by Cheri M on August 19, 2010
As a resident of Brentwood with a recent appointment to keep up at Crowfoot, I had the luxury of leaving my wheels at home, walking to the Brentwood station and taking the NW leg of the LRT to get the job done. But as I finished my chore and made for home, I was struck by the fact that the pedestrian route I was following was anything but luxurious. In fact, it was rather bleak.
The first leg of my journey as I headed back towards the Crowfoot LRT station took me down an alley between Safeway and Rona. I found myself mostly surrounded by loading docks and blank concrete walls – no Jane Jacobs eyes on this street - but at least I had a sidewalk to trudge on.
At the end of the alley, I approached the bustle of civilization again, as evidenced by several cars and a restaurant which surely had people in it, even if I couldn’t actually see them.
Next I entered an intersection with several lanes of traffic approaching from all sides. Although you can’t see it in the photo, on my left was a lone teenager with shoulders hunched, looking like he was enjoying the walk almost as much as me. If you squint really hard and put your nose up to the screen, you might be able to make out the intrepid cyclist coming towards us on the opposite sidewalk. These are the only people I encountered on the streets in my 10 minute walk.
Leaving the teenager and the cyclist behind, I now headed down a stretch where I would pass multiple car dealerships, a restaurant, a funeral home and a car wash, giving new meaning to the term “mixed use”.
I rounded a bend in the road and my destination came into view. Another half block and I would be able to scoot up the steps to the station.
Thwarted. The sign that’s obscured in this photo told me the steps I had spotted from a distance are for transit employees only. Another sign in the foreground told me this area was designated for drivers dropping people off. Idling beside it was one of those massive two storey trailers that transport automobiles. By this time I was beginning to wonder if pedestrian access had been considered at all when the station was planned. Doesn’t anyone walk to the LRT?
I trudged on and spotted a pedestrian crosswalk, so clearly it had occurred to someone that the odd person might approach the station on foot. The crosswalk is located right next to the car wash. Of course. What else would you find adjacent to an LRT station but a car wash?
Finally, I breached the ramparts of the station and boarded the train for Brentwood but on the way home I wondered how could it be that we had built an LRT station where the last thing anyone would want to do is walk to and from it. This is not an environment that says “Leave your car at home, the walk will do you good”. This is an environment that says “Are you nuts? Why would you walk when it’s so much easier to drive?”, an environment where only the most determined – or those who have no choice – tough it out on foot.
Rapid growth that is planned around the needs of drivers in cars rather than the needs of people at street level has not served us well in Calgary. It has left us racing to catch up, laying tracks out to suburbs that are already fully built and have been functioning for years around the automobile. Suburbs that have, in fact, been fully dependent on those automobiles since the day they were built. As we head into the election this fall, surely we all need to be thinking harder about the implications of that fact when it comes to building flexible, livable neighbourhoods and a resilient city as a whole. We would do well to challenge all candidates to share their big picture, visionary thinking, not just at the mayoral level but at the aldermanic level as well. And we all need to start looking a lot further down the road when it comes to planning how our city grows.
by Cheri M on July 9, 2010
Late Monday evening, Council started into “Financing Municipal Infrastructure”, a report on who should pay for the costs of growth in Calgary and how. But the discussion ended almost as soon as it started, when the report was referred to the Standing Policy Committee on Finance & Corporate Services scheduled to meet later that week. Sensing that what was unfolding deserved attention, on my own time and dime I scrambled to read the reports and clear an afternoon to attend the Finance committee meeting.
First, some background as I understand it. Every few years, the City and development industry must negotiate agreements governing the funding of infrastructure and services for new areas. The current agreement lapses at the end of this calendar year and so, following a City/Industry forum last year, a working group was created to address three specific issues: closing the capital cost gap, addressing timing and risk, and finding long term solutions. The most urgent of these is closing the capital cost gap.
Currently, water and sewer infrastructure for new suburbs is paid for entirely by the City with the costs borne by all of us via our utility bills. So, Calgary’s exponential expansion of its footprint is echoed in the expansion of the City’s debt and we – you, me and everyone who lives here – are struggling to pay for it all. According to the City, either we find a new way to pay for this infrastructure or cap all new growth at the edges immediately.
Cap new growth: words that no one who makes money developing land in Calgary wants to hear. And let’s be clear, the industry makes money. And let’s also be clear, there’s nothing wrong with making money on developing land in Calgary per se, but the debt load being shouldered by citizens as a result of the current business model is not financially sustainable.
Let’s also be clear that this is not an issue of pitting established inner city neighbourhoods against newer suburban neighbourhoods as some have tried to paint it. This is an issue for every citizen of Calgary. We can no longer afford to artificially support the development industry’s business model, even though the jobs/taxes generated by the industry are an important part of our economy. We can no longer subsidize the price of new housing stock when so many existing communities lack key infrastructure such as recreation centres, libraries and adequate transit. We can no longer allow debt to expand exponentially with Calgary’s footprint, leaving ourselves unequipped to deal with upkeep of aging infrastructure and necessary services like snow-clearing. And though it may have pained committee members to extend a long meeting even longer, several citizens – also on their own time and dime – waited hours for their five minutes of airtime to make these points and more.
To their credit, the reps of the suburban development industry who presented at the meeting acknowledged that changes are needed. Although they initially balked at the report, upon being painstakingly walked through it by one alderman, they had to admit that they agree with most of it. They conceded that their industry must share more of the costs and risks of developing new suburbs, that the development levies that pay for water and sewer must, indeed, go up. They also conceded that the levies need to double to cover costs which, by the way, will bring us in line with our neighbour to the north, Edmonton. And that even though these levies will be significant, increasing densities in new communities under the Plan It Calgary model, passed by a unanimous Council last year, will lower “per door” costs.
Still, the industry said that the report should be delayed until the fall – which effectively means after the October election dust settles – and some aldermen were intent on giving them that time. The report was only forwarded to an upcoming Council meeting by the narrowest of votes. But in the end, the job got done. The report now moves on to the July 19 Council meeting. This will be a meeting to watch. As one alderman said Wednesday, “we have to do something now and we’re limited to the tools we have now.” Who on Council will vote to accept the report and get on with difficult but necessary changes? And who will vote for more time for the industry to establish its negotiating position on the timing and phasing of the levies that all parties say must go up? I know I’ll be watching.
