Speaking Municipally

Mack:
Stop trying to make a tree bylaw happen. It's not gonna happen. This week, Council approved what's been described as an alternative to a private tree protection bylaw.

Stephanie:
Plus, we take a look at proposed changes to Jasper Avenue and White Avenue. But don't worry, they're not funded yet.

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, Episode 358. Are you keeping cool, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Well, currently, I have to close all my windows to record the podcast, so…

Mack:
Yes.

Stephanie:
'cause at outside my window is very loud. So, I'm at, like, about, five out of ten uncomfortable, and probably by the end of this recording, I'll be closer to a nine out of ten. So, let's get it, let's go. No. How are you, Mack?

Mack:
I'm in the same boat.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I'm in the same boat. You would hear all of the LRT construction outside if I left the windows open so I also have them closed for the moment, but, I'm glad that we're finally getting some nice warm weather in Edmonton.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Although, when it is this hot, you do want to be outside, and it's nice to be under the shade of a tree, right? And we're gonna talk more about trees, in this episode, but before we do that, we have an ad for you.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you buy U of A Reads from the University of Alberta. It's a podcast that starts where most stories don't, before the first word is even written. You'll hear from alumni authors about the real stuff behind their books, like what it means to write through illness and recovery, or how lived experience shapes conversations around Indigenous identity and resistance. Some episodes explore poetry and the quiet realities of distance and loss. Others unpack history, imagination, and the stories we carry forward. It's a reminder that every story comes from somewhere real. Listen to U of A Reads wherever you get your podcasts.

Mack:
On this podcast, we've talked many times about our love for trees. And the need for protection of trees. And the city has some pretty ambitious plans for planting new trees, growing our canopy. All of these things are really positive for lots of different reasons, economic reasons, aesthetic reasons, climate change reasons, health reasons. But the one that's been the most challenging has been the protection of private trees. And so, several folks on Council and in our community have been pushing for a private tree bylaw, protection bylaw, a bylaw that would require some sort of approval or compensation or something if you're gonna cut down a historic tree on private property. Currently, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. I understand it was kind of up at Council again recently. Bring us up to speed, Stephanie. Have they passed a private tree protection bylaw?

Stephanie:
No, they have not. But over the years, yeah, like you've said, there's been many people, many councillors and people in the community asking for a private tree protection bylaw and administration has been very firm in its stance over the years that it is too, time-consuming and costly to do this, even though many other cities around the world have this. So, what they say instead, all the, like, especially recently in the last couple of years, they've been saying, "No private tree bylaw, but we do have this thing called the Landscape Securities Program." And this week, Council approved updates to that. So, under this program, developers have to give a deposit to the city when they get their development permit, and then they get it back once they prove that they've planted the required numbers of trees and shrubs as laid out in the zoning bylaw. So, they can cut down as many trees as they want, but they just have to replant new ones. The changes will expand what type of properties must participate, namely to small-scale residential, such as row houses, duplexes, semi-detached and single detached. So, before it was mostly larger developments and commercial and, industrial, but now they're adding on, you know, your typical infill, you know, the eight-plexes and stuff.

Mack:
Okay, so previously, if you were doing a major redevelopment on a large property, you cut down some trees. You have to replace them, maybe not like-for-like. Probably there's some kind of a formula they figure out for how many trees you need to plant. We're now expanding that to essentially residential properties as well. So, if you're putting in an infill or building a new single detached home or whatever, you cut down some trees, you're gonna have to put in new ones. So, this is good, I think, this improvement that passed. It protects the trees we already have in terms of quantity, but obviously, there's no comparison between a new little sapling you're gonna plant and potentially a 100-year-old 50-year-old tree that you've cut down, right? And so this doesn't do anything to protect those existing old trees, right?

Stephanie:
No, it doesn't. This just it just simply doesn't, no.

Mack:
Why do you think administration is touting this as the solution rather than the more obvious, let's just put in the private tree protection bylaw?

Stephanie:
Well, like I said, they said that it would be too time-consuming and costly, but I mean, also, like I said, other cities have them too. Like, one example is in Toronto. I actually wanted to talk about this news story that I saw from Toronto. So, they have a tree protection bylaw that certain species can't be cut down. And I saw this, come out of CBC Toronto. There's this tree that, is a non-native tree in Toronto called the gingko tree. And, they'they're these beautiful large trees, super nice, and they were planted by, you know, people moving here couple decades ago. But they've started, now that they've reached full maturity, the female trees have started releasing this disgusting fruit that falls onto the ground, and it says that it smells like a cross between dog poop and vomit.

Mack:
Ooh.

Stephanie:
But the City of Toronto is like, "You can't cut it down," because it's under the tree protection bylaw. There's very strict rules, that you have you need a permit from the City to take down any tree with a diameter of 30 centimeters or greater, even on private property. Violating the bylaw can carry fines of up to $100,000.

Mack:
Interesting.

Stephanie:
I'm not and you know, I'm not arguing on either side right now for a private tree pr-… private tree bylaw, but I just think it's funny that it's coming up in the same week that there's this, like, disgusting tree that makes your yard smell like literal poo-poo. And…

Mack:
Yeah, that's funny, like…

Stephanie:
You're like, "Oh, can't cut it down."

Mack:
People didn't realize that this is what would happen with these trees when they passed the…

Stephanie:
I guess so.

Mack:
The bylaw? That's really fascinating.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Well, obviously there are ways to implement a bylaw that is not quite so difficult…

Stephanie:
Yes, for sure.

Mack:
To address the problems. What does the development industry think about this new change that council has approved?

Stephanie:
Well, it's gonna cost them a little bit more money and cause them more paperwork, so they do not want to do it. Gary Hoft, who is with Cantiro Homes, and he was speaking on behalf of Build Edmonton Metro, he said that council should just let developers handle the issue, and that tying up capital in the form of these deposits that developers have to make would hurt the infill development that the city seeks to increase. And he said, "Most likely there's going to be a doubling up of funds there, and some of that could potentially be tied up for years. We don't want to add more administrative burden to this. So just within Cantiro alone, doing about 400 houses, we're going to add an unnecessary burden with just administrative responsibility to try to manage all of these deposits."

Mack:
Yeah, so the argument against this is the red tape reduction idea, right? Which I get. That makes sense. Want more infill? Don't make it harder for people to go and do infill, I think is essentially the argument here. But the thing is, we also want a healthier city, and we also want to try to mitigate the effects of climate change. And there's unequivocal evidence that trees are an important part of that. So I think I saw in the reporting from Postmedia Coun. Aaron Paquette basically say, "Nobody's happy here," right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. Basically, well, because on the other side, Jan Hardstaff, who was speaking on behalf of the Residential Infill Working Group, who's also an arborist and is, like, very passionate about trees, she also spoke in opposition to it, so it was kind of funny seeing, like, the developer and the anti-infill person sitting beside each other on the bench there. But anyways, she spoke in opposition, but because she in general supports it, but she wants more to be done.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
One of the main things is that she wants to see the timelines changed around so that developers only get their money back after the trees have been established and healthy, as opposed to just, like, checking a box after a short amount of time. Because she says that it takes between three and five years for landscaping to become established.

Mack:
Right. I'm guessing the developers really wouldn't want their capital tied up for three to five years.

Stephanie:
Exactly, yeah.

Mack:
Yeah. Okay, so I've been saying this passed. It was almost unanimous.

Stephanie:
Yeah, it was 12 to 1, with Principe opposed.

Mack:
Well, like most of the tree things that seem to happen in this city, it's like a baby step, so a small step forward. It's a good thing, but we could still have further we could go. I'm sure private tree protection bylaw will come up again in the future.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Okay, the next item we wanted to talk about was actually from couple of weeks ago. The Edmonton Police, Commission has presented the 2025 EPS annual report. This was at council, where they presumably just received this for information. Any highlights or anything that stood out to you, Stephanie, as part of this presentation?

Stephanie:
Well, one of the things that I think stood out to a lot of the reporters there and everything was this announcement that there was gonna be this stabilization center, and it was, presented as a way to kind of help people who maybe the officers come across in the middle of the night, and they're not really sure what to do with them. Maybe they're acting erratically or doing drugs, or they're sickly, and, yeah. So, but the thing is that, like, currently, if you run into folks like that on the street, the officers, if they're not doing anything illegal, they can't bring them into the jail detention center, and also maybe that's not the right place for them to go. Sometimes maybe the emergency room isn't the right place to go. So they need another place for these, for these folks. So they've introduced this stabilization center.

Mack:
Yeah. When I first heard about this, I thought, "Well, that's an interesting choice of term here, stabilization center, but they're detaining people." "Isn't that a jail?"

Stephanie:
"But without being charged for a crime."

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
So…

Mack:
Well, the thing that, also stood out to me was that this sounded a bit familiar, and I went back and looked, and it is very familiar. So back in 2023, Edmonton Police and the province announced this thing called the Integrated Care Center. Slightly different, not integrated stabilization, Integrated Care Center. And what they did is they repurposed the holding cells at the downtown branch of the Edmonton Police Service and paired people with support staff from, Radius Health, which is the former Bull McCauley Health, renamed organization. There was funding that came along with this. The province announced in 2023 about $17 million it was gonna fund a few different things, but the center was gonna be one of them. So, like I said, 17 holding cells. It could accommodate 17 people at a time. The police touted that 350 people went through there basically from March to September of that year. It was not mentioned again. It was not mentioned in the 2024 annual report. There was no mention of this later. That funding originally was for three years. We're now about three years later. It seems to me that this Stabilization Center is essentially the same thing they've already been doing for the last three years, but funded now with support from Recovery Alberta rather than the former provincial, departments that funded this in the past. And so the cynic in me is looking at this as the police needed a message to get out there to say, "We hear you, Downtown Revitalization Coalition and others who are calling for some action on this. Here's what we're doing," but without actually doing anything new.

Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, that totally tracks. And maybe that's why, you know, this wasn't really, like, an announcement, any fanfare, didn't really seem to make a huge ripple at council when they were listening to the report.

Mack:
Yeah, I can't find the details. We'll have to dig into this further about how this is being funded and that sort of thing. You know, even from 2023 to 2026, the number of journalists working in this city and this province has declined, and so the number of people to ask these kinds of questions is smaller than it used to be, right?

Stephanie:
Okay.

Mack:
And the coverage that these things get, unfortunately, is diminished, which is why it's so important the work that you do, Stephanie, to pay attention to this stuff…

Stephanie:
Thanks.

Mack:
All the time. So, we'll try to find that out. But it just seems to me like, you know, this is more of the same from the Edmonton Police Service, and it's not clear to me that it's gonna make a big difference in terms of, both perceptions and real outcomes for people. If I could imagine what the difference is between 2023 and today, I think the only thing is that there are potentially some different powers through this new Recovery Alberta, thing that's been set up by the province for, essentially for detaining people, right? And maybe that is what is making this new announcement possible. But also, you know, when I read about this, it's like we have this Integrated Stabilization Center, we have the Neighborhood Empowerment Teams, we have HELP, Human-Centered Engagement and Liaison Partnership, we have PACT, Police and Crisis teams. We just It seems like there's a lot of different departments and functions and places that are essentially doing the same work. And the game we play whenever these news conferences happen is that somebody will call for things to be more integrated. Maybe we should integrate all of these things and not have so many different ones that are really impossible to track and keep, you know, pay attention to over time. I think it probably comes down to where the funding comes for these things, right? And that's why they're all different and not the same. The police has been talking in the past about how much is spent on social services, and wouldn't it be better to do this more efficiently? I submit they could start right here and make this a little bit more simple. Okay, well, I'm probably not the only one, wondering about this and feeling somewhat critical about this. What else have you seen, Stephanie?

Stephanie:
Well, CBC spoke to Janetta Salvaglio, a University of Alberta Professor of Medicine, who said that this approach just kinda seems to be a reaction to discomforts that the public has with seeing visible signs of homelessness, poverty, addiction, mental health, et cetera. She questioned, "Is this evidence-based? Is it helpful?" There's not a lot of suggestion that is the case because, yeah, I don't know, it's like a drunk tank. That's another thing Petra Schulz, who's from Moms Stop the Harm, she said, "It's like a drunk take. Somebody rolling you rolling up with a uniform and picking you up for your own good and locking you up somewhere is not the approach that is going to work."

Mack:
The CBC article that talked about the Integrated Care Center back in 2023 also quoted Petra Schultz saying essentially the same thing. So, another reason why these two, these two centers just seem like the same thing rebranded with a, with a new name. And yeah, I think it's a really good question to ask. Is it gonna have an impact? Is there any evidence of it? If we've been doing this since 2023, has anything changed? It doesn't seem like it, right? And so just coming back to, you know, the annual report, the 2025 Citizen Perception Survey was also talked about in the annual report, and I noted this, I thought it was pretty interesting. EPS saw the first significant improvement in perceived public safety since 2020, with 70% of Edmontonians feeling safe in their communities after dark. Now, what always happens when the police put out information? They'll use a statistic like this to say, "See? Aren't we doing a great job?" And then they'll talk about…

Stephanie:
Give us more money.

Mack:
How the number of calls for services increased, and so we need more money to do more, right? So that is pretty expected. But I just feel like that 70%, up from 65% in 2024, 67% in 2023, like not a huge amount, but even still, any kind of an increase does not match the on-the-ground experience that I think we have when we're talking to people. And I don't know about you, but anyone I talk to, who's coming downtown or visiting downtown or whatever, still perceives there's a problem. And again, back to the reaction to that sentiment, that is why this Stabilization Center is being talked about at all, right? To try to demonstrate that they're doing something about that perception. So, anyway, I'm just pointing out that I don't think the Perception Survey matches the reality in this case for how the vast majority of people feel and sort of the discourse that you see out there.

Stephanie:
Well, I mean, this is anecdotal, but because there's been so much more of a crackdown on, folks who use drugs, folks who are sheltering outside, there's been more of a dispersion into, like, surrounding neighborhoods, and also, like, they're literally physically hiding in more discrete places. And so people don't see them as much? I don't know. It's very complicated. Police statistics low-key kind of don't mean anything because…

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Crime going up does not necessarily mean that crime went up. It means that reported crimes to the police went up. If there was no one there to see the crime and report it, then it did not get reported. Like, they kind of just are meaningless a little bit.

Mack:
And you always have to keep in mind per capita…

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
Because our population increases significantly, so you can't look at absolute numbers. And they always report the absolute number of calls. It should go up if our population increased by the size of St. Albert in the last Year or whatever, right? Like, yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
You definitely have to take these numbers with a big grain of salt. But I'm not around the rest of the city as much as I am downtown, and I will just say that walking around downtown, even today, I went to a meeting earlier today, it doesn't seem like there's fewer people on the street in need of assistance than there was before, you know?

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mack:
I don't, I don't think anything materially has changed.

Stephanie:
Yeah. If any like in my neighborhood, in the Strathcona neighborhood, if anything, same.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
Well, we know there are things that could be done to help address that problem. A temporary jail cell drunk tank does not seem like the most effective way to do that.

Stephanie:
Well, we'll see if there's legal challenges. Like, I don't know. We'll see, won't we?

Mack:
All right, moving along. We've got some urban planning things to get into. We have two really interesting ones that I know have got you very excited, Stephanie. So, let's first just stick with downtown and talk about Jasper Avenue New Visions, which, I think I've said this on the show before, I first wrote about in, I think, 2008.

Stephanie:
-huh.

Mack:
Here we are in 2026.

Stephanie:
I was looking at your Flickr for photos to potentially use for this, and some of the photos are from, like, 2008, 2009.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And I'm like, it's not that new of a vision anymore.

Mack:
Not anymore.

Stephanie:
It's a bit of an old vision. But find…

Mack:
What's new this week? Yeah.

Stephanie:
Well What is, what is new? Well, the city has released some proposed designs for the final phase, or the third phase at least, for Jasper Avenue New Vision, which would be the stretch between 109th Street and 102nd Street. Like you said, this has been going on since, like, the construction started on everything east of 102nd Street in, like, 2013. About in 2020, construction started on everything west of 109th Street. Now they are finally taking steps towards the middle section, because, as I'll get to later in this, or as I said at the beginning too, they are none of these projects that I'm about to talk about are funded. But yeah, so this would be the first major refresh of this section between 102 and 109 with, like, the very aesthetically pleasing green streetlights and lamp posts, which I just think are so iconic, and they're gonna get changed to the silver ones that are on the other sides, which … (sighs)…

Mack:
Yeah. Let me just stop on this. So, I too love those green, old, now rusting and deteriorating You know, lightposts and signposts and all of that. And sure, it was from another era. I mean, they had the sort of, shelter things for the poster boards underneath.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Like, there's a few poster boards, but that's not really It's all digital now, right? It'it's a bygone era. There's no newspaper boxes. All that kind of stuff is gone. So, I get that we might wanna replace it, but I hate those gray silver ones. They are so ugly. They are so messy. They make the street look cluttered and messy and unnecessarily, confusing. When you just look down the street from 102nd, you know, looking west, and you just see the green stuff, it's nice, uniform, clean lines. It doesn't take up too much space. You go further east, and you're looking down east on Jasper Avenue, and it's just clutter from the way that they've designed these lights. I wish Like you said, this vision is not so new anymore. I wish we could change it. It's already been different in this section of Jasper Avenue for the last 10 years. Why don't we do something better…

Stephanie:
It's…

Mack:
In this spot?

Stephanie:
It's already dated. It's very much what would a person in 2010 think is futuristic. Right?

Mack:
It feels like that.

Stephanie:
I'm so glad that we agree on this.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
There's just something so special about the You're so right. Like, looking down the, like, vibe of looking down Jasper and seeing the clean lines and everything. You're so right. But anyways, we're not just here to talk about the aesthetic of the streetlights.

Mack:
Okay.

Stephanie:
There are many other I'm gonna say the main three things that I pulled away from this report. One, the project involves rehabbing of nine LRT station entrances. About half of them for Corona Station and about half of them for Bay Enterprise Station. We'll get into all of these later. Two, four lanes of travel, as well as dedicated left turn lanes are maintained along this stretch. However, many street parking spots would be removed. And number three, bus bays for along this stretch are being removed, as they are being on White with those transit priority measures. So, they will no longer have to pull out and then go back in.

Mack:
Okay, so let's talk about these three things. LRT station entrances feels like When I think about low-hanging fruit in this city, Stephanie I think about those LRT station entrances to Corona and Bay Enterprise Square. I mean, the one on 104th Street just south of Jasper Avenue. The reason that 7-Eleven couldn't make it, there's a new restaurant there that just opened up called Solar. Finally opened up. I feel like that area would be so much more successful without that horrific LRT station entrance there. The same thing with the one on 103rd Street next to Enterprise Square. I mean, they smell like urine. They're not clean.

Stephanie:
They're dark.

Mack:
They're very unsafe. They're dark. Low-hanging fruit. So, what is the plan under this new vision?

Stephanie:
Well, you know, many people would agree with you, like business leaders, downtown advocacy groups. Benita McBryan when she was the leader of the or the CEO of the Downtown Business Association. They've all been calling for this too, because they just Terrible vibes. Rancid, terrible vibes. But, some of, some of the kind of design features would be to maximize visibility into stairwells and exposure to sunlight and to use materials that are durable and easily replaced. Those are the two kind of things that I noticed, because, you know, maximize visibility, that's sightlines, so that it's not a place to hide away and do drugs.

Mack:
Yep.

Stephanie:
That's kind of what I got inferred from that. I think the other thing is to use materials that are durable and easily replaced, because how many times do you walk by an LRT station entrance and the window's smashed or something like that?

Mack:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, anything would be an improvement, I suppose, over what is there, but I would love to see a more imaginative take on not just the experience of the transit rider, but the impact of how those station entrances are designed on the streetscape around it and the street life around it, right? I think the big, boxy, concrete things we have now really take away from the street, in addition to having those negative benefits to people who are trying to just use the public transit system. So, maybe this, opening it up to sunlight and everything would make that, a little bit better, but remains to be seen, when we get some more detailed design on that. And then the other aspect of this that always comes up is it's gonna be, it's gonna be expensive, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. I mean, like I, like I said, this is not funded yet. There wasn't even, from what I saw, any information on how much it's gonna cost. There is a small portion of this project that we will get into a little later that is going to be debated in the fall.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But yeah, this could, this will I, if I had to guess, it's at least four years before they even discuss funding it.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
So we got a lot We got a while.

Mack:
We got a while. Okay, number two. You mentioned, the four lanes of travel and dedicated left turn lanes, but some on-street parking removed. What's the plan there?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so, it's gonna be pretty similar to, like, the kind of travel configuration on either side of this stretch. Still four lanes each direction, plus more where they've got turns, turn lanes. So yes, the main street will be up to, like, six lanes not in some spaces. However, a lot of the parking is getting taken away, so to, like, widen the street, and again, like I said about the bus bays being removed.

Mack:
Yeah, and so that'll make it, more space for pedestrians and buses and active transportation users…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
We'll say, less for vehicles, even though the number of vehicle lanes is maintained.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That makes sense.

Stephanie:
A little bit less, yeah.

Mack:
A little bit less. Not a, not a dramatic decrease. Okay, number three, you talked about, relocating bus stops or having the bus bays, right? So tell us about that plan.

Stephanie:
So yeah, they're going to be kind of shifting around where the bus stops are, and in the kind of, like, math, in the, in the net impact will be that there will be one fewer stop when you're going westbound, so on the north side of the street. The same number of stops on the south side of the street. Probably not a huge loss 'cause it's just one, and you know, there's almost a bus stop every, like, what, two blocks? But, like, when this does happen, you'll have to get used to new travel patterns. But again, that's gonna be for, like, in, like, 15 years, so anyways. But what I think is interesting here is that they're going to be taking out the bus bays so that buses will no longer have to go out and then in, which is a transit priority measure, like they're, like they're doing to parts of Whyte Ave, in that project that's removing the scrambles. So I thought that was really interesting.

Mack:
I think that's a fantastic change. We've talked about that before. I think it'll be very positive to have no more bus bays, no more pullouts for buses. They just stop. It's not only good for, speed of the bus or efficiency of the bus, it's also really great for weather because sometimes in the winter when the bus It can only come in so far to that bus bay and you as a pedestrian have to somehow get over the windrow to get to the bu Like, it's actually really problematic in the winter. So eliminating all of that is a positive thing. I'm a bit concerned about the removal of the bus stop on the north side. Like, there's a lot of stops, yes, but I think they're positioned really well currently. Like, no matter which side of Corona station you come out of, there's a bus stop right there. If we're gonna make people…

Stephanie:
Interesting.

Mack:
Walk another block, I think that's a negative, and I hope they take that kind of thing into consideration.

Stephanie:
Well, Mack, they're doing public engagement and they're seeking your feedback, so.

Mack:
All right, I'll have to go and give them my feedback.

Stephanie:
Okay, so I just looked at the plans, and you're right that those stops are very conveniently located. For the ones going westbound, it's moved just onto the other side of the entrance, and then for the ones going eastbound, it's moved, like, a little bit further down the block. So it's not a huge change, at least for those ones.

Mack:
Okay. All right. One other change about this part of Jasper Avenue that we have to touch on, I'm hoping they said something about this, that is the only part of our downtown and Jasper Avenue that has dedicated motorcycle parking. What is happening with that dedicated parking between 107th and 108th Streets on the south side?

Stephanie:
It was not included, so we'll have to wait and see. And again, Mack, they're accepting feedback. If you are, if you would really like to see the motorcycle parking retained, please send in your feedback.

Mack:
Okay, so they're accepting feedback until June 10th. What's the earliest that this could go ahead if we fund it?

Stephanie:
Okay, so planning and design is being funded right now through the Downtown Community Revitalization Levy, but there's no timeline for construction. Planning and design is expected to be complete in 2029, but construction will have to be considered in future budget cycles. And then there is one more thing that we, I don't really wanna get into it too much. All of this information, by the way, is gonna be in the Pulse on Friday morning, so if you wanna have more information about that, take a look. But there's a separate design booklet for 107th Street between 99th Avenue and Jasper Avenue, and that funding for that project construction is set to be debated in the upcoming four-year budget cycle. So it's, like, a little chunk of the project, and it also connects up to, like, O'diamond Park eventually, so you know, it'll be nice to have a little redo of that area.

Mack:
And it looks like the big change there would just be changing, the configuration of bike lanes.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So we've got one on either side of the street, which…

Stephanie:
Instead of, yeah.

Mack:
Makes a ton of sense heading into O'Diamond Park, right? And maximizing that investment that we've made.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Okay, let's move south of the river. There's also new plans for BRT on Whyte Avenue that you've been following. What is the story there?

Stephanie:
Well, you know, all of these signs for I spent a You guys know, I live in Strathcona. I'm a south side girly. I spend a lot of time whipping around this area, and in the past, like, two days, signs about BRT have been popping up like mushrooms after a rainfall. Like, they're everywhere. I think that they wanna get, like Even as far south as I was in Park Allen, I was down by Scona, they're everywhere, these signs, like, "Give your input on BRT." Which is awesome. I obviously want more people to participate. So they've released two configuration options for It's one of the BRT routes that will go down Whyte Ave and also go around the U of A area. Again, I'm gonna do three big points. First one is that there's two options. The lanes will either run alongside the curb or in the center of the street.

Mack:
Down Whyte Avenue.

Stephanie:
Yep, down Whyte Avenue, and then Point two, the proposal would remove almost all street parking along the entire, along the entire stretch. There'd be a couple of spots, parking spots maintained near the French Quarter and some loading zones. But, like, seriously, almost every street parking spot along the entire street would be removed. Number three, vehicle lanes would be reduced to only one in each direction, but emergency vehicles would still be permitted to use the transit lane so they could kinda whip around.

Mack:
Okay, this is really interesting. This is that BRT route, B2 it's called…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
If you're looking it up in city documents, that would go from Bonnie Doon to West Edmonton Mall. So it goes down Whyte Avenue. I think it's particularly interesting 'cause this is the same location that we've had proposals for gondolas and all kinds of different ways to move people east to west. So fascinating. We're finally gonna get something here with BRT. So the first thing you mentioned, curbside or center lanes. Curbside wouldn't be dramatically different from what we have right now. Center lanes would be more like what they're have in other cities, and you have some firsthand experience with this, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so center running, they, you would have to build, like, a little station in the middle of the street, and when I was in Mexico City I actually did not ride the BRT because I was a little bit nervous only because, you know, their metro, trains are so much easier 'cause they stop at every station and then, you know, you can just…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Get off and turn around and go back. But I did get to look and admire the center running lanes for the bus rapid transit. And yeah, like, it just works. You just, instead of crossing, like, you just cross halfway into the middle of the street, then you go up the little platform. That's how it works.

Mack:
Yeah. I think a lot of places have these. They can be very effective. I don't love them, I will say, and the main reason is because pedestrians now have to cross in order to get…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
To the transit, to the bus, from wherever their destination was. Sometimes that's unavoidable. You have to cross anyway, but it's just, it's one of those tiny, little annoyances that does build up. I know that places even like Toronto, they have similar center lane things for example, the streetcar system, right? So it does work in other places, but just given the way that things are configured so far, I find myself leaning toward the curbside option.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I…

Mack:
Especially if we're gonna get rid of the parking anyway, you know?

Stephanie:
Yeah, I understand, and I also think that with the curbside option, the stations are just at places that I think make a little bit more sense. So there would be six stations with the curbside option, at 109th Street, at a spot near 106 or 107, at Calgary Trail, at 99th Street, 93rd Street, and 83rd Street at Bonnie Doon Mall.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
Those are all, like, very, like, kind of, I would say those are like the landmark streets of Whyte Ave, you know what I mean?

Mack:
Absolutely.

Stephanie:
But with the center…

Mack:
Those are the destinations, right? Those are the places you're going.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Exactly. And I think also, you know, with the 106th Street one, that would line up really nice with the bike lane if you wanted to hop on and off with your bike on BRT, but with the center-running BRT, the, it's all off by, like, a block, and I think it makes sense because it's not at the destinations, right?

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
So there would be stations at 108th Street, 105th Street, 98th Street, 93rd or 91st, somewhere in there, and 83rd Street also at Bonnie Doon Mall. So it just kinda seems off. You know, and one of the, one of the benefits though of the center running is that there would be fewer conflicts with vehicles because, cars wouldn't be turning right through the dedicated, BRT line, but we all know that in Edmonton, no one ever runs into transit vehicles that have their…

Mack:
No, never.

Stephanie:
Way.

Mack:
Never, absolutely. That doesn't have happen at all.

Stephanie:
It's never happened before.

Mack:
So as we're talking about this then, I think you could succinctly say curbside is the pedestrian-friendly option and center, running is the vehicular-friendly option.

Stephanie:
I guess so. Well, I mean, also the center…

Mack:
Is that too strong? I don't think so. Like, you, what you just pointed out with the stations, the length of time or the amount of space that pedestrians need to cover to get to their destinations, like, the big benefit is just we don't interact with cars. Well, who cares about the cars? You know?

Stephanie:
Yeah, I, well, I, one major thing also about the center stations is that it would, mean a lot more left turns would be taken out.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
So both options involve left turns being restricted on some intersections, but it's many more with the center running because, like, stations are gonna be in the way.

Mack:
For sure, yeah. Okay,…

Stephanie:
And, you know what? Neither option is convenient for cars because like, it's like a big proposed change.

Mack:
Well, if neither's convenient for cars, we should pick the one that's best for pedestrians and active transportation users, then. That's what I would suggest. Okay, so also not friendly for cars and people are gonna be upset about this. You said all the parking is gone, like, all of it.

Stephanie:
So there's like a I couldn't really fully understand from the documents 'cause the picture was really small, but it looks like there's gonna be a couple of spots maintained on service roads near the French Quarter, but other than that, no parking along the entire thing. A couple of flex zones and loading zones, but other than that, no parking.

Mack:
And the parking is being removed and then also, vehicular lanes, one reduced to one in each direction, and…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
This is just because we need space for these BRT lines to run essentially.

Stephanie:
Yeah, so space to widen the sidewalks, space for the, BRT line, and then the rest of the space would be for cars.

Mack:
Okay, so 109th it sounds like is the last station that you talked about, but this is gonna keep going eventually to West Edmonton Mall and, of course, the major transit center at the end of Whyte Avenue. It's not technically at the end of Whyte Avenue, but everyone thinks about it, and that's the U of A, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So how does this connect over there?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so in this whole survey that, again, is open until June 24th, we'll have links in the show notes, they have two design booklets, one for what we just talked about on Whyte Ave proper and then the rest for the university area, and they presented a couple of options for how it's gonna kinda get around there. If you've ever ridden the 8 or the 4, you know that it's kind of this weird circuitous route to get around…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And go, and basically they're wondering, "Okay, which of the two weird routes are we gonna take?" and it's kind of one of them is pretty similar to the 4 and one of them is pretty similar to the 8, so give you feedback on that part. And I just wanted to touch on, I was like, "I wonder if Prioritize Whyte Ave has put out a blog post about this." And I looked, and of course they had already…

Mack:
Okay.

Stephanie:
Because they're on top of that.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
So the blog post said that they're excited that the BRT proposal implements some aspects of the Old Strathcona Public Realm Strategy. They said, quote, "We encourage the city to enhance and expand these proposals so that they reflect the direction provided in the strategy. This approach ensures that investment on Whyte Ave does not turn into a decade-long series of construction projects, but rather creates better transit connectivity and public spaces within one construction project." So they are calling for, hey, if you're already doing the BRT, please, for the love of God, do the public realm stuff at the same time.

Mack:
Which they had talked to us about before…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Too, right? It's like…

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
Just coordinate the projects here if you're gonna do all of that work. I think that makes a ton of sense. Hopefully we'll see council consider that. How about this one then? So the surveys are open, I think, a little bit longer than the downtown one.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
This one's till June 24th. What is the potential for this to move ahead? Is this in the upcoming four-year budget?

Stephanie:
So back in March at an urban planning committee, councillors supported a motion from Coun. Michael Janz who's, of course, his ward, Papastew, includes most of Whyte Avenue, most of this area. He, the motion directs administration to bring forward two funding packages to budget deliberations. Council will consider funding the detailed design, infrastructure delivery and operations of the B1 and B2 BRT routes. Try saying that 10 times fast. It will also consider funding simultaneous improvements to the pedestrian realm along Whyte Avenue. So basically what they're asking for, but again, this is just being brought forward to council. We are not sure if it's going to be included in the budget or not.

Mack:
Okay, and these are unfunded service packages, which as we learned in our last episode…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Could be in the budget If administration thinks they are aligned enough with things that need to be need to happen anyway, right?

Stephanie:
Yes, and I'm not really sure if it'll be included. I can't guess. I don't know, maybe we'll start making bets.

Mack:
If I had to guess on this one, I would say they're not gonna be included. I think council's gonna have to fight for this, when it comes to budget time.

Stephanie:
That's probably a pretty good guess.

Mack:
Anytime there's parking involved, I'm willing to bet administration's not gonna put their thumb on the scale too much.

Stephanie:
Fair enough.

Mack:
Okay, well, lots to dig into there. And as you point out, lots to give your input on, so if you want to go and share your feedback, now is the time, and the links are in the show notes for both of those. Next week we'll be back with another episode. One of the things we're gonna do is dig in a little bit further to the bridge topic that we talked about last time, because, we found out some new interesting information there, so I'm looking forward to that. But it's the weekend coming up. We've got some fun to have before then. I understand you're going to the Riverhawks.

Stephanie:
Yes, I'm I can't go to the season opener on Friday, but I'm going to the Saturday one. Maybe I'm doxing myself here, that's okay. But it's the River Valley themed one, which is so exciting, and I think that I'm gonna try the new shuttle that I wrote about in my, story a few weeks ago and test it out and see how it's going. I do usually love to take an electric, like a ride-share or electric, like, bike or scooter, because, I don't wanna have to go up a hill at the end of the night.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
But I don't know, maybe I'll try the little shuttle moment.

Mack:
Okay, well, we look forward to hearing about your experience if you do Next week. And we'll have more about the bridge and whatever else city council gets up to in that episode as well. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.