Trains, Cranes and No More Cheap Flight Deals

It's been quite a time for the traveller lately: a couple of air crashes in August followed by a CTrain in Calgary being attacked by an Enmax crane last Wednesday. Then, Thursday saw a plane crash of a different kind, when Zoom Airlines went spectacularly out of business with the repo man turning up at Calgary and Glasgow to repossess some planes. My father, the master of bad timing, purchased Zoom tickets on Wednesday, just one day before the company collapsed, and is now fighting with anyone who will talk to him (ie the bank) to get his money back but I think there's more chance of Vladimir Putin kissing George Bush on the lips.

So, the one airline that offered non-stop, year-round flights between Calgary and Glasgow has, well, stopped and I must admit that I'm finding it quite sad, kind of like the way I felt when Freddie Mercury died, although that's kind of weird, I suppose. I liked Zoom, they were good at what they did and they made it possible for us to move to Canada without becoming totally isolated from our friends and family.

I had a thought over the weekend; suppose someone were to establish some sort of non-profit organisation, dedicated to providing affordable trans-Atlantic travel, kind of like a travel cooperative. The more I thought about it, the more excited I became - sign up 1000 people in the southern Alberta area, get them to contribute $20/month and you have $20,000 a month or $240,000 a year with which to charter planes. A volunteer executive board in the cooperative would put together a travel schedule that could be booked by the membership just like an airline and would also be responsible for the travel rota, budget planning and other administration. It all sounded great, a travel revolution no less.

Then, I looked up the cost of jet charter. In order for my scheme to be viable, I imagined giving every member the chance to travel every year, in a plane would have to accommodate at least a couple of hundred people, so approximately 5 trips per yer. But prices for chartering a commercial-sized airliner are in the region of $10,000 - $20,000 an hour, so for a nine hour flight from Calgary to Glasgow you would be looking at up to $180,000 (actually another site quoted around $300,000 for such a flight). Remember, that's one-way plus all the associated fees!!

So, maybe my idea wasn't so revolutionary after all. Even for a 30-seater jet, the one-way cost is in the order of $65,000 so, with a thousand people contributing $20 month, we could only hope for 1 transatlantic trip per year, meaning that members get to Europe once every 33 years !!!! Even with a plane that carried, say, 300 people, members would still only be able to travel once every 3 years, incurring a personal cost of $720.

Oh well. Looks like we're all stuck with the traditional transport methods for a while yet. Let's just hope that the other airlines stay in business and keep their prices decent.

Excellent...

It's official; Canada is now the Mr Burns of the world with our $6.8B world trade surplus (http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=e7706cbb-967f-4a0a-8cd6-017921f987ae). Let's celebrate by driving to the forest in our 4x4s while there's still oil and trees in the country.

Oohhh, Canada, Mr Burns. Now I'm thinking who would the other cast members be. Can't let this pass - here's my World Simpsons and it's sure to offend SOMEONE so please also accept my apologies, don't take it too seriously and feel free to comment ! See if you can work out the reasoning behind my choices.

Homer : China
Bart : Pakistan
Lisa : India
Marge : Tibet
Millhouse : Sri Lanka
Flanders : Italy
Moe : Germany
Mr. Burns : Canada
Smithers : Scotland
Chief Wiggum : United States
Ralph Wiggum : Poland
Disco Stu : Brazil
Krusty the Clown : Israel

Boy, that was harder than I thought.

Where's the Choo-Choo ?

I don't actually live in Calgary, but in a little town to the south called Okotoks (which is native for "Where did all these bloody English people come from??").

As I come from a country with an extensive public transport infrastructure (rail and bus), one of my biggest culture shocks was Alberta's lack of anything resembling public transport. For example, if you live in Okotoks and work in Calgary and don't want to drive to work, you have two options; carpool or get the commuter bus of which there are only two, running ten minutes apart, very early in the morning, and for only $240 per month.

So, if you have a job that entails working unusual or flexible hours, you have to drive.

Therefore, I'm interested to read about the Calgary Regional Land Use Plan which is beginning not only to address the lack of commuter services in southern Alberta, but also, how we remain sustainable in the the face of a potential 1.7 million new southern Albertans over the next 50 years. One of the effects of this plan is likely to be much tighter restrictions on development which may mean more concentrated residential development in order to maintain and protect green areas. While this concentration may have the knock-on effect of an easier transit implementation, I'm sure some people might wonder why, in a province as sparsely populated as AB, do we have to be packed together like the Stampede on family day?

The Calgary Regional Partnership has a website with all sorts of interesting info (including nice colourful pictures). You can see it at http://www.calgaryregion.ca/crp/projects/projects/regionalgrowth/presentations.aspx

Paying for It

This is a shameless plug for my novel, Paying for It. If you like sex, drugs, the UK, confict, deception, emotional dead people and a story with a big twist at the end, then this book is for you. You can buy it on Lulu at http://www.lulu.com/content/766999. It's on Lulu because I can't get a proper publisher to take it on but I think it's great (even though I'm biased). There's a lot worse things you could spend your $21.50 on (or $5 for the download version).

This post will be repeated periodically throughout the blog, just to remind people...

My Rings Are Killing Me

So, no more Olympics. Being a Scotsman in Canada, I am able to claim that my country of Sconada got 65 medals which places us 4th! Nice to see China doing such a good job with the games and so many people tuning in, even if they were hoping to see an organisational disaster or some protester being beaten. Also nice that Canada decided to show it's displeasure with the Chinese human rights record by not winning too many medals. Subtle as only Canada can be.