Revolutionary Moderation

Edmonton driving tip #3

Here's a few ideas about how Edmonton City Council could spend a quarter of a billion dollars:

- Along with legislative imperative, subsidize developers building in new communities to add some low-cost and off-market housing, so that people have some choice and won't have to drive as far (or possibly at all) to work.

- Add more buses and greater variety in routes. Lower the cost of using public transit.

- Keep snow and ice cleared off the bike trails at least as well as you do from the main roads. Add paths. If bike commuting was taken as seriously as car commuting by the city, Edmontonians might actually be encouraged to do it.

And here's one idea about how Edmontonians could save a quarter of a billion dollars, bypassing City Council altogether: stay away from the Best Buy and Wal-Mart at South Edmonton Common. Seriously, I don't really want to use my property taxes (dutifully passed on via my slumlord) to subsidize your thirty-cent savings on lead-coated Chinese-made tacky knick-knacks. If they want you there so bad, let them build their own damned overpass.

Thursday afternoon, edited to add: An Edmonton Journal letter writer suggests using the HSTF to build the overpass. Today, on the 36th anniversary of the Tories' assent to power in Alberta, I'm sure Peter Lougheed would agree. The Heritage Fund was set up as a legacy of Alberta's resources, to be saved for a rainy day, and who can imagine a rainier moment in Alberta's future than this asshole having to wait an extra ten minutes to get to Ikea?