I haven't been ignoring you, I was actually in Europe for a month and haven't been on the board.
I have always described myself as neither a pessimist nor an optimist, but a realist. I think we need to be honest about what we can hope to accomplish as a community, and much of what we have to go on is based on past performance. I believe that when municipal officials/business leaders/community leaders attempt to sell the public on a particular concept, and the concept ultimately fails or underwhelms, that breeds a cynicism among citizens that endangers future projects. I would rather undersell and overperform than the other way around.
It's not just transit. Think about Blatchford. Consider the glowing promises that were made to the community after the Muni was shut down and a development vision was drawn up. It was going to be a radically environmentally sustainable community with new technology, etc. The public was told that land sales were going to make a ton of money for the city. The public was told that Blatchford was going to inject major new life and vitality into the central city. Has any of that happened? To any significant extent? The original vision in terms of environmental sustainability has been radically scaled back, and Blatchford has become less and less of a model and more of just a run-of-the-mill brownfield redevelopment. And the area has not developed nearly as quickly or as profitably as projected, nor has it had the impact on the wider area that was expected. Even now we are being told that one of the LRT stations built as part of the Metro Line extension will not be needed for years.
I'm not saying we should walk away from Blatchford and bulldoze everything that's been built and make it into a public park. But I'm saying it SHOULD be a cautionary tale. When concepts are proposed to the community, we should be asking hard questions: is that realistic for Edmonton? Is there a reasonable chance of success? Or is a given project likely to underperform and disappoint for decades?
I'm a big believer in going with what is already proven to work rather than wishful thinking. I remember a few years back there was discussion on council about the pedway system. A couple of councillors came out against further expansion of the network, claiming that it sucked life away from ground level and made Edmonton a less walkable city, and that they felt connecting major buildings by pedway was actually a net negative for street life. This of course completely ignored the fact that for much of the year, outside on the street in the biting cold and wind is NOT where you'd want to be. Yes, street life and patios are lovely in June, July and August, but Edmonton is a winter city and hoping to stimulate hustle and bustle on city sidewalks in November or March by opposing pedways is just foolishness. Pedways have a proven track record, they're an asset to a winter city, they've proven themselves for decades, let's stick with what works instead of indulging in silly fantasy.
As far as TOD goes, as I said I don't think they've proven themselves over the many years now we've experimented with them. Century Park and Belvedere are miserable failures in which what was ultimately delivered bore little to no resemblance to the grand, dense, sustainable vision that was originally promised to the community. (And CP STILL isn't built out, decades later!) I would be ecstatic if CP had achieved the building heights, density and sustainability that were part of the original proposal, but the low-rise bait and switch we got is nothing short of a failure.
As I said before, Edmontonians have shown over the decades that they want rapid transit to run to post-secondary institutions, hospitals, major destinations and shopping malls (many of which happen to have bus transit centres already, providing convenient first and last mile connections). Run transit where people want to go, don't overthink it, and stop trying to sell the public on something they clearly don't want. If people want to be able to ride LRT to Manning Town Centre to shop at Canadian Tire and see a movie at Cineplex, then run the trains there instead of laying tracks to Gorman and hoping a few people might eventually, possibly, someday, potentially want to live there.
