What do you think of this project?

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Warning, this post ended up being a long one (1/2).

"[It] would add a non-essential, redundant transportation corridor to an area well served by many transportation crossings including the new Walterdale Bridge."

I didn't realize that a single vehicle bridge crossing the river is comparable to a gondola that would connect two key pedestrian corridors, the funicular, and the beautiful Rossdale Power Plant. Sure, ETS buses use that bridge too, but those routes are by no means the same. Just the detour to the UofA Transit Centre alone can add a lot of time when compared to going directly to one's destination. And who's to say what qualifies as a "non-essential" trip? Are essential trips only allowed on ETS? Will Prairie Sky prohibit people from using the gondola to access appointments, run errands, or see family and friends? Do the trips that we can make to Southgate via the LRT really count as essential if most are probably to buy non-essential goods - and a fair number of those shoppers are tourists? How does that differ from this? After all, the area around Southgate has a number of other transportation modes as well, including sidewalks and roads! And again, even if lots of the trips on the gondala are non-essential, SO WHAT?? What is the friggin harm in getting something unique here that people WANT to experience even if they don't have to? What joy does living in a city bring if everything there is strictly utilitarian, and you need to leave that city to see anything interesting? And why wouldn't we want to bring things here that encourage people to see Edmonton and experience what we have to offer, as opposed to going to another Canadian city?

"Proponents proffer phrases like — “transit-oriented development” — to feign alignment with the city plan. Without surprise, a private entity is being assisted at the public’s expense by Edmonton’s developer-friendly city administration. This works well in cites where public purpose, community benefit agreements and social procurement are front and centre. In this case, the citizens pay."

Ah, fluff words without any sources or examples to back them up. This can't encourage transit-oriented development... because it can't. The citizens pay for this... because they will. Does the city have an agreement to give PS a cut of Arc revenue, should the two share the Arc system? Not as of now. The Arc revenue goes straight to the systems involved with the tap; ETS gets revenue from taps on ETS routes, StAT gets the revenue from taps on StAT buses, etc. So even if PS did use the same Arc system (keep in mind that, according to @PrairieSkyGondola, they'd need to pay a not-insignificant price to do so), they would (in theory) only get the revenue from taps at gondola card readers.

"it will add an additional electric load to Edmonton’s fossil-fuel heavy grid. We all know we need to reduce electric loads as we green our grid. The addition of a gondola will only burn more coal."

What a strawman this is. Not only does it ignore the fact that facilitating electric modes of mass transportation makes it easier for people to navigate Edmonton without cars (or diesel ETS buses at that), but it also perpetuates a harmful myth about electric transportation in general. They are equating the emissions from the power grid as equivalent to the emissions from fossil fuel-powered vehicles. In reality, research has shown that "under current carbon intensities of electricity generation, electric cars and heat pumps are less emission intensive than fossil-fuel-based alternatives in 53 world regions, representing 95% of the global transport and heating demand. Even if future end-use electrification is not matched by rapid power-sector decarbonization, it will probably reduce emissions in almost all world regions." And the gondola would have even fewer life-cycle emissions than EVs, since each car does not contain its own batteries. Similarly, the gondola would be better for the environment, even with our gas-dominant power grid, compared to conventional vehicles. This is because it is simply more efficient to generate a lot of energy in a few spots and distribute it through the grid than it is to generate a little bit of energy in millions of small engines that each burn their own fuel, start up multiple times per day and often need to warm up for a few minutes each time, etc.

"The city plan is designed to address climate change and add tree canopy and green space. Green jobs and blue and green infrastructure are at the base of most economic-recovery plans that address climate change. The gondola will not help with these core ambitions."

Notice how they neglect to define what blue infrastructure means. Does it have a similar meaning to blue hydrogen, where gas is used to make hydrogen but the emissions are pumped underground? Would their opinion on the gondola change if PS invested in CCS technology? Why is the gondola, which is powered by electricity and will provide mass transportation for pedestrians, not considered blue?
 
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"Citizens also pay for the degradation of river valley parks, Edmonton’s greatest civic achievement. A gondola would add 13 towers — one as high as 37 metres — with 10 by 10 metre bases to a part of the city prized for its beauty. At one site within Queen Elizabeth Park’s spruce and aspen forest, a key link in the region’s wildlife corridor, heavy equipment would be needed to anchor a tower to bedrock to protect it from a sliding hill."

Again, they complain that "citizens will pay" without backing that claim up. Aside from that, although land degradation is not ideal by any means, this could be a key corridor that connects high traffic areas and provides alternatives to car use - which is both worse for the environment in terms of emissions, and because road infrastructure takes up more space than rail/gondola infrastructure. Did they make similar complains about the Valley Line since it juts through the river valley? And if so, as in this case, what is their alternative to move thousands of people every day? Rely on our road network even more? That would just lead to more road construction and expansions, and further jeopardize our environment - while conversely providing less efficient modes of transportation. I don't know what the ridership projections for the gondola are, but I think it's safe to assume that it has the potential to mirror high frequency bus routes, if not upcoming BRT lines, in terms of daily ridership ridership. And all that using infrastructure with less of a footprint in our environment compared to roads and vehicle bridges.

"As well, the mono-cable style of gondola typically requires a cutline — see Banff and Jasper’s — but even if it’s able to get over most trees, nonstop bobbing of carriages down the slope of Queen Elizabeth Park is sure to disrupt the quiet pleasure in viewing the park’s old growth forest from the other side of the river."

Finally, they admit that one of their arguments is merely conjecture. And now we're getting into frustrating levels of NIMBYism. Not only is densification and reduced car dependence inhibited by people who don't want noisy/crowded neighbourhoods, but now a key mode of mass transportation is seen as bad because people WATCHING A FOREST FROM ACROSS THE RIVER MIGHT DISLIKE THE SOUND OF BOBBING CARRIAGES?? PEOPLE, YOU'RE IN A FRIGGIN CITY - NOT ELK ISLAND NATIONAL PARK. They touted the Walterdale bridge as a good alternative, but what about the traffic noise???? Surely, engines must be louder than something dangling from a cable.

"New York’s Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted said, 'a park should present the greatest possible contrast with town conditions.' Today, young people from highrises and walk-ups dotting downtown and Oliver take a break from town conditions by fleeing to the valley below. The water’s edge and the open spaces of Rossdale are fertile soil for quiet contemplation, cycling, walking and jogging. So, why bring more “urban” into this scene? There is nothing in the gondola proposal that adds to the valley as parkland. There’s no start at planting the two million trees called for in the city plan. Nor does it build on the hard work of four generations of Edmontonians securing title to and preserving a forest through the city."

Not all of the river valley is a formal park. I am an environmental purist who opposes the vast majority of developments in the river valley and other natural spaces, but large towers are peanuts compared to the alternative. When we're talking about moving people between the core of our downtown and the second busiest node in our city, we are going to need more infrastructure to move people as we climb towards 2 million residents. Now is the time to decide how we will provide additional transportation capacity, not if we need to. When I'm down by the High Level Bridge, the area still feels plenty natural despite the presence of the bridge and its pillars. Moreso, in fact, than the Walterdale bridge and its two additional lanes of traffic. And this is at the heart of the city, just like the gondola would be.

It is very unrealistic to expect that we are entitled to go to the heart of our city and be surrounded by so much undisturbed nature that we forget where we are. It is a great ideal to strive towards, and I do not wish to see the downtown stretch of the river valley overrun by development, but by limiting mass transportation infrastructure in our core, we are -at best- simply relocating environmental damage and disturbance, and heritage asset loss, to other areas of the city that would see new and expanded road infrastructure to compensate. In fact, with the High Level Bridge likely coming under consideration for partial replacement in the next few decades, we could even see yet another car bridge in the very same area as the gondola ROW if we do not diversify our ways of getting around.

"When the old exhibition grounds — now the baseball stadium — moved to Northlands in 1909, a concrete company asked to buy the land. Looking to the future, the city said no, 'this particular block asked for by this company may be required for park purposes.' In the past year, more than 12,000 households have put up lawn signs saying, “Defend Alberta Parks.” In the last month, Edmontonians have joined Albertans by the thousands in pushing back against the province cancelling the coal policy protecting the Rockies."

Remember: Their ENTIRE environmental argument against the gondola is that some tall trees might need to be cut down due to height conflicts, and some pillars will need to be built. Does that really compare to an entire concrete plant, or coal mining in the rocky mountains? No, it does not. And unlike those two case studies, the gondola would provide a mode of transportation that is better for our environment, better for people who do not have their own vehicles, and could ironically save the river valley from some of the more disruptive infrastructure projects in the pipeline due to our reliance on a mode of transportation that the gondola can help replace.
 
westcoastjos said:
Pretty sure Eric was against LRT as well. I recall quite a few articles to save the Footbridge and leave things as is.
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The funny part of this story is that the unavoidable result of his preaching against anything happening in or around the River Valley is more vars on the road, more congestion, more sprawl and, thus, more environmental damage. Unless he's also advocating for childbirth control, migration control and things of the sorts, which would stop the population from growing (and all of the ensuing issues) and, if that is the case, we might recommend that he has his mental state checked before allowing him to publish articles anywhere other than the psych ward of a hospital.
 
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This just confirmed what I already suspected. Certain opponents are against this project because it is not operated by ETS as a public service, which is a terrible reason to stop the gondola. ETS doesn't have the money to take care of the infrastructure has now, so I think it is safe to say that the project won't be getting built with public money. If we truly want to address the climate crisis we have to accept that solutions will come from a variety of places; if the private sector can create an electrified transportation option that won't exist otherwise, we should be all over it.
 
The_Cat said:
I'm sure if the Prairie Sky Gondola is popular ETS will complain about the revenues not being shared.
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Gotta love it - a private company shouldn't develop the gondola because it falls under ETS's domain, but Edmonton won't build it because they think it's a waste of money compared to bus, LRT, or road infrastructure. It's like a company wanting to sit on a trademark for decades even if they'll never use it, just to make sure nobody else can either.
 
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