The offending new blanket parking ban signs.

Following up to last week’s post on the latest round of Snow Policy work, I can confirm that Council intervened and, as you may have read in the media, the blanket seasonal parking ban on bus routes has been suspended.

At the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee meeting on September 6, I proposed that all we need to do is re-define what we mean by Snow Route. Then we can continue to use the existing signage, rather than spend more money on new signs. (Although in newer areas signage for snow routes would need to be added along bus routes).

Snow Routes as currently defined in the Transportation Bylaw can be declared in effect after a snowfall, which then bans parking for 72 hours to facilitate snow removal. They haven’t been declared since 1994. Part of the challenge is that we really need cars out of the way when it starts snowing so we can get the plows through quickly and push windrows against the curb. It then can take several weeks to remove those windrows, so the parking restriction would need to remain in place until the windrows have been removed and then and only then would parking be restored.

Most of the feedback I’ve received understands this kind of tradeoff; people were really concerned about losing the parking for the whole winter, but I believe most can accept losing it for short periods to facilitate quicker and cost effective plowing and removal.

The other main concern I, and others, heard was that if those residents on Snow Routes were going to be forced to use their alleys for a period of time they should get some priority to ensure continued access to their on-site parking at the rear of their properties. Transportation Services agreed with that.

Others are opposed to losing parking at all but we all learned last year that it’s futile to manage snow around parked cars on busy roads.

Other cities made different (probably better) decisions and have wide boulevards where they can push that snow but regrettably Edmonton only has boulevards on about a third of our streets. I wish we could change that but all we can do now is push to have boulevards again on bus routes in new neighbourhoods being built, and perhaps make some retrofits over time, which the city is looking at.

The other parking change that was discussed, but somewhat overshadowed, was for narrow local roads (less than 8.8 metres). This will go ahead year-round for safety reasons, mainly to ensure access for emergency vehicles; however, this will only restrict parking to one side of the street. On-street parking will still be available for residents, it might just be across the street now. And yes there will be half as much, but this move is long overdue.

The other major discussion was about moving to bare pavement rather than a 5cm snow pack on local roads. This will mean bigger windrows, and perhaps a tradeoff that people will be responsible for clearing larger windrows from their own driveways. Discussion on this will continue at Council tomorrow, Sept 14.

[I wrote the piece below for the Edmonton Examiner last month but am just now finally getting around to posting it here. It follows up from a previous post on Lego urban design from last year and a video on transportation choice illustrated with Lego that we did during the last campaign. The City's blog post on all this can be found here. And yes, those are my Mr. Data-like hands assembling the attractive brownstone in the city's promotional video above. The whole display is up for another week and a half so go check it out if you have a chance.]

What influence do our development plans have on our transportation patterns, and what influence do our transportation plans have on our development pattern? These are some of the questions Edmontonians of all ages are asked by a City Display which depicts Council’s vision for development and transportation using Lego.

The large display is set up at the Telus World of Science as part of “Wheels, Wings and Waves: a Lego World of Transportation” exhibit running until January 2.

Engineers and planners from the city have been hard at work (on volunteer time) designing and assembling this sixteen foot by five foot display containing more than 20,000 pieces. It was an incredible feat, as I can attest having helped them build for just a couple of hours.

The layout depicts three distinct areas in the city: downtown, a mature neighbourhood undergoing redevelopment, and a new suburban area. Each of them is linked together by roads, LRT, bike paths and good sidewalks. There is special emphasis on space to move goods, especially by truck, to reflect the needs of commerce.

Of particular note were the intricate rendering of City Hall and Churchill Square, and the lovely medium-density brownstone townhouses and duplexes in the mature neighbourhood, where people can afford to invest in more expensive land and housing because they save money by relying more on transit and walking instead of that second or third car.

To illustrate the point that this is an interactive and ongoing process, ‘lots’ were left vacant within the layout for the public to ‘develop’ through a building contest that was held [in November].

This family-oriented brownstone on the corner in the mature neighbourhood was my contribution.

I had the privilege of judging the winners with Councillors Karen Leibovici and Ben Henderson. We struggled to select from among dozens of very creative entries, but we particularly liked the very colourful multicultural centre and museum for downtown. We also chose the multi-purpose mixed-use library, day care, bike parkade and seasonal lemonade/hot-chocolate stand for the mature neighbourhood. In the suburban area we liked the high-efficiency solar-powered home with the garden and apple tree for food production.

It was encouraging to see that most of the entries reflected Council’s vision for our city’s future.

This is what it looked like all put together.

What follows is my January contribution to the Edmonton Examiner’s gracious ‘Councillor Connection‘ column space which rotates among us.

Since the Examiner is split run (there are, I believe, seven different versions, each localized to different parts of the city) people outside the South West would not see this. But I thought it might be of interest to readers of this blog, who seem to come from across the city.

This is my version; I haven’t compared it to what was published in the paper:

The news stories about the city with the greatest reverberation tend, unsurprisingly, to be about when things are going poorly. Sometimes this means citizens don’t hear about some of the successes we can all be proud of, though this newspaper is an excellent source of just that kind of news.

I wanted to share one such ‘good news’ story that I knew nothing about until this past year: the city’s Aggregate Recycling program. This is different from our very successful road sand recycling program, which has received a lot of good coverage and for which the city has been recognized with several awards.

The Aggregate Recycling program started with the city’s own supply of broken concrete and stripped asphalt more than thirty years ago. The thinking was that this waste material, rather then being landfilled as was the prevailing practice, could be crushed and sorted like gravel for use in city projects.

Our transportation department has tested the large aggregate in use and found the rough edges hold up better as a road bed then smoother river rock gravel of the sort normally used, meaning roads can last longer.

The City now processes more than 200,000 tonnes of concrete, soil cement, asphalt, gravel, bricks, paving stones and coarse sand annually. The city also accepts this material from citizens.

Of course it’s good to recycle, but the business case for this activity is very strong. In 2008 73,586 tonnes of waste were diverted from the landfill, saving $6.3 million in disposal costs; 187,449 tonnes of large aggregate was used in city construction projects, saving $3.8 million; 4,270 tonnes of smaller aggregate was used by roadway maintenance saving $320,000.

The total savings to the city were more than $10 million in 2008, and this value continues to grow.

Using recycled material also reduces the need to disturb land for quarrying in our region, which has a value too, though harder to quantify.

So next time you’re driving down a stretch of new or rebuilt road, remember it’s actually paved in part with good intentions – the kind that save public money and reduce our environmental impacts.

If you would like more information on public drop-off sites you can go to: tinyurl.com/aggregaterecycling