Before the war on the car columns appear, read this

Bike lanes are appearing on Edmonton's streets and the false dichotomy can't be far behind.

Are you ready for it?

Shortly, as in probably the next few days, columnists like that guy who goes on Rebel Media cruises and fails to mention it when writing about the group, or that guy who hates photo radar and strangely has two Twitter accounts, will write something similar to the following: "There's a war on the car," they will scream, before complaining about the cost to build the lanes and the traffic "delays" and, well, what people incapable of unthinking car-think tend to complain about.

Be prepared. The message will resonate. 

Twitter/@YEGJackson

As laughable as this assertion will be in a city with some of the widest road lanes in the world, where driving downtown from the suburbs is still a simple 20-30 minute loaf rather than the sheer agony drivers in many other Canadian cities experience, where downtown streets are double-laned monsters, busy for barely an hour each morning and evening, and then deader than a sidewalk along those same monstrous streets, this idea will have a dangerous stickiness, especially with the municipal election around the corner. 

Every story of a motorist being delayed will be magnified. Every story of a person being lulled into riding to work rather than driving because of the safety the lanes provide will be dismissed. The false dichotomy that any space given to others is somehow space taken from the motorist will be presented, and if allowed, left unchallenged. The yellers will be given attention. The cyclists will simply ride about silently. 

There is not a war on the car in Edmonton. Bike lanes do not signal the beginning of this pretend war. Our streets are simply evolving to allow other users to co-exist with motorists. And after a few months, the anger and the shock will have worn off and we'll have taken a giant step toward closing our gap with other cities when it comes to cycling infrastructure.

See you on the other side. 

Driving is less about choice than we think

I've been driving a lot lately.

For someone publicly critical of car-think and who as a result receives car-shamed apologies from colleagues who drive to meet me for coffee, this is not a shoe that fits without blisters. But it has helped me understand *why* people drive in a city like Edmonton.

From the point of view of a walker/cyclist/transit-rider, who's been playing a bit part as a motorist of late, I can more clearly see driving is far less about choice and far more about unnecessary barriers to doing things without a car. In Edmonton, there are a whole lot of incentives to get behind the wheel—and no, winter is not one of them—and few reasons to consider alternatives.

Folk Fest, Cloverdale. For much of the city, taking the bus or biking to this outdoor festival is a bigger pain than finding parking. That's a problem. Photo: Flickr/ICRT Canada 

I've been driving a lot lately because my partner lives in Cloverdale. The community is small, idyllic and bordered on all sides by dramatic geography — hills, river valleys, vistas. Downtown is so close that the skyscrapers almost cast a shadow upon Cloverdale. But the way we treat non-automobile mobility in Edmonton for this central community, which hosts thousands for Folk Fest every year, is a story of closed walking trails, non-existent bike infrastructure and sidewalks, and unusable bus service. 

Let me break it down by mode.

One day this week, I went to Cloverdale from my 124 Street condo using Edmonton Transit. My options were a bus route that would drop me off at a place requiring a 20+ minute walk after a 25 minute ride, or to wait for 30 minutes at the stop for the infrequent bus that rolls right past my partner's house. I chose the walk. And I decided to make it an adventure by walk on the roof of the Muttart as a short-cut. Walking is fun and I make sure to explore when I walk.

One day this week, I biked to Cloverdale. Hoo boy. Getting reasonably close wasn't so tough, once I braved biking down the Victoria Park hill, which has a 60 km/hr speed limit, in order to get to a protected bike pathway along the river to head east. Things got tougher, though, once in Rossdale, where my options for getting across the river were limited to a sidewalk along the 98 Ave. bridge. It wasn't safe, or inviting. I'll have to study the route more to figure out a better, safer route, possibly including the Low Level Bridge. Thankfully this trip takes only about 20-25 minutes and keeps me fit. 

The all-too common sign you face when you're on your feet in Edmonton. This one is because the Cloverdale Footbridge was to be removed. At least that means LRT. But the barriers are everywhere in Louise McKinney Park and the walk path detours are not. Photo: Flickr/Mack Male

One day recently, I tried to walk from Cloverdale's neighbour, Riverdale (where I'd brunched at Little Brick), to downtown. Unfortunately, as is usual in Edmonton, walking trails are the first things to be closed whenever construction is afoot (pun intentional). I ended up hopping wire fences and walking in restricted areas in the Louise McKinney Park area to take a more direct route downtown. Detours are always offered to motorists when a road is closed. They are almost never offered to people on their feet or bicycles. Why? 

Many days this week, in what is my cheapest and most logical option to get to Cloverdale from 124 Street, I've driven a Pogo carshare to the northeastern edge of its zone , which happens to be beside an old brewery and Diamond Park in Rossdale, on 100 Street. It's as close to Cloverdale as Pogo goes. From there I walk up on to the 97/98 Ave. bridge and head east, only for the sidewalk to end along 98 Ave. I'm then forced to run across a two-lane, high-speed traffic loop, then trundle in mud and slush on 98 Ave. until 96A Street, where the sidewalk returns. There are, oddly, crosswalks and lights on this route, as the Muttart is right here, but there are no sidewalks.

Rossdale Brewery. A forgotten gem at the edge of the Pogo carshare zone. Photo: Edmontonmapsheritage.ca

As my partner said on one of these walks to Cloverdale, as we got close to her place, "Finally, the sidewalk is back!" 

Many days this week, I've also driven to downtown in my partner's car. From Cloverdale, the traffic never stops flowing, the lights are all timed to make the trip easy. We're at Jasper Avenue in about six minutes. Adding a trip to 124 Street adds another 10, and I stop for lights on Jasper maybe three times at most.

Thing is, the car will always have a convenience advantage — that's why we pay so dearly for them, in all ways (think social costs as well as material costs). But in Edmonton this advantage is stretched and distorted. If there were better bus service, my partner would likely take the bus downtown for work. If there were bike lanes, she would likely consider biking. She once walked to work, but now with the Cloverdale Footbridge gone and all those barriers up for the LRT and the funicular, the time to do so has been doubled. 

So, have I been *choosing* to drive to Cloverdale or has driving been forced upon me?

The hope in this story is the Valley Line LRT. It will soon have a stop right in Cloverdale, two blocks from my partner's place. It will connect us, with a short walk, to nearly everything. I wouldn't be surprised, however, that we don't have sidewalks or bike lanes connected to the station when it opens. We still don't think of those things in our car focused city. 

WHY Saying "no" is more powerful than "please" in Edmonton

"Please in my backyard."

It's not a term you often hear in Edmonton, and that might be because it too often gets ignored.

True, "please" groups like QA Crossroads in the Queen Alexandra community, or the group I helped start, which successfully pushed for more logical and walk-oriented pedestrian wayfinding in downtown Edmonton, both scream, "Please in My Backyard!" and both have created change. 

Sidewalk at far left, sod moat at middle, back end of buildings at far right. Walkability is about making places that are nice to walk along. This is a good example of how not to achieve that. 

But the PIMBYs are way less powerful than the NIMBYs when it comes to what happens in the backyards of Edmonton. Politicians in this city listen to negativity, it seems, far quicker than to better ideas, proposed solutions or the best practices that other cities use.

We're all lesser for it. 

To illustrate my point, let's compare a PIMBY exercise to a NIMBY one.

As early as 2013, the Oliver Community League made it very public that it was not happy with the proposed Molson Crosstown development that became the Brewery District, roughly located at 121 Street and 104 Avenue. (For a full recap of the league's work to encourage a better development, click here.)

I live in Oliver and found the league's efforts to engage with the developer inspiring. Our community held several events where we brainstormed what a development that spoke to our community's love of walking and cycling, and the fact we have seniors, kids and all sorts of other diverse needs, would look like.

The league then told the developer and city administrators that it wanted the development, yes, but also wanted some tweaks to make it better. It was pure PIMBY. 

But despite all that good work and honest PIMBY diplomacy, Oliver got little of what it suggested.

Result? I routinely jump for my life from motorists, who fly through the arterial roads that surround the Brewery District, when I walk to buy groceries at what became my neighbourhood grocery store. I shudder to think what happens to the seniors, who live a block away in a dedicated retirement facility, when they dare to walk there to buy a meal.

Let's compare this, then, to the NIMBYs.

As I've written, and as Louis Pereira with INFILL Edmonton so brilliantly illustrated with a graphic, Edmonton is dense at its core and the modern suburbs at its fringes while being comparatively empty in its middle.

Courtesy Twitter/Louis Pereira

It's a donut city. 

Now, as with any donut city, most planners and urbanists see the inner suburbs of Edmonton as badly in need of densification. Yet Edmonton's decision makers have routinely responded to NIMBY activism from many of these inner-city communities, who often oppose denser developments within them using all manner of reasoning, by creating a Mature Neighbourhoods Overlay. 

What is it? In the simplest of terms, the overlay — created in 2001 — is a policy approach that locks these mature neighbourhoods in time, hamstringing infill developers and effectivley forcing other 'hoods, like downtown, Oliver and the new suburbs on our outer fringes, to absorb the boat-load of Edmonton's desperately needed density in the form of ever-taller towers or multi-unit developments.

Thankfully, this overlay policy is currently under review. But a quick read of the proposed changes seems to suggest the NIMBY side of the discussion is still winning rather than the PIMBY side. One community is even taking the opposition to density so far that it's proposing a restrictive covenant there that could make it impossible to split lots — something that's often required for density.

I'm not a politician and I'm not a genius, but it's clear to me the conversation needs to swing toward those saying please rather than those just saying no. Please, allow something different in my backyard but please just add the following things to it to make it better. 

Over to you, Edmonton.