Quote:
Originally Posted by DizzyEdge
Well hopefully Amazon reads this and your wish for no big new employers in MB comes true... I guess?
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Where on earth did you read that? In the link you provided is an article related to Winnipeg's bid I didn't see anything in the comments section (only 1 comment actually) that remotely resembling what you posted.
There's a few mistruths in the article. They actually do put sand on the streets in Winnipeg when it's icy although maybe it is not as often as some would like. In regards to plowing, I have seen articles from places like Edmonton (and possibly Calgary) that regard Winnipeg plowing frequency and the fleet of plowing vehicles as superior to their own.
The 8% PST is certainly not an incentive...I can give them that.
Assaults on the bus? I am pretty sure that happens in every city and we don't know the frequency it happens in other cities in relation to Winnipeg. I'm not sure how that would be of any significance to a company to Amazon. Stealing a purse of the bus? Stop the presses!
Winnipeg is not the murder capital of Canada. In fact one of the cities who bid on Amazon has a higher murder rate than Winnipeg last year and will again this year. Winnipeg did not even make the top-5 list of murders per capita in Canada.
The buses are fine as the main mass transit source in a city this size. The problem is the lack of rapid transit. The city has still not finished the first line to the southwest and another line is only in the planning stages. A city this size should have had a fully planned and implemented rapid bus transit system at this point - 4 to 6 major routes extending to all parts of the city. I think the absolutely earliest that will happen is 2030 - 2035. Definitely a strike against the city.
Rapid rail service would be nice but is prohibitively expensive...nearly three times the cost of bus rapid transit. It's just not a feasible option at this point.
Some of the other comments do not even deserve a response. Winnie the shit!? WTF!? And the silly comment about Eatons and the catalogues? Who cares and how is it relevant?
The author of these comments might very well be one of those bitter patrons of the city who constantly complains about it but does little to help out his/her community like volunteering. And I'm not sure his comments about Toronto are not entirely accurate. While the infrastructure in Toronto blows past Winnipeg's for obvious reasons, it is not particularly impressive for a city of its size. The subway and freeways should see vast improvement more befitting a city the size of Toronto.
I do think it is a waste of resources on the city's and province's part to partake in this bid for Amazon's 2nd headquarters. It's more of a vanity bid if anything. One of the biggest impediments in my mind is the city size and relatively small labour pool. Amazon will require 50,000 individuals to fill the positions for their new headquarters and I somehow doubt they would find the depth in each required job field in a city of Winnipeg's size. The city would do better to aggressively court smaller fish.
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