The press was reporting yesterday that the taxi union met recently and have decided that they’ll allow the cameras to be installed, but only if they get to pick the system.  The city has identified a system made by VerifEye Technologies which reportedly costs about $1500.  The union is complaining that this is too expensive.

While looking through VerifEye’s website, I came across the results of a study conducted by the City of Portland where they evaluated a number of different camera systems and determined that the images captured by VerifEye’s systems were better than the others.  (The results are also available in a PDF.)

Since the photos are going to be used by the police, it is reasonable to assume that you want the highest quality photos possible.  If you crop a photo to zoom in on someone’s face, you don’t want it to be all pixilated and fuzzy.  You want it to be clear enough that the individual can be identified.  Otherwise, there’s really no point in having the camera.

It’s been suggested in a comment on my other entry that perhaps the taxi drivers have spent the money they’ve been collecting that was specifically earmarked for the purchase of the camera systems.  This bears further investigation.

So, let’s look at how much money may have been collected by a cab driver since the city started allowing them to collect a extra money on each fare specifically to help pay for the camera systems.

Assumptions:

1. Each cab is on the road 6 days/week, or 300 days/year (allowing for 2 weeks of vacation).
2. Each day a driver has 10 fares.
3. The average fare is $15.00 according to the meter.
4. They are allowed to collect $0.05/fare plus the difference between 7% and the current GST rate.  Because the GST has been dropping, let’s assume this to be 1.5% average for the period.
5. As of today, they have been collecting the surcharge for 2.37 years (30 September 2005 to 16 February 2008).

Calculations:

(Fares_per_day) * (days_per_year) * (((gross_fare – flat surcharge) * difference_in_GST)+flat_surcharge) * (number_of_years) = amount_collected

= 10 * 300 * ((($15.00-$0.05) * 1.5%) + $0.05) * 2.37

= 3000 * $0.27 * 2.37

= $822.75 * 2.37

= $1957.48

Conclusion:

If my assumptions are reasonable (and I have no idea if they are), it appears that a driver will have collected enough money to offset the cost of the camera system.  Even if my assumptions about the number of fares carried in a year are overstated by 100%, you can still see that a driver has probably collected enough money to take (most of) the sting out of the one-time investment of $1500.  This is further offset by the reduction in crimes against drivers that have been experienced in other cities when camera systems were installed.  I can’t understand why there would be so much resistance on the part of the drivers when they will experience the benefits first-hand.

Ultimately, this is one of the costs of doing business if you’re a cab driver in Ottawa.

(Ottawa) – At 3:15 am, Wednesday February 13, 2008, a taxi driver was robbed by two male fares in the Elmvale Acres area (Saunderson Dr. near Colson Ave.). The driver was assaulted, money was taken, and when the driver exited the taxi to escape, the males drove off with the taxi. The taxi was recovered nearby a short time later. The driver was not seriously injured during the incident.

The suspects are described as white males, 30-40 years of age.

The robbery is being investigation by the Criminal Investigation Division’s robbery section. (taken from an Ottawa Police Service news release on 13 February 2008)

The City of Ottawa wants to make the installation of cameras in Ottawa taxi cabs compulsory.  While it’s getting a lot of coverage in the media right now, it’s not a spur of the moment idea.  Two and a half years ago, they granted a 5 cent/fare surcharge plus the difference between 7% and the GST specifically to help offset the eventual installation of taxi cab camera systems.

The head of the taxi cab drivers’ union, on the other hand, would have you believe that this is a horrible financial burden and untenable invasion of privacy and that his drivers will not bend to city hall’s will on this matter.

In April 2007, CBC reported that Coventry Connections, the largest taxi operator in Ottawa, was planning to equip all its vehicles with cameras by the end of 2008.

The camera system the City has specified costs about $1500.  In addition to recording a visual and audio record, the system apparently records braking action and steering inputs.  It’s been likened to a black box recorder used in commercial aircraft.

The union complains this is unreasonable and asks of all the modes of public transportation — school buses, regular buses, taxis, and so on — why are they being singled out?

A fair question, so I decided to do a little googling to see if I could find out.

What I found out is that in November 2007, OC Transpo decided to run a six-month pilot project and equip 265 buses with cameras, similar to the ones that will be used in the taxis, that will watch over the drivers and passengers.  If the pilot project is deemed successful, then the entire fleet will be outfitted with camera systems.

One of the goals of the cameras is increasing safety while reducing taxicab crime.  Shortly after being introduced in Winnipeg in May 2002, taxi cab drivers were reported a reduction in fare jumpers and rowdy passengers.  In the calendar year 2002, there was a 71% reduction in serious taxicab crimes.  When you compare 2003 with 2001 (the year before the cameras were installed), robberies and other serious taxicab  crimes are 79% lower.  This is particularly impressive when you consider that crime in the City of Winnipeg increased by 10.5% during the same period.  The police reported that arrest rates increased from 35% in 2001 to 50% and 66% in 2002 and 2003, respectively.

Other Canadian cities, such as Toronto and Vancouver, require taxi cameras, so this Ottawa is not doing something never before done in Canada.

The union did raise concerns about who will have access to the information.  A spokesperson for the city indicated that while the policy isn’t currently defined, they would be working it out with Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner by the time the cameras must be installed.  This seems reasonable to me.

The bottom line is this:

• Crimes against both taxi cab drivers and passengers alike have taken place in Ottawa cabs.
• When camera systems have been installed in other cities the number of taxi cab crimes has dropped significantly.
• Taxi cab drivers have been collecting 1% to 2% extra from every fare they’ve carried in the last two and a half years. 

Any point is a strong argument supporting their adoption.  Combined, they more than outweigh the $1500 price tag.

Or does the taxi cab union believe that the safety of their members and passengers, also known as clients, isn’t worth a one-time investment of $1500 per cab?

It’ll be interesting to see if the union changes their mind in light of the assault, robbery and theft experienced by the taxi driver mentioned in the Ottawa Police Services news release I quoted above less than one day after they protested against them in front of city hall.

While surfing the ‘net last night, I came across the plight of Philadelphia resident Edward Stanley Harris.  It seems that Edward has a twin brother named Edwin Shelby Harris and about seventeen years ago Edwin received 8 moving violations worth some $1500 that he never paid.  Since then, Edwin has moved away and Edward rarely hears from him.

Every time Edward went to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) office to renew his license, they told him he had outstanding tickets and thus couldn’t renew his license.  And every time he would faithfully trot himself down to the Philadelphia Traffic Court and explain (again) that he was Edward Harris, not Edwin Harris and the tickets weren’t his.  Each time the traffic court judges would listen, realize PennDOT didn’t know what they were talking about and rectify the situation (until the next time his license came up for renewal).

Except for Traffic Court Judge Willie Adams.

Traffic Court Judge Willie Adams apparently had no interest in hearing the facts or reviewing the ample documentation and ordered Edward to pay the outstanding fines –now worth a little over $1800 — at the rate of $100/month, or go to jail.

He started paying this while off while he filed his appeal because he didn’t want to go to jail.

Sanity made a brief appearance during the appeal hearing and the payment order was withdrawn and someone suggested to Edward that he go back to Traffic Court to get his money back.

At some point, Edward contacted Ronnie Polaneczky, a reporter at The Philadelphia Daily News.  The reporter in turn contacted attempted to contact Traffic Court Judge Bernice DeAngelis, but wasn’t immediately successful and wrote about Edward’s story in the newspaper.  Two days later, Judge DeAngelis contacted the reporter and couldn’t apologize enough for the travesty Edward has been subjected to.

The judge couldn’t, however, explain how the situation got to the point it did, nor why Edward had to resort to calling a reporter who ultimately shamed the Traffic Court system into fixing the problem.

As for Judge Adams, the idiot who really should go before the Judicial Conduct Board to explain his actions, Judge DeAngelis is quoted as saying “I wasn’t in the courtroom.  I don’t know what was said or not said. Judge Adams is my colleague. It’s not my place to comment on his actions.”  There’s really no need to, eh?

It’ll be interesting to see what happens next time Edward goes to renew his license.  Will PennDOT get things right or will he have to go to Traffic Court again?

There’s a mosque in Umm Tuba, which is near Jerusalem, that was apparently built on a Sunday 700 years ago. You need a license to build things on Sundays and the mosque in question is alleged to not have had such a permit 700 years ago, so Israeli authorities have decided to demolish it. (Ma’an News Agency story and the blog entry I stumbled across)

This immediately reminded me of the destruction of the giant Buddha statues by the Taliban in 2001 (see also Wikipedia). As you may recall, the Taliban destroyed several huge sandstone Buddha statues as part of their campaign to rid Afghanistan of everything they did not approve of.

If there’s any truth to the story about the mosque, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) needs to step forward and prevent the destruction of this mosque, which is arguably a cultural heritage site.

I wrote an entry at the end of December talking about the problems with lamp post caches (LPCs). Barely three days later there was an bomb-scare incident in Plano, Texas involving a lamp post cache in a parking lot. I contacted the Plano Police Department to learn more about the incident.

Around 1pm on January 4th, the police department in Plano received a call from security officers at a local Wal-Mart store reporting suspicious activity around the base of a light pole in their parking lot. One or more persons were observed placing something under the cover at the base of the light pole.

The object in question, of course, was the container for a lamp post cache (LPC) that had been placed in the Wal-Mart parking lot without the knowledge of Wal-Mart.

According to one of the Public Information Officers at the Plano Police Department, had the geocacher who hid the cache contacted Wal-Mart for permission before placing the cache the 14 officers, two bomb trucks, a bomb trailer, a fire truck and a medical unit would not have been dispatched. Instead, they had to be dispatched to respond to an unknown device, a situation that may cause concerns for responding officers. And they were there about 3 hours before the incident ended at 4:21pm.

“If the individuals hiding the item would of contacted Wal Mart this would not of happened” [sic] said Officer Rick McDonald of the Plano Police Department in an email to me earlier yesterday (Tuesday). He also noted that “with the times of today Homeland Security issues are very high and suspicious activity around populated stores draws a lot of curious calls.” Police encourage the reporting of suspicious activities like those the security officers observed.

In this case a non-trivial amount of manpower was expended because someone didn’t follow the rules, specifically the one that says “you assure us that you have adequate permission to hide your cache in the selected location.” Because the investigation was on-going, Officer McDonald could not comment as to whether the owner of the cache in question has been contacted by the police. He was able to confirm that the cache container was not destroyed by the bomb squad.

If the geocaching community as a whole doesn’t exercise better judgement and respect the fairly simple self-imposed rules in place with respect to placing geocaches, we will increasingly find ourselves unwelcome where we previously were.

My grandfather is celebrating his 100th birthday today.

Since being born in 1908, he been around for…

• the sinking of the "unsinkable" Titanic
• the first crossword puzzle
• The Great War (which wasn’t so great)
• The Great Depression (which also wasn’t so great)
• World War II
• 16 Canadian Prime Ministers
• 18 US Presidents
• Four kings and a queen (not a bad poker hand)
• the building of the Berlin Wall
• the tearing down of the Berlin Wall
• the first satellite in orbit
• the first dog in space
• the first human in space
• Man landing on the Moon
• the formation of The Beatles
• the break-up of The Beatles
• the invention of the colour photographic process
• the invention of the fortune cookie
• the first trans-Atlantic phone call
• penicillin and bubble gum (in the same year!)
• television
• the Internet
• email
• spam
• the invention of the pocket calculator
• the first man-made object on another planet
• the end of smallpox

More significantly, he’s been an important part of my life since before I can remember. 🙂

Happy birthday, Granddad!!!

It’s always exciting to see someone you know mentioned in the news and especially so when it’s someone you’re related to.  Well, my cousin, Grace O’Connell, was announced as one of three finalists for this year’s Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers for her short fiction entry entitled The Bottlenecks.  The award is given to a writer below the age of 35 who has yet to have a book published.

The winner will be announced on January 15th.  Good luck, Grace! 🙂