of this type of multiuser scam. I just got back from Toronto, where they have a wonderfully convenient downtown airport on a small island that's part of the complex forming the harbor. The only inconvenient thing about it is that to get to it you have to ride a ferry across the channel -- the guys told me it is, or was, in the Guiness Book of World Records as the world's shortest ferry ride (it's around a hundred yards or so).

Trouble is, the Condo Commandos have taken over the waterfront, and now that they're there, they don't want no !#%$$#@ buzzy little airplanes running around in the picture windows of their $300,000 Homes in the Sky. That means that if the subject of building the bridge they've been charging ferry tolls for (CAN$30 round trip, unless you work there!) comes up, dozens of people will stand around in the area chanting the CC's Magic Mantra: Don't Hurt Property Values.

Happens all over. People build right up to the fence, then [the horror! the horror!] discover that there are airplanes coming by! Right over their house! The city council Must Do Something!

If I were an airport manager, I'd hire a series of people, probably college students, and give them a little pickup and a supply of signs. Whenever they found a surveyor's stake, a hole not dug by an animal, or a stone lying on a stone within the airport's operating area, they would put up a sign reading:

Airport nearby
Airplanes make noise
Airplanes sometimes crash
Talk to your Realtor^TM about Airplanes Nearby!

If they then returned and found that the sign had been taken down, they would call the airport, which would respond with a construction truck and crew. That crew would erect an identical sign, twelve feet high, made of steel and set in concrete.

Sheesh. I feel better now :-)

Same in Toronto, except no earthquake; the Condo Commandos just want the Gardiner Expressway buried out of sight.

Interestingly, a few people seem to have started a sort of underground, low-key program to remind people of just how much it's going to cost, and what they can't do about highways, etc. for the city if they do that.

I'll have to keep tabs on the situation.

Nearby in Fort Worth, the overhead for I30 is now gone; the last few bits of rubble are being carted away. That, though, was a matter of spending a few extra bucks to do it right when a major bottlneck intersection was done away with. The replacement isn't buried; it's built on air rights over the railroad yard.