This just in: Independent mayoral candidate Bob Kasting has become the voice of reason among the crew he’s battling for city hall’s top job!
Holy itshay, I just wrote that.
But what else am I going to write about a guy who did me a solid at the mayoral debate held Monday in Shaw’s television studio. I was there along with Georgia Straight colleague Charlie Smith to fire questions at Kasting, Mayor Gregor Robertson, the NPA’s Kirk LaPointe and Meena Wong of COPE.
Well, maybe “fire” is too strong of a word.
As I’ve learned with television and this live-stream business we’ve gotten into at the Courier, the format doesn’t necessarily allow me to spend 10 minutes challenging a candidate on a single issue.
Apparently, the goal of these types of broadcasts is to give viewers a taste of where candidates stand on more than one issue and let them prattle on. Think of it more of a public service, which is fine.
That will all change, of course, when I get my own show. I promise to just tackle one issue and go all Mike Wallace on my guest until he or she abruptly leaves the studio. (Re: Mike Wallace reference. For the young folk out there, Wallace was a legendary journalist at a program called 60 Minutes. Google him).
Anyway, back to the Kasting stuff…
I asked all four candidates to answer this: If elected, how will they accommodate the huge influx of transit riders expected to be dumped at the already crowded Commercial-Broadway transit hub when the Evergreen Line opens in the summer of 2016.
Never mind the debate over a subway for the Broadway corridor, I said, just tell the viewers what you will do in the short term to create some order to an already chaotic choke point in Vancouver’s transit system.
Lobby TransLink for more buses? More bike lanes? Free bikes? Segways for everyone? Jetpacks? What?
LaPointe and Robertson partly answered the question and agreed more buses were needed. But they didn’t say how many or how they would convince TransLink to add more buses on the congested route. Wong didn’t answer the question and instead floated her $30 a month transit pass.
The trio spent more time debating the subway and attacking each other than providing specifics on accommodating what the city’s transportation director says will be a 25 per cent increase in transit users to the Commercial-Broadway hub in 2016.
So Kasting interrupted the debate and said this: “I’m going to respectfully suggest that we should be talking about what the question was rather than the question you wish it was. The question really was: ‘What do you do about the fact that there’s going to be a lot more people who are going to get off the [SkyTrain] and get on to a bus, or get on to their feet or get on to a bicycle. How do you accommodate those people?”
Nicely done, Bob.
Robertson: “That is a good question, that is a very important question and there aren’t easy solutions to this. Broadway is the busiest bus route in North America right now and that is a problem for us…”
LaPointe: “But it was a problem when you arrived in office…”
Robertson: “That’s because the NPA did nothing prior to us coming in…”
Wong: “Excuse me gentlemen, excuse me gentlemen…”
On it went.
Here’s what Kasting said, in part, when asked the same question: “Certainly, having a subway promised for five years, or 10 years or 15 years or never is not going to help anything right now. What we need is something that is practical and going to work. That has to be buses because we don’t have any other way of getting around.”
No specifics, but he did use the word “practical.”
Which, it appears, is just plain crazy talk for someone running for mayor.
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