Opinion: Stop hijacking Edmonton's inner-city main streets for commuters
Jamie Czerwinski
As a third-generation Edmontonian, I’m optimistic about the future of our city. Our municipal leaders talk a great game about their vision to transform Edmonton into a vibrant and sustainable urban metropolis.
Jamie Czerwinski
As a third-generation Edmontonian, I’m optimistic about the future of our city. Our municipal leaders talk a great game about their vision to transform Edmonton into a vibrant and sustainable urban metropolis.
© Provided by Edmonton Journal Heavy traffic on 97 Street. File photo.
I recently purchased and renovated my first home near Commonwealth Stadium. I appreciated its proximity to the river valley, Commonwealth Recreation Centre, the Italian Centre Shop, and the LRT. I believed that the city’s promise to become more pedestrian-, cyclist-, and transit-friendly meant that my neighbourhood was on the right track.
That’s why I was excited to learn that the City of Edmonton had opened public consultations on its Boyle Street and McCauley Neighborhood Renewal Plan . But when I dug into the details of the plan, my heart sank.
The plan is irredeemably flawed. It focuses on secondary streets, when the glaringly obvious problem in these neighbourhoods is that, for generations, its main streets have been hijacked for use as “arterial commuter roads,” encouraging tens of thousands of commuters to speed through the hearts of these communities every single day.
The city’s failure to address this fundamental problem is a gross abdication of responsibility. Treating community main streets like “arterial commuter roads” is dangerous, unhealthy, expensive, and unsustainable. It is a slap in the face to the thousands of diverse Edmontonians who call these communities home, and it is completely inconsistent with the city’s professed values and objectives.
It’s inconsistent with the City Plan . It’s inconsistent with Vision Zero . It’s inconsistent with the Main Streets Guideline . It’s inconsistent with the Transportation Master Plan . It’s inconsistent with the Bike Plan . It’s inconsistent with Edmonton’s climate emergency declaration .
It’s inconsistent with the Climate Resilient Edmonton Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan . It’s inconsistent with the Community Energy Transition Strategy . It’s inconsistent with the Boyle Street McCauley Area Redevelopment Plan . It’s inconsistent with the Norwood Boulevard Corridor Study . It’s inconsistent with the Stadium Station Area Redevelopment Plan .
These plans all look great — their graphic design is especially bedazzling — but once again, when the city plans and budgets an actual infrastructure project, it fails to live up to its promise, and instead continues to kick the can down the proverbial road.
It’s almost as if the plan was intentionally designed to avoid the crux of the issue; how else could it be that a conversation about main-street renewal is completely absent from a neighbourhood renewal plan?
Do you know what the worst part is? I bet every single municipal decision-maker — from Mayor Amarjeet Sohi on down — knows that this is wrong, but they would rather silently condemn underprivileged inner-city residents to yet another generation of heavy traffic and broken communities than take responsibility and persuade commuters to change their habits.
How would you feel if tens of thousands of commuters were speeding through your neighbourhood on a daily basis?
If the city really wants to continue to misappropriate these community main streets as “arterial commuter roads,” then it should publicly scrap its much-ballyhooed visions of a better city and loudly and proudly declare itself the sprawling suburban wasteland it evidently aspires to be.
It should expropriate and bulldoze adjacent properties to maintain adequate clearances from these urban highways. And it should designate them as toll roads and direct their revenue to the neighbourhoods negatively impacted by the traffic and community disruption they cause.
Oh, what’s that? You don’t think those are good ideas? No, neither do I.
Instead, these main streets should be returned to the communities they were originally designed to serve. They should be vibrant, green, healthy, and safe places for residents to live, work, and play. To accomplish this, they must be freed of the oppressive burden of high-speed commuter traffic that we have collectively forced upon them for generations.
The city should immediately halt all neighbourhood renewal operations and revise their plans to ensure that main-street renewal becomes the primary focus of every neighbourhood renewal project. Anything less is completely unacceptable.
The future of our city depends on it.
Jamie Czerwinski is a data scientist and former graduate student leader at Athabasca University. He lives in Parkdale, is an avid bicycle commuter, and is a lifelong resident of the Edmonton area.
I recently purchased and renovated my first home near Commonwealth Stadium. I appreciated its proximity to the river valley, Commonwealth Recreation Centre, the Italian Centre Shop, and the LRT. I believed that the city’s promise to become more pedestrian-, cyclist-, and transit-friendly meant that my neighbourhood was on the right track.
That’s why I was excited to learn that the City of Edmonton had opened public consultations on its Boyle Street and McCauley Neighborhood Renewal Plan . But when I dug into the details of the plan, my heart sank.
The plan is irredeemably flawed. It focuses on secondary streets, when the glaringly obvious problem in these neighbourhoods is that, for generations, its main streets have been hijacked for use as “arterial commuter roads,” encouraging tens of thousands of commuters to speed through the hearts of these communities every single day.
The city’s failure to address this fundamental problem is a gross abdication of responsibility. Treating community main streets like “arterial commuter roads” is dangerous, unhealthy, expensive, and unsustainable. It is a slap in the face to the thousands of diverse Edmontonians who call these communities home, and it is completely inconsistent with the city’s professed values and objectives.
It’s inconsistent with the City Plan . It’s inconsistent with Vision Zero . It’s inconsistent with the Main Streets Guideline . It’s inconsistent with the Transportation Master Plan . It’s inconsistent with the Bike Plan . It’s inconsistent with Edmonton’s climate emergency declaration .
It’s inconsistent with the Climate Resilient Edmonton Adaptation Strategy and Action Plan . It’s inconsistent with the Community Energy Transition Strategy . It’s inconsistent with the Boyle Street McCauley Area Redevelopment Plan . It’s inconsistent with the Norwood Boulevard Corridor Study . It’s inconsistent with the Stadium Station Area Redevelopment Plan .
These plans all look great — their graphic design is especially bedazzling — but once again, when the city plans and budgets an actual infrastructure project, it fails to live up to its promise, and instead continues to kick the can down the proverbial road.
It’s almost as if the plan was intentionally designed to avoid the crux of the issue; how else could it be that a conversation about main-street renewal is completely absent from a neighbourhood renewal plan?
Do you know what the worst part is? I bet every single municipal decision-maker — from Mayor Amarjeet Sohi on down — knows that this is wrong, but they would rather silently condemn underprivileged inner-city residents to yet another generation of heavy traffic and broken communities than take responsibility and persuade commuters to change their habits.
How would you feel if tens of thousands of commuters were speeding through your neighbourhood on a daily basis?
If the city really wants to continue to misappropriate these community main streets as “arterial commuter roads,” then it should publicly scrap its much-ballyhooed visions of a better city and loudly and proudly declare itself the sprawling suburban wasteland it evidently aspires to be.
It should expropriate and bulldoze adjacent properties to maintain adequate clearances from these urban highways. And it should designate them as toll roads and direct their revenue to the neighbourhoods negatively impacted by the traffic and community disruption they cause.
Oh, what’s that? You don’t think those are good ideas? No, neither do I.
Instead, these main streets should be returned to the communities they were originally designed to serve. They should be vibrant, green, healthy, and safe places for residents to live, work, and play. To accomplish this, they must be freed of the oppressive burden of high-speed commuter traffic that we have collectively forced upon them for generations.
The city should immediately halt all neighbourhood renewal operations and revise their plans to ensure that main-street renewal becomes the primary focus of every neighbourhood renewal project. Anything less is completely unacceptable.
The future of our city depends on it.
Jamie Czerwinski is a data scientist and former graduate student leader at Athabasca University. He lives in Parkdale, is an avid bicycle commuter, and is a lifelong resident of the Edmonton area.
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