Speaking Municipally

Mack:
No way, four-way. This week we've got a little update on Bridgegate.

Stephanie:
Plus, we go on a bit of a deep dive into a southeast neighborhood that was designed with only one way in or out. What could go wrong?

Mack:
Hi, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Welcome back to Speaking Municipally, Episode 359.

Stephanie:
So, Mack, you went to the Team Canada Soccer game on Monday, you, how was that?

Mack:
In a word, wet.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I can imagine. I was like, "Did you drown?"

Mack:
Yeah, it was very wet. It was a lot of fun, it was I'm really glad I got to go. They said attendance at the game was 46,100, even though there was all of that rain. It rained nonstop. Actually, it was really funny, my sister and I were walking back from the train on the way home and it stopped raining.

Stephanie:
Of course.

Mack:
But like until then, you know, it just rained the whole time, but it was really fun. Canada won, obviously…

Stephanie:
Yay.

Mack:
2-nil, which was great, and just really cool that we got to see our national team before they go off to World Cup.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Very exciting. I…

Mack:
You know, the rain caused some problems. The LRT was a bit slow, and backed up in some cases, but overall, I think everything went pretty smoothly. I have no complaints about the game. Everyone was really friendly. All the volunteers were great. The staff were great. The concessions didn't work so well. There was a really long line to get out of the, out of the seats into the concourse, and then the concourse into the concessions. There's only a couple at Commonwealth. It was just jam packed, and I saw on LinkedIn a post from our friend, Jason Svicay, over at BuilEdmontonMetro, and he said it was his one gripe, actually, was the concession stand. So, the concession stands at Commonwealth are actually run by volunteers. It's one of these fundraising opportunities for charities. And he said, "For a world class international event, food and beverage service should be run by experienced private operators. Feels like a missed opportunity relying on volunteers at this scale." And I find myself in agreement with that. I think, you know, we don't have world class events like the World Cup all that often, but when we do, we really should put our best foot forward and that includes the food and beverage options at a place like Commonwealth. I mean, it is a very old stadium. You gotta work with what you gotta work with, but that is something that I think could be improved in the future.

Stephanie:
Yeah, definitely. So the footy scran wasn't quite up to snuff.

Mack:
I don't know what footy scran is. Enlighten me.

Stephanie:
Okay, I only learned about this a few weeks ago. My friend showed me this, Twitter account based in the UK called Footy Scran, and scran is a slang term for food, grub, nourishment, and footy scran is the scran that you get at the footy match. But the funny thing that, about the pictures is that they range from everything, from like a cheese panini, which is really just a bun with literally nothing in it, to like a delicious, Korean fried chicken bucket, and it's just really funny, comical to see the difference, but also, you can play this game called Scrandal. It's like came from that rush of Wordle, you know, like the Wordle gold rush, where you vote on which of the two footy scrans you would eat…

Mack:
Ah.

Stephanie:
And then if you vote with the crowd, you win, and I've been playing it, and it's a very fun game. So, link in the show notes for Scrandal and Footy Scran, very entertaining.

Mack:
I wish I had known about that. I could have done that in the line waiting for my Scran at Commonwealth.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Exactly.

Mack:
Fun. Okay. Well, thanks for that. Overall, really great. I'm so glad Edmonton got to host this game. It's too bad we're not a host city for actual World Cup games, but still great for Edmonton to be on the stage like this. Okay, before we get into our bridge update and other things, we have an ad for you.

Stephanie:
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Mack:
Thank you, Stephanie. All right. We teased in our last episode that we would have some updates on the high-level bridge and low-level bridges in the conversation we had in a recent episode about what administration proposed doing there. This is a long-term project. The bridges are still there, don't worry, but what did council discuss and what did we hear? What new details can you bring us about these proposed projects?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so this was at the Infrastructure Committee last week. So, it's been, it's been a while now, but because this is gonna be such a long-term discussion, I was like, "We can This can kick down the road a little bit." The conversation at Infrastructure Committee was only a couple of hours long, and I would honestly recommend listening to the whole thing 'cause it's very interesting, especially if you're a nerd like me. Just listen to it on 1.5 speed like I do. I rarely recommend people listen to an entire council meeting, so I would definitely recommend this time. A couple of things that they brought up. So, administration talked about the Alexandra Bridge in the Ottawa-Gatineau region as an example that they're looking to for guidance. So, this bridge is also around 120 years old. It was also built for horse and buggy, trains, streetcar, and pedestrian traffic. It's also an iconic landmark in that region, and it's about 10 years ahead of us, so to speak, so it's like a good project for them to watch to see how they're doing things. It was a Fun fact, it was paid for entirely by the federal government, which makes sense because…

Mack:
In that region.

Stephanie:
Ottawa.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So are they replacing that iconic 120-year-old bridge? Is that what's happening?

Stephanie:
Yes, it's a full replacement, and they said that they are like honoring parts of the, old bridge in the design of the new bridge. Could have fooled me. It to my…

Mack:
Looks totally different?

Stephanie:
To my eye, having never been to Ottawa-Gatineau I could not tell you that they are honoring each other.

Mack:
But it will be a project for us to watch, okay.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That's interesting.

Stephanie:
Yeah. So we mentioned how the High Level Bridge is a designated historic resource, which means that it is legally protected from demolition. But you can just simply repeal the bylaw and then it's no longer protected, and we weren't quite sure last episode that we talked about this how many times that has been done.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
We now know that it's been done three times. Once was for the Gem Theatre, which is in kind of the quarters area, which the city demolished in 2010 after deeming it a hazard to public safety. One was Hangar 11, which is in, like, the Blatchford/Naik/Kingsway area, which the, City Council deemed, you know, designated it a historic resource and then it burned down, like, within a month later. So, the whole reason they designated it is because there was this, proposal to turn it into this mixed-use building and then it burned down and they're like, "Well, we can't give you the funding anymore. We're not going to reconstruct it. Might as well-"…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
"… just rescind." And the third was the Tegler Building, which then became the BMO Building, which, as we all know, became the hideous pit of downtown Edmonton. So, three very different examples of times that it, has repealed a heritage designation.

Mack:
Okay.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
So that's the High Level. You also found out some stuff about the Walterdale Bridge, and how that connects to these bridge projects, right?

Stephanie:
Well, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Walterdale Bridge, and I was, like, a little bit too young to kind of remember the discourse around that. Sorry not to make you feel old, Matt.

Mack:
Thanks.

Stephanie:
But I just wanted to I'm sorry. It's just the truth. But I just wanted to know what, like, what were people saying about that replacement? Because, you know, it wasn't as iconic as certainly the High Level Bridge, and I would say the Low Level Bridge is iconic too. So, what was the discourse like around that bridge replacement back in, like, late 2010s, early Or late 2000s, early 2010s?

Mack:
Well, there's a couple things that come to mind. I think, first of all, we were pitched this vision for a new iconic bridge, the one that would appear on postcard photos of the City of Edmonton, and we got that, I think.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
The new Walterdale Bridge really does serve that purpose. It's multimodal, it's much wider, it's much safer. All those things are positive. But the discourse was similar in terms of, "We're losing this historic bridge." The old Walterdale Bridge also had this really lovely sound, because it had this metal surface, and when you drove over it, you'd hear And it was the only place where, in You know, the only bridge in the region that made that sound. And I think a lot of people really loved that and missed that when that went away, so there was that, you know, connection to it that I think people had.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And I think in You know, people wanted to see it preserved in some way. There was talk about, "Could we put it beside the new bridge and use it for, you know, pop-ups food pop-up food opportunities or events or things like that?" of course, none of that happened in the end, and we ended up with just a brand-new bridge, but people wanted to see that saved as well for lots of those same reasons as the High Level Bridge. It's perhaps not as historic, not as iconic as the High Level Bridge, but people still had a connection to it, and it has, you know, connections to the early days of Edmonton, and so people wanted to see that preserved in some way. And, you know, similar to what I was, thinking about on our recent episode, it's like, "Well, if we don't put cars on it, is it safe enough for people? Can we just keep it for people?" That was some of the discourse around the Walterdale Bridge.

Stephanie:
Hmm. So pretty similar.

Mack:
Very similar in lots of ways.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And one thing that I thought that was so interesting, I went back and looked at some news stories, and it says that the Walterdale Bridge only cost 155 million dollars. Now, granted, it was finished in About 10 years ago, so obviously there's inflation, but now they're saying that the High Level Bridge is gonna cost Well, replacing both bridges is gonna cost a billion dollars. So, math, about half a billion for each.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And, yes, obviously because the High Level Bridge is higher and it's gonna literally just have more materials to get it up to that height, but I don't know. I can't believe that the Walterdale Bridge only cost that much.

Mack:
It is a much more complicated bridge to replace, I think, the High Level…

Stephanie:
For sure.

Mack:
Than the Walterdale. The Walterdale's…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Pretty low. It's almost Calgary-esque. You know, you were talking about how Calgary's rivers are all basically at grade and it's easier to cross them. So I think that's part of the cost. The Walterdale Bridge was way over schedule. Like, we didn't get all the pieces when we were supposed to. There was issues with that. But that was baked into the contract, and the contractor paid for those things. So, the true cost of that bridge was probably higher than it actually, ended up costing taxpayers in the end.

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
But, you know, the longer that you wait to do any construction project, the more it's gonna cost. We know this, right? And so, if we built the High Level Bridge replacement today, it would probably cost less than it will when we start it inevitably in 15 or 20 years.

Stephanie:
Right. So, I wanted to talk a bit about some motions that came out of this meeting last week to kinda tell you where things are going now. The first motion was moved by Coun. Michael Janz, and I saw this one as kind of a pumping of the brakes, pun intended. It is that, "Administration provide a memo detailing all north/south traffic counts, mode shift forecasts as Edmonton approaches the 1.5, 1.75 and two million population horizon, public transit expansion opportunities to reduce vehicle load, traffic pattern analysis, and current funding options from other orders of government to fund bridge crossings." It's a lot there, but…

Mack:
So you say this is pumping the brakes in terms of instead of us as the City going fully forward to figure out how to plan this replacement, let's just collect some data first? Is that what you mean?

Stephanie:
Yeah, and I just think, like Yeah. I think it's like, "Okay, before we go and we tear down the bridge and we build a new one that's, just like a mega bridge with all of the, like, five lanes across, let's just-"… "Calm down for a second. Let's just get some data and see what we should be building." That's what I, that was my vibe for that one.

Mack:
Well, that's what you argued for last time, right? Like…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Like, "Let's not build a bridge that the people 50 years from now will feel ashamed of. Let's build something that is as forward-looking as we, as we can be." I…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I think this is a good motion. I think having the data for this is great. I think it's really hard to project traffic counts and mode shifts accurately as we get up to two million people. We're gonna talk about another story later on where it's just clear, it's really hard to project that stuff.

Stephanie:
Yeah, especially if you don't know what a bridge is going to look like.

Mack:
Exactly, yes.

Stephanie:
'Cause that will affect modal shift.

Mack:
What's, the second motion?

Stephanie:
So, it comes from the meeting that they first learned about this, which was over a year ago, April 2nd, 2025. They got this in-private report presented to them about this and in the meeting, they were talking about, "Okay, now that this is out in the open, let's redact whatever we need to in this report then release it to the public." That'll be interesting to read, I'm sure, get even more information about these projects.

Mack:
Okay, good. Look forward to that. And the third motion?

Stephanie:
Yeah, so this is titled Central Area Bridges Planning Considerations, that and it was moved by Coun. Aaron Paquette, that administration provide a report detailing elements that could be part of this Central Area Bridge Replacement Projects, including but not limited to, re-re-orientation of roadways to simplify and optimize Edmonton's transportation corridors, daylighting Mill Creek, encouraging multimodal transportation, et cetera. So this is, I think they were probably already going to do this, but this kind of formalizes it.

Mack:
Now they can't say, "Oh, that would be too expensive" because council's given explicit direction that you should do this in the planning.

Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly.

Mack:
Okay, great. Well, there will be lots more about the bridges in the months ahead so thanks for that update.

Stephanie:
Of course.

Mack:
Another thing we wanted to talk about was construction, not of bridges, but of other major construction projects because we learned this week that Khazana, the Indian restaurant that has a couple locations, but the one you're probably most familiar with is downtown on 107th Street, just, at 102nd Avenue. They are going to be closing after a very long time. Our sometimes food reporter, Sharon, my better half, also did some reporting recently about Chai Coffee Day, which is a coffee shop just east of Canada Place, across 97th Street, right beside that really expensive e-bike place, Bike Tricks, that seems to be very popular. They're also closing. As of, they closed as of May 30th and when she talked to the owners there, they cited the surrounding construction there as really the reason. There's been all this construction along the avenue there. For what reason, we're not really sure, but, you know, there's, all of this construction. For Khazana, it was, the Valley Line West is the most recent thing that has impacted, their business, but of course, before that it was the Odeynman Park, construction. You know, these are two incredible infrastructure assets, the park and the LRT, that should mean that businesses in that area, such as the restaurant, could thrive, but they have to survive the construction in order for that for that to be the case. The owners of Khazana said, "After years of ongoing construction, limited access to our location, and the uncertainty of continued disruptions in the future, we have made the difficult decision to cease operations." What do you think about these things, Stephanie, when businesses are shutting down for construction of these major projects?

Stephanie:
Yeah, it really sucks. Another thing that you didn't mention that's coming to that area is, like, 2,000 housing units as well.

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And a lot of them are geared towards students, like, I just, it'it's, it really sucks 'cause I feel like in five to ten years, it's gonna be popping off in that area, but for right now, it's, I can imagine it'd be really hard to, you know, make it work. I don't think I've ever personally decided to go to or not go to a restaurant because of construction, but that's just because, like, I don't really drive and park places. I'm kinda used to having to walk, like, around, a pedestrian detour to get places, and like, if I really wanna go somewhere, I'll go. Yeah, but I get it.

Mack:
Yeah, we went to, Seven Kitchens, which is a relatively new Chinese restaurant, over by this, Chai Coffee Day place just, you know, on the east side of, Canada Place, and because we were walking and we knew we were gonna go there, we persevered, but it was really not obvious how to get there, and it was kind of amazing that the restaurant is open, given the construction around that, and it's similar with Khazana. Like, some days, actually, it's challenging as a cyclist or a pedestrian to even get into Odeynman Park off 107th Street because of all of the construction they're doing around there still, so it's kind of amazing to me that they stayed open as long as they have. All of this made me think of, a conversation we've had on the show before, back in August of 2024 actually, which is when then-councillor Knack, brought forward this motion to come up with some kind of a program for businesses impacted by the Valley Line West LRT construction along Stony Plain Road, and I had, said in that episode that I went down Stony Plain Road and was shocked at the level of disruption to those businesses. There was a proposal back then for, you know, some financial compensation for businesses, but also a grant program. Council voted against it eight to five, and it was one of those super interesting votes where the people who were aligned on the eight side and the five side were not the ones you typically see vote together. And then, that didn't go anywhere after that, and this was not even to approve the project. It was just to bring forward an unfunded service package that council could then consider at budget time. Administration at the time had recommended against it saying it was probably gonna be too expensive, but it made me think that perhaps it's time to revisit this, and now that Coun. Knack who had brought this up a number of times when he was a councillor is the mayor, maybe there are some other levers he can pull here to try to do something about this.

Stephanie:
Yeah, I mean, this is so tough because I know they make it work in other cities, and there are many-… programs and services that we've talked about on the show, where for some reason Edmonton just can't seem to make it work, like the private tree bylaw that we talked about. I do kind of echo what, some councillors said way back then two years ago that, you know, $250,000 for all of the businesses that are affected, that's only gonna be maybe about $2,250 per business. Is that really gonna help that much? You would need to provide pretty substantial money to these businesses to make the program actually make a difference and I don't know. Yeah.

Mack:
I agree. I mean, I said that at the time too, that it just doesn't seem like enough money to make a difference.and it's really hard to disentangle, why is the business unsuccessful, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
But like you said, other Montreal, Calgary, lots of places do have programs or grant programs or financial, compensation programs that do help a little bit and there's I think the first part of it is just an acknowledgement from the City that this is gonna be impactful on your business and we're gonna do something about it. It's not gonna solve the problem, but it's an acknowledgement that this is rough and we're gonna do something to help, right? I think that would go a long way to just bolstering the mood amongst the business community about these things. But I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days, and I feel like the missing piece perhaps is, like, what is the stick for the City here? You know, when we, when we sign a contract with a big developer, like for the Valley Line West or for the Walter Deba Bridge, like you were talking about earlier, we can build things into the contract so that if there's delays or whatever, there's, you know, the City is compensated for that. But there's nothing there's nothing for these businesses. There's If the City says, "Well, we're gonna have to take a bit longer," or, "We're not gonna coordinate those things," or, "It's gonna take another season," there's no penalty for that. Nobody gets fired, nobody pays anything extra. Like, there's really no stick here for the City to ensure that these things happen as smoothly as possible. So, I don't know what that looks like. I think, like you said, this is a thing that other cities seem to have figured out and I feel like we should revisit the conversation and try to explore what could be done here because there's so many projects in this city that happen all the time and they don't just happen, they linger. Like, let's get them done as quickly as possible, close things down completely, go really intense for a while, and then open things back up as quickly as possible. But there are no incentives or disincentives to encourage that type of behavior currently and I feel like maybe we need to bring in some of those things to try to improve these projects in the future.

Stephanie:
(clears throat) And, you know, it's not even just the restaurants that are closing. There are some that are just having these impacts from construction. Over on the west side of Jasper Ave where they're doing the Jasper Avenue Vision, the second phase of it's all torn up over there. And Clementine, which is just this lovely little tiny cocktail bar, they are gonna have to tear down their patio to, you know, deal with the construction and then also on the other side of the street, the three, restaurants in The Citizen Building from Daniel Costa, Ölya, Mimi, and VA, they're not they don't have a patio or anything, but right now to access them, I went there I went to Mimi and VA with a friend and, like, they've cut down the sidewalk so tiny, it's completely inaccessible to someone in, a with a mobility device. It's honestly getting kind of inaccessible to just a person walking and it's just, like, not fun. It's just ugly and ugh to get to and also, like, when that Citizen Building is only a couple years old and I was looking on Google Maps 'cause I was curious and when they built that building, they made like a nice, lovely, like, little plaza out front on Jasper Ave with some trees and then all of that has been torn up for this Imagine Jasper Ave project. So, why did It's just an example of, departments not talking to each other again, because why did, like, the development permit require them, and I'm sure it did, to make this nice pedestrian space in front just for the City to come along three years later and tear up these trees?

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And, like, yes, two or three years in the life of a tree isn't that much, but, like, what is the point?

Mack:
Absolutely. Yeah. And so it's not just these restaurants closing, but who knows how long some of these others are gonna hold on, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And, it's not just the compensation for restaurants like Khazana but, you know, what do we do to mitigate the situation that's happening over on Jasper for those three restaurants, for example? Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I feel like there's more here to explore and I hope that Council can reopen the conversation about this.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Just with everything downtown where Edmonton is in such a growth period, it's in puberty right now, everything's weird…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And awkward and growing and, like, I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-my-hands and I-feel-icky and then in, like, 10 years it's gonna be so slay. But for right now, it just kind of sucks everywhere downtown. With so much peace and love, but it does.

Mack:
It's just that in 10 years there'll be more construction projects. Ugh.

Stephanie:
No, don't say that. Don't say that. Don't say that!

Mack:
It never ends. It never ends. Okay. Well, we gotta talk about something else that sucks down in Mill Woods, but first we have another ad for you.

Stephanie:
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Stephanie:
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Mack:
Okay, we have another, big item to dive into here. This one's gonna be fun, Stephanie. It's all about a four-way stop down in Mill Woods. So what happened?

Stephanie:
Oh, I love Mill Woods. Okay, actually, if I'm being completely correct, this is, I don't think this is technically…

Mack:
It's technically not Mill Woods, yeah.

Stephanie:
But it is spiritually Mill Woods, okay?

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
This is a Mill Woods AF kind of story. So a new four-way stop in the southeast neighborhood of Maple was removed after just a few days after hundreds of residents emailed the city and the city councillor, Jo-Anne Wright, to complain. So the intersection is along the neighborhood's only route in or out, and because of the physics of traffic of, like, stopping and going and stopping and going, it was causing traffic backups for nearly a kilometer according to some of the residents that spoke to media. The signs went in on Friday, and by Monday afternoon, they were out. That's only two rush hours.

Mack:
That's right.

Stephanie:
Friday, and also the weekends, which are typically, like, are, like, you know…

Mack:
Not as bad, yeah.

Stephanie:
Not as bad because a lot of people are working from home.

Mack:
So why did they put the four-way stop in the first place? Like, this is in response to something, presumably.

Stephanie:
Yeah, it was to make turns. So there was already a two-way stop there in the first place, and it was to make turns from those streets safer. But, I guess what it did was just really back up traffic because there's, you know, basically the entire neighborhood worth of homes must travel along that road because it's the only way. So, you know, there was hundreds of cars going, at any time. So you might've heard about this neighborhood before. It's a bit of a weird one. Like I said, it only has one route in or out of the neighborhood, and another thing is that a train crosses this one route, which not ideal, because when that train's there, no one can get through obviously. And another thing is that, sometimes emergency vehicles get stuck there.

Mack:
Yeah. It's worth explaining why there's only one route in or out. And so this neighborhood of Maple is part of the Meadows, Area Structure Plan. This is down in that southeast area and it's bounded by Whitemud Drive on the north, Anthony Henday Drive on the east, and then this train line that you're talking about, on the west. And so this 38th Avenue, which once you get into this neighborhood is known as Maple Road, is really the only way in or out. And it made us wonder, like, why did they develop it this way? Like, why is there only one road in or out? Knowing that there are these other big boundaries, like, you just can't cross Anthony Henday. You can't cross Whitemud Drive. It's challenging to cross a train line. Surely there was another egress point planned for this, and it turns out there was, right? So, when this neighborhood was developed, they did all the same kind of planning that they would normally have done. Back in 2009, they did a traffic impact assessment and looked at the collector roadways and the arterials and the design of the neighborhood. And the plan was always going to be there would be another entrance point to the neighborhood on the south at 23rd Avenue. But that would be developed in the future once development warranted it, once there was enough development in the area, once traffic volumes rose and all of that. So, you know, we can get into the weeds here, Stephanie, but I think the sort of big picture takeaway that I got from reading through all of this documentation is that nobody has done anything wrong here. Nobody has miscalculated, what we need to have happen and when. Nobody has not followed through on an obligation that they must follow through on. It's just that the on-the-ground lived experience of the people in that neighborhood doesn't match the reality of the requirements of all of these planning documents for when things need to happen. And so if you're living in that neighborhood right now, you're really feeling the pinch point of that one road and that train stop or the train crossing, and it's just that the second access road on the south was never going to be built by now because the scale of development hasn't yet warranted it.

Stephanie:
And, like, I think that many residents in the neighborhood would disagree with that it hasn't warranted it based on their day-to-day experience, but, like, according to the planning documents, that's what it, that's what they say.

Mack:
Yeah, there was a resident in the CBC reporting, he said, "Our issue is that there's, like, there was no hindsight when they let them develop all these new communities in our area. They just let them build more and more houses, but there was no infrastructure or road infrastructure put in place before."So, as we know, when these new developments are built, it is the developer's responsibility to build a lot of that infrastructure. They build it to standards that the city has set out. There are agreements for contributions that are made to arterial roads and things like that, and at some point when they're all done, they get handed over to the City for maintenance, right? And so Jessica Lamar, who's the City of Edmonton's Director of Safe Mobility said, "It's up to the developers in the Meadows area to go and make upgrades to the roads," and that includes the 23rd Avenue and Maple Road connection down at the south part that I talked about. So, I did a little bit of a deep dive here, Stephanie, because I thought this was super interesting. If you look through all the documents, they're tracing this from 2009 to today, in 2026, councillors did talk about this back in, as recently as 2022, and at that time, they decided against, constructing that 23rd Avenue connection to the neighborhood. It would have cost $11 million, so partly, it was too expensive, but also, it would have been a dangerous precedent to set, because again, it's developers that should be doing this, not the City of Edmonton, right? And if the City just steps in and starts to build this, you know, it's like, "Why don't they do that all around the city?" And that just…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Would not be tenable from a tax point of view.

Stephanie:
And they would Those developers would learn well if we just sit back and do it. It's like when you know, leave the dirty dishes in the sink and then eventually your spouse gets mad and just does the dishes anyways.

Mack:
That does not lead to a happy outcome for anybody, right?

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
Then in January 2023, they were looking at this again, and they said that there were servicing agreements for the construction of Maple Road South, and they've signed those and that construction would happen within three years. And there was also a transportation infrastructure projection study for the Meadows area that was beginning. That finished at the end of 2024. We fast-forward to earlier this year, and a public hearing in February, Council discussed basically stepping in a little bit. So not as much as they would have in 2022, but doing a little bit more now than they would normally, do for the area. And so what they decided to do in February, in an 11 to 1 vote, only Coun. Jo-Anne Wright, who is the councillor for the area, opposed this, and I can explain why in a second. They basically changed the responsibility for some widening of roads from the developer to the City, and others from the City to the developer. The whole idea here was just to speed up the development of those, widenings. Now, they're not to construct that 23rd Avenue connection. You know, that is still a couple of years away, but widening roads along 23rd Avenue and widening 17th Street are what is now gonna happen a little bit more quickly because it'll be the developer who's responsible for that, and that is because of traffic volumes in that overall area, so not just the Maple neighborhood, but the Meadows area overall has just incredible traffic volumes now. And so this is for safety and, capacity and things like that. The connection of 23rd Avenue up into the Maple neighborhood has now been changed to a city responsibility. The first two lanes will be done by the developers, but the widening to four lanes eventually, the longer-term plan, would be a city responsibility. That is still a dirt road currently. And so some people can use that to get in and out of the neighborhood, but there's another train crossing there. It's not a, it's not a proper road. That is still on the developers to construct the initial two-lane road once development warrants it. We're just not there yet, is the, is the harsh reality.

Stephanie:
So, you mentioned Coun. Wright opposed it. Why was that?

Mack:
Well, her argument was basically, "Aren't we going to have to do an environmental impact assessment here? Isn't there potentially a need for a wildlife crossing?" "Like, if we change this responsibility from the City to the developer and vice versa, aren't we just gonna have to come back and do this again in the future?" And so she wanted to refer this back to administration to get all of those pieces done first. The rest of council felt differently and decided to just move forward with this now and it was about expediency, right, to try to get some of these capacity improvements for the area into place. This doesn't help Maple, and I realize we're now a little bit of a long way away from that four-way stop, But it just hopefully provides a bit of context for the overall area and the, and the challenges that area faces around, traffic. It is really funny, Stephanie, when you read through some of those reports. Like, not one of them mentions, you know, traffic volumes might skyrocket in the future. There is talk in them about, you know, the Meadows has a transit center and that was gonna be key to transportation in the whole area. Guessing what has happened is that not as many people take the bus there as they maybe thought might take the bus, right? And so there are more cars than there should be.

Stephanie:
Okay, so where does that leave us?

Mack:
Well, back without the stop signs, number one.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And waiting for this 23rd Avenue construction to the south of the Maple neighborhood to take place eventually, but, you know, pending further development and, after all of these other projects in the area, widening of 17th Street and 23rd Avenue take place. So…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
It's gonna continue to be challenging for, residents in that neighborhood to get in and out by vehicle.

Stephanie:
Yeah, and just genuinely unsafe with the emergency vehicles, and also it reminds me a bit of when I was working in Kamloops. There was a, I mean obviously this is a very Kamloops story that I'm about to tell, but, there was a neighborhood there, kind of up in the hills, only had one route in or out, and there was a wildfire and people were trapped in the neighborhood, because they couldn't cross that road, and, God forbid something like, knock on wood, but it's not safe.

Mack:
Yeah, the city documents do clarify that developers of the area are required to maintain for our emergency access via 23rd Avenue, which is why there's that dirt road, and that requirement will remain and it'll remain in place until they build that, you know, formal secondary access via the 23rd Avenue extension. So there is another emergency route. It's just not the same as a proper paved…

Stephanie:
No.

Mack:
Road. It, kind of, makes me want to go down and do a deep dive there, Stephanie, in the Maple neighborhood. I actually have spent a bit of time over there. I have family in the area. And But I've never really gone far enough east into the neighborhood. I, kind of, stop at Tamarack, which is the neighborhood just to the, to the west of there, but, I'm sure we could find some pretty interesting stories down there.

Stephanie:
Yeah, for sure. I love the Southeast. I love Meadows Mill Woods. Grew up in that area. Grew up going to the Meadows SO for Slurpees. It's a great, it's a great little neighborhood.

Mack:
Maybe we'll do a Speaking Municipally road trip at some point.

Stephanie:
Oh. Also, I rode my bike down there on all the new bike infrastructure, like, last summer and it was a lovely, quick and, low-stress experience.

Mack:
Nice. Okay.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Good shared use paths in the area.

Mack:
Well, if you're down in the area and you wanna come talk to us, hit us up, send us a note.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
We'll see if we can make that happen. Okay, something that is happening, you're doing something fun coming up here in June.

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
What Tell us about that.

Stephanie:
Yes, I am hosting a municipal trivia night at Earths Refillery Co-op on June 23rd. If you haven't heard about this, it's a, it's a co-op and café in the Little Italy neighborhood in the piazza, and they're a really great business. I'm very biased because my friend is involved. But yeah, it'll be a really fun time. I had so much fun doing the, like, election trivia back in October around the election, so when I was asked to do this one, I had to say yes. I'm, kind of, basing it a little bit around civic engagement, as well as municipal trivia. So, it's going to be based around, not every question, but a lot of it will be about people who had their voices heard and made a difference or didn't make a difference, because there are lots of examples of both of those things. So yeah, I think it's gonna be really fun and hopefully educational on how you can get involved in civic stuff, 'cause that's what I'm passionate about. I don't have a ticket link or anything, but it'll for sure be on the TapRoot calendar, on, and in future show notes. But it'll be really fun and I'd love to see you guys come out and try some delicious drinks and snacks and at the, at the café, and you can refill, like, your beans and pasta at the refillery.

Mack:
Awesome. Okay. Well, you're the perfect person for that. Stephanie, of course, writes Your Turn every Friday usually, at least, which is our, overview of all the different public engagement opportunities that are taking place around the region. So, that's in your inbox already if you subscribe to The Pulse, and if not, you should. You should get that regularly. It's a great feature.

Stephanie:
Yeah. What's the holdup?

Mack:
Okay. Well, that sounds like fun. We'll be back next week with more fun from city council.

Stephanie:
Okay.

Mack:
I think we're gonna be talking about the most Edmonton topic ever, which is parking, so stay tuned for that.

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.