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The Parkades are Full!

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[Updated 2026-10-11 with some minor edits and a new Updates section] Here's a new parlour game. One player is told to go online and find a letter to the editor or a Facebook post complaining about downtown Victoria. When they're ready, they place their phone face down on the table, and the other players take turns guessing what the writer was complaining about. The first player to guess correctly wins. What's should your first guess be? You could do a lot worse than "Parking".  Setting the Stage People hate it when they can't park next to their destination. People will drive to the mall and spend fifteen minutes trying to find the closest spot to the entrance, even when the lot is ¾ empty and an empty spot is 30 seconds farther away. If it wasn't for hockey, finding the closest parking spot would be the national pastime. And when people write these letters and posts, one of the common refrains is  THE PARKADES ARE FULL! So, back in June, I thought I'd...
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Jim Takes a Bike Share

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[Updated 2026-09-01 with some additional information from a CTV News article and some minor cleanups. Updated 2026-09-02 to fix a mistake: Langford used an RFP, not a pilot.] Friday, August 21 was the official kickoff day for the the City of Victoria's new E-Bike Share system. Victoria has a municipal election coming up in October, and, unsurprisingly to anyone who has followed the last few municipal elections, social media and the Times Colonist letters page are burning with outrage. Some recent letters are: Not enough parking even before the Lime invasion Why aren’t we using a Canadian company? Paying a high price for the rental e-bikes   What about the people who can’t use e-bikes? Comment: Victoria's taxpayers are subsidizing a U.S. e-bike business   The social media is worse, as usual, and is filled with people drawing equivalences between first generation bike shares (like the abortive U-Bicycle here in Victoria) and modern bikes shares like our new Lime system, and the...
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Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
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