connection between the airport and the city, so the first experience most people will have in Montreal is dysfunctional infrastructure.  Talk about transparency. 
• Champlain Bridge: Motorists beware - major work this weekend. Note that this means that two of the major bridges cannot really used much for folks who want to flee Montreal.  For my summer vacation, this means driving west to leave the island and then drive southeast to get back to the route we need.

The buck should stop with Hamad--that his ministry is UTTERLY FAILING.  Since he has been at the head of this organization as failures in infrastructure, failures in communication, and failures in responses to the infrastructure problems have repeatedly occurred, should he not focus less on the contractors and more on ... himself?  I don't know if there is anyone better to do his job, but can anyone do it worse?  We need at least some symbolic accountability--he needs to get his ass fired or he ought to resign if he has an ounce of conscience.  The last time I saw government so repeatedly and systematically fail to do its job was perhaps in the aftermath of Katrina.  At least, those folks had a huge natural disaster with which to share responsibility. 


Hamad has now agreed to review his ministry to see if it could organize repair work better.  Um, horse, barn, get it.  Fire his ass now!  The buck stops with him.

Tunnel Collapse Update

One of the questions that comes up whenever a Montreal piece of infrastructure collapses (and yes, it does seem to happen often) is: don't they inspect these things?  Yes, yes, they do.  They just don't do anything about it.  The tunnel that collapsed this weekend was found to be in deep trouble three years ago, but nothing was done.  Actually worse than nothing as repairs on the sides of the tunnel, including using high pressure water blasting the sides, may have actually destabilized the ceiling of the tunnel. 

So, we have a two part process: ignore the results when problems are found; go ahead with some efforts to fix but ignore what these efforts might do to the rest of the tunnel.  What this tells us, as if we did not know before, is that there is something deeply and SYSTEMATICALLY wrong with Quebec's political system that allows infrastructure to fall into such a state of disrepair and then the lame efforts to deal with this problem end up causing more problems.  This would be stunning if we were not already stunned already by the previous events and revelations.

The newspapers, including letters to the editor, are clear that we understand that there is no accountability in Quebec.  The transport ministry has tried to cover things in secret sauce by claiming that documents cannot be released as they would affect bidding, or because the civilians would not be able to understand them.  But the larger dynamic is that of nationalist politics.  Elections rarely turn on good governance or its absence but on the nationalist issues of the day, whether it is hating immigrants a few years ago or on separation.  So, politicians are not held accountable for the rubble in the streets, whether the rubble is from collapsing bridges or from World War I battlefield-like potholes. 

While the Parti Quebecois is now criticizing the provincial government for being opaque about this stuff, I have no doubt that they will focus more on how best to get my daughter out of English schools when they come back into power, rather than on fixing the roads, bridges, tunnels, etc.

Driving in Montreal is Like Comedy and Poker

It is all about timing--don't be on a bridge as it collapses, don't be in a tunnel when 15 meter hunks of concrete collapse.  Seriously.  We were not going through that part of the tunnel this weekend (twice) for the comedy festival, as our exit was right before it-where there was yet more construction.  But to get to the other side of downtown--to the TV stations where I did media (when they still cared about Afghanistan), to the distant frisbee fields (before I stopped going to such distant fields because the construction and traffic became too insane), to La Ronde (the Six Flags park), one would have to go through this tunnel.  And to get to downtown itself, there is an earlier tunnel segment right before this exit that is made of the same material--crappy.

The city and province were so lucky that no one was under the concrete when it fell as it is a busy highway.  The sad thing is that no one will hear the alarm bells that this event will ring precisely because they are deaf from all of the other bells already ringing.  Oh yeah, one reason to take this particular road is to get to the one bridge that is more or less okay since the other two major bridges that are on the other side of this tunnel are falling apart.

I rely for worktime commutes on the train system.  And now I will simply avoid driving through downtown unless I absolutely have to do so, as I have no reason to expect that the city and province will provide a durable solution to the collapsing infrastructure.  The big concern is figuring how to get to New York for our summer vacation with the bridges falling apart.  The alternative of going west and then east adds much time, but going on a bridge or through a tunnel as they collapse might mean far less time ... on the planet.

Carmegeddon? Montreal Scoffs

LA develops a bit of panic over the closing of 405, a key freeway through the city.  I was flying to and beyond LA as this weekend of construction was approaching.  Apparently, it was not as bad as feared.  As I heard more and more about this, I could not help but be amused.  Why?  Because LA was reacting to an announced closing while Montreal was just reeling from a closing of a key part of a highway that surprised even the government.  Contractors went ahead with a project without the government agency being too clear about the timing.

Indeed, Thursday night I was driving home from the Nasty Show (which was very funny, although we think last year's might have been funnier) and was gleeful to just make it on to the highway as they were closing the on-ramp.  Otherwise, I would have had to drive around looking for other entrances to the highway that might have also been closed.  A fun Montreal game--looking for the random on-ramp that is still open.

So, LA prepares the public, and the public reacts by staying home.   Montreal does not even know what is going on and tends to message poorly.  But the Quebec folks would say--we cannot learn from LA.  Montreal is unique, they would say.  Oy, I would say.

Escape from Montreal

My parents visited us this week, and now I am wondering if they can leave.  One of the major bridges is now closed for repairs in the direction of the south shore.  Another is at risk of being closed at a moment's notice.  Why?  Because these bridges are falling apart.  You would think that a city that happens to be on an island would have secure means to get to and from the island.  If there is anything here that testifies to mismanagement by the province and by the city better than the bridges falling apart, I do not want to hear it. 

So, I am imaging what a third "Escape from" movie would be like.  In the first one, Snake Pliskin (Kurt Russell) is dropped into Manhattan, which has been made into a prison, to rescue the President.  In the second, he has to escape LA (the plot was pretty forgettable).  In the third, he is simply visiting Montreal for a festival (jazz or comedy), and finds out that all of the bridges to get to the south shore are closed.  What will he do?  What will he do?  Kidnap all of the politicians to force them to spend more attention on the bridges than on a new hockey arena in Quebec?  Only if he wants to be driven mad by the infighting and nationalist posers. 

Finding a Spot?

I am a big fan of Tom Vanderbilt's posts on traffic and parking stuff.  His latest riff on parking makes a great deal of sense, which means that Montreal is sure to screw it up.