[Romanov]

Hoping to see some of those north central neighbourhoods shift from red/yellow to green. Blatchford is coming, but I was surprised by neighbourhoods like Queen Mary, Westwood, spruce avenue and McDougall. Glad that some new routes planned for 111 Ave, 113 st, 114 Ave, 106 st, blatchford, etc.

 

[thommyjo]

Great map - thanks for sharing and deciding to do that as an assignment.

If we're currently in that modal share you expect (2-3%) I guess we are on the money in terms of our $100 million capital spend from 2023-26 in active transportation. But that will need to continue as we catch up from years of neglect and the need to build a safe, viable transportation option for our growing population.

From the city: "The 2023-2026 capital budget includes $100 million for the active transportation network expansion. It makes up 2% of the approximately $5 billion capital budget for transportation projects, including roads and bridges."

This is actually one of the most effective discussion points I use with people complaining about bike lanes. I do a line of questions like:

“I agree it can feel like a lot. What do you think would be the most fair way to allocate money? Based on how many people actually use it? Like if only 2% of people bike, we probably shouldn’t spend more that 2% on bike lanes, hey?”

Them: “yeah exactly. When so few people bike, we shouldn’t be spending millions on bike lanes”.

“We’ll good news, the 100mil is actually 2% of capital spending, the same proportion of people that bike. And for decades we’ve spent next to nothing. So we should probably keep spending this much every budget cycle, just to be proportional like you agreed is fair. Then arguably we should spend even more to catch up for decades of not fairly spending.”

People are often pretty quickly shocked to realize their logic doesn’t line up with their feelings/biases.

 

[dkazzed]

The argument I'm hearing these days is that we don't pay gas taxes, licensing, and registration, therefore we're not entitled to using the road. That's about $1.1 billion per year in the province, which is good for what repaving 140 lane km of roadways each year? That's cute believing roads aren't heavily subsidized.

In other news, City of Edmonton is essentially doubling down on Hermitage Road by adding bus bulges at 40 St in both directions. They were installing them this morning.