Don't Leave Home Without Greenlink

Seriously, how much time wasted and how many credit card, air and hotel points have been earned by City Hall people and their consultants flogging Greenlink rather than trying to figure out how to work with the Province? Do the travel rewards belong to them personally for use by them for their private purposes or do they go to City Hall to be used for City business in the future? After all, City taxpayers pay the shot!

Thanks to Gord Henderson, we learn about more Greenlink travel. Maybe taxpayers will be fortunate and all of the costs will be paid for by the organizers. In any event, a nice perk for those involved: world travel at the expense of someone else.

Gord is such a character. He knows that Bloggers will check up on what he wrote. I know he is egging us on. But what the heck, he is doing me a favour and so I better do as he expects or I won't get any more gems of information from him.

He wrote in a recent Saturday column:

• "Landmark? Visionary? Exciting? We have that in spades in the GreenLink plan developed by traffic guru Sam Schwartz and the New York-based PB (Parsons Brinckerhoff) engineering and design firm.
  
  The plan that the McGuinty government and its hired help found unworthy of serious consideration has been basking in the glow of accolades from professionals around the globe.
  
  In late May, at the World Tunneling Congress in Budapest, attended by thousands of tunnel experts, GreenLink was given its moment in the limelight.
  
  "This was really a signal honour, coming from the most prestigious underground construction industry forum in the world. It's our all-star game," said Nasri Munfah, PB's tunnelling genius, of the GreenLink presentation that he and city engineer Mark Galvin were invited to make in Budapest. "In general they liked it," said Munfah. "But they kept asking 'how come this is not being implemented?'" It's small consolation, but at least GreenLink will be immortalized in a hardcover book documenting papers delivered at the Congress.
  
  Intrigued by the Budapest presentation, Singapore officials have invited GreenLink's authors to pitch the plan at the 2nd World Roads Conference to be held in the dynamic Southeast Asian city-state Oct. 26 to 28. Given that the theme of the conference is "Sustainable Urban Transport Development," GreenLink should find a receptive audience."

"In general they liked it"....Oh boy, is that ever an underwhelming statement. Mind you, what did you expect him to say...

• "PB rep says no one cares about Greenlink."

Could it be the reason this question was asked: "how come this is not being implemented?" is to find out how NOT to do something! Learn from Windsor's mistakes!

You think that I am being cynical. Hardly. Here's the reality that Gord neglected to tell his readers about. Here are the two conferences' details and Greenlink's small role in them.

Budapest: part of one of dozens of seminars given. I wonder what jet-grouting is all about

Their session lasted 1 hour and 40 minutes so that with the other speakers and questions, the 2 Greenlink people got about 15 minutes of fame each I would guess.

Singapore: again, merely one of a number of seminars

Note as well that the talk is amongst the last ones of the conference. There is a golf tournament the next day so many participants will have to decide whether to attend the session or to hit a pail of practice golf balls instead.

PS Did they travel out of YQG or Detroit Metro?