Edmonton is Sacrificing Accessibility and Inclusion . . . For What?

On September 26, 2018 the City of Edmonton will be hosting yet another “Engagement Session” about “Neighbourhood Renewal” in Strathcona, where I live. With the ongoing construction of the 83 Avenue Bike Lane, my little bit of the neighbourhood has had an advanced taste of what “Neighbourhood Renewal” means. Below I’ve composed a little of what I’d like to say at that “Engagement Session” next Wednesday. I don’t suppose I’ll be given the opportunity.

I live on 83 Avenue. The new painted bike lane runs right in front of my house. I like the idea of bike lanes. But everyone agrees the little roundabouts on 83 Avenue west of 99th Street are confusing at best and probably dangerous. I remember Becky from the City – who also agrees that the roundabouts are useless – telling me at one of these “engagement sessions” that the roundabouts will NOT be reconsidered or removed.

I don’t like some of the execution of this particular bike lane, but, we make sacrifices when we live in a community.

Homeowners on the north side of 83 Avenue are not allowed to have those little walkways across the boulevard from the sidewalk to the street. We’re supposed to only cross at the corner. Jay walking is now very specifically no longer allowed. But everybody still does it. Everybody that walks without trouble or rides a bike.

Not really a sacrifice.

My friend Marion, a marvellous hero in her 60s living with MS, now has a little more difficulty on her regular visits to stay with us. She needs to come to town every few months to shop for things she can’t get in the small town where she lives. Because the avenue is now one-way, we can’t drop her off on our side of the avenue. She has to struggle a little further with her walker. If we lived two blocks to the west, where the protected bike lane is, Marion would have to struggle even more.

Heroes make sacrifices.

My 93 year-old father, who volunteered for both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy in World War II now has similar difficulties to Marion when he comes to visit me. If we lived two blocks further west, where the protected bike lane is, he probably wouldn’t visit us anymore.

Veterans make sacrifices.

My daughter, with her many special needs, doesn’t have major mobility issues just yet, but she’s only 23. Still, getting around isn’t always a cake walk.

People with disabilities make sacrifices.

I am privileged.

I don’t have a disability, I don’t have a degenerative disease, I’m not old. Yet.

I haven’t had to go to war, I haven’t lived in poverty. I can go for walks for pleasure. I even have a bike.

My voice is the voice of privilege. The 83 Avenue bike lane hasn’t forced me to make much in the way of sacrifices.

Yes, the roundabouts are dangerous when I go for a walk.

Yes, the sidewalks are dangerously dark when I walk in the evening.

Yes, I’ve been sworn at by cyclists using the sidewalk when the bike lane has been closed for construction and “detour” seems to mean “usurp that pedestrian space”.

Yes, there’s still no north-south sidewalk on 97th street – the only route to Tubby Park – and all the traffic from 98th is about to be diverted there, but I’m not a little kid anymore and neither is my daughter, so we just won’t go to the park as much as we used to.

I can handle those unimportant sacrifices. I’m privileged with health and time and relative youth and yet a grown up voice with which to vent.

Marion? My father? My daughter? The neighbourhood kids?

Much less so.

Maybe I can try to use my privileged voice for them:

Please, when constructing this new neighbourhood, take more than a moment to consider those not privileged with easy mobility, time to go to public engagement sessions, and a voice.

Take a moment to consider:

How will Strathcona look for people who will never have the privilege of mobility you might enjoy?

How will Marion or my father, with their walkers or canes, get across that street from the car they’ve travelled in to the home they need to get to?

How will the DATS user negotiate the protected bike lanes?

How will a single mother – or anyone – get home at night on a pitch-black sidewalk?

How will those children get to Tubby Park safely, when all the traffic has been diverted from 98th to 97th – where there is STILL no north-south sidewalk – how’s that Vision Zero thing working out?

Edmonton has come so far in its efforts toward inclusion.

Don’t move backward.

Don’t make our neighbourhood less accessible, as you have on 83 Avenue.

Don’t move to further exclude people with mobility issues, as you have on 83 Avenue.

Please make Strathcona, and Edmonton, more accessible, not less.

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Guenevere: A Tragedy

A long time ago, before Netflix or Google, almost before the Internet, when I was a young man, and people read books and used typewriters, I set myself an exercise. I was on the cusp between university and the real world, steeped in Classical and Medieval Literature, wanting to write something that might last. I set myself the task of writing an Aeschylean Drama. And I chose as my subject the last days of Camelot. Yes, a Medieval Classic Greek Tragedy. Sort of like attempting to write an Elizabethan Tragedy featuring Vladimir Putin (my current work-in-progress).

So, I sat down and wrote a thing called Guenevere. Some bits had been around for a while — a nostalgic bit of a lament addressed by Lancelot to Guenevere is the earliest kernel. All of it came out in verse, some of it, the odes of the Chorus, with an elaborate rhyme scheme emphasizing the strophic structure. It all came out quickly, a function of a few intense years of learning ancient languages by studying ancient poetry. Punctuation was inconsistent, like old manuscripts. Speeches were not always attributed to specific characters, again like old manuscripts. Stage directions were entirely absent, like — you see the pattern. I figured Guenevere would never see a stage, certainly not in my lifetime, and if it did, it would be interpreted as whatever group of thespians might perform it might wish.

Well, this August, at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival, my little exercise will be performed and interpreted. I would be very pleased if you went to see Guenevere. My play is deeply rooted in some very old traditions, is deeply conventional, is at once both very unfamiliar and extremely accessible, and is, I think, not quite like anything you have likely seen before.

Camelot is an empty shell. King Arthur and his knights have long been at war in a grey and fading landscape. Arthur’s greatest knight, Lancelot, is a monk. Guenevere, with all the ladies of Camelot, has gone to a nunnery. The Holy Grail has been found, but, is it too late? Golden memories of youth and dreams of happiness stand against a reality of war, decay, incestuous betrayal, and inevitable death. Guenevere, the woman, and Guenevere, the play, resolve to Myth, to human meaning in the face of universal meaninglessness, to the Life that lives in memory in the face of the endless Death of forgetting.

Just a little something I tossed off as a young man back in those mythic times of typewriters, fountain pens, and real books. I’d love it if you would give it an hour of your Fringe time. I guess I’m blowing my own horn, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Times and tickets will be available at the Edmonton Fringe webpage.

For those who remember real books, a limited number of printed copies of the play will be available for purchase.

Idle Musings on Sir Richard Francis Burton and the Arab Slave Trade

Here again the Demon of Slavery will reign over a solitude of his own creation. Can it be, that, by some inexplicable law, where Nature has done her best for the happiness of mankind, man, doomed to misery, must work out his own unhappiness?

The Lake Regions of Central Africa, Volume I, p. 85.

I didn’t learn about the Arab Slave Trade in school. I don’t remember the Arab Slave Trade ever being the subject of any conversation I’ve ever been involved in, until recently, when I’ve started a few such conversations. Slavery, in modern times at least, seemed to always be assumed to be something White People made happen.

The other night I finished reading Sir Richard Burton’s The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration. Sir Richard Burton, the eccentric Nineteenth Century British explorer, not Richard Burton (CBE) the eccentric Twentieth Century British actor. The adventures of Burton and his rarely named “companion”, John Hanning Speke, read alternately like a dull economic travelogue, an extremely extended and excessively juvenile Monty Python sketch, a presentation and presumption of accuracy of the racist Hamitic Hypothesis, and, dissonantly, a lament for the tragic state of the people of East Africa in the mid-nineteenth century. As well, for a moment, Burton’s book is a sketch of a plan to eliminate slavery in the region. Clearly Burton was a conflicted fellow in a conflicted time, in East Africa, a terribly conflicted place in the mid-Nineteenth Century.

A particular incident of Burton’s journey has haunted me, as it seems to have haunted Burton — he mentions it twice in his book:

The Kirangozi or Mnyamwezi guide, who had accompanied the Expedition from the coast, remained behind, because his newly-purchased slave-girl had become foot-sore, and unable to advance; finding the case hopeless, he cut off her head, lest of his evil good might come to another.

Volume II, pp. 161-2

This indescribably horrible and likely oft repeated moment came at a time when there were perhaps a half dozen Europeans on the mainland of East Africa, at a time when the internal and Arabian slave trade had continued for untold generations. This was a developed, agricultural society whose economy was driven almost completely by the internal marketing and exporting to Arab lands of slaves and, to a lesser extent, the export of elephant ivory across the Indian Ocean. I can’t help but think that at that moment, unlike almost any other time in White, Upper Class, British, Victorian Burton’s life, there was no such thing as Race. In that moment, there was only Good and Evil, and Burton was seeing the Horror of Evil. Yes, that is a Heart of Darkness reference.

But what could Burton do? The Arab Slave Trade in East Africa was at least 1000 years old. It had been 700 years old when the European Transatlantic Slave Trade began. Burton was almost alone. To hear Burton describe him, his companion, Speke, wasn’t much better than useless. And they were lone Europeans, both very ill, in an extremely violent slaving society which saw them as nothing but (possibly) wealthy interlopers whose lives were worth nothing more than their merchandise that might be bought or stolen.

Burton stayed silent on that bloody path on that bloody day. The foot-sore young woman died, unnamed and unremembered but for Burton’s written memorial.

But, long before Burton ever laid eyes on the poor victim, he was campaigning in his way to end the slave trade in East Africa. Although he had almost died on an earlier journey, speared through the face at the hands of Somali warriors, he wrote home from a ship off the coast with concern for the people he had met and was yet to meet and a suggestion of a military/diplomatic remedy:

By means of two such steamers we shall, I believe, be prepared for any contingencies which might arise in the Red Sea; and if to this squadron be added an allowance for interpreters and a slave approver in each harbour, in fact a few of the precautions practised by the West African Squadron, the slave-trade in the Red Sea will soon have received its deathblow, and Eastern Africa its regeneration at our hands.

From a letter from R. F. Burton, sent to the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, London, from HEIC Sloop-of-War Elphinstone, 15 December 1856, reprinted in Appendix 2 of The Lake Regions of Central Africa: A Picture of Exploration, Volume II, p. 428.

His letter was not well received:

From H. L. Anderson, Esquire, Secretary to Government, Bombay, to Captain R. F. Burton, 18th Regiment Bombay N. I.

Dated the 23rd July, 1857.
Sir, — With reference to your letter, dated the 15th December, 1856, to the address of the Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society of London, communicating your views on affairs in the Red Sea, and commenting on the political measures of the Government of India, I am directed by the Right Honourable the Governor in Council to state, your want of discretion, and due respect for the authorities to whom you are subordinate, has been regarded with displeasure by Government.
I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,

(Signed) H. L. Anderson,
Secretary to Government
Bombay Castle, 23rd July, 1857.”

Volume II, p. 428

It seems the British government had little stomach for interfering with Indigenous and Arab affairs in East Africa, and certainly not in playing the long game Burton had proposed.

But Burton continued. His book about his travels to the Lake Region is certainly a travel narrative, but Burton devotes a remarkable proportion of his tale to description of the economic and political facts and potentials of the region. These details may at first seem to be gathered as a guide to colonial exploitation of East Africa, for example when Burton suggests a Biblical/genetic basis for the European colonial urge to build railroads:

For long centuries past and for centuries to come the Semite and the Hamite have been and will be contented with human labour. The first thought which suggests itself to the sons of Japhet is a tramroad from the coast to the Lake regions.

Volume II, p. 411.

But Burton makes clear a few pages later what his true goal is:

To conclude the subject of commerce in East Africa. It is rather to the merchant than to the missionary that we must look for the regeneration of the country by the development of her resources. The attention of the civilized world, now turned towards this hitherto neglected region, will presently cause slavery to cease; man will not risk his all in petty and passionless feuds undertaken to sell his weaker neighbour ; and commerce, which induces mansuetude of manners, will create wants and interests at present unknown. As the remote is gradually drawn nigh, and the difficult becomes accessible, the intercourse of man — strongest instrument of civilisation in the hand of Providence — will raise Africa to that place in the great republic of nations from which she has hitherto been unhappily excluded.

Volume II, p. 419

This is nothing other than a manifesto of economic development and globalisation as tools to give all people a hand up to greater welfare, happiness, and self-sufficiency. Some might argue that it is also a recipe for colonial exploitation, but exploitation is clearly not the dish Burton dreams of cooking up. “That place in the great republic of nations from which she has hitherto been unhappily excluded” is an aspirational phrase that ranks alongside any of the great Declarations of the United Nations. Perhaps Burton is expressing some paternalism, but nothing in the final sentiments of The Lake Regions of Africa smacks of colonial exploitation.

Burton returned to Britain after this journey with his health shattered. After a heroic series of dangerous adventures in Arabia, Asia, and finally Africa, he never made another journey of exploration more dangerous than a brief visit to Brigham Young’s Salt Lake City. He took a series of uneventful diplomatic postings and turned his attention to writing and translating works from some of the dozens of languages in which he had become fluent. Thirty years after the death of the footsore young lady on that path in East Africa, Burton died at the age of sixty-nine. The slave trade on the island of Zanzibar was abolished seven years later.

In 1953, almost a century after Burton witnessed the beheading of a tired young woman, slaves were part of the Qatari delegation to the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Mauritania, in Northwest Africa, banned slavery in 2007.

And I was pretty much unaware of the Arab Slave Trade until I read The Lake Regions of Central Africa. Thank you, Sir Richard Francis Burton, for enlightening me.

“I am just of middle station”: Tolkien’s “Kullervo”, Kirby’s “Kalevala”, and Editorial Responsibility

. . . no one can really write or make anything purely privately.
— J. R. R. Tolkien, in a letter to W. H. Auden, June 7th, 1955

Last night I stayed up late to finish reading Verlyn Flieger’s edition of some of J. R. R. Tolkien’s youthful undergraduate jottings published under the title The Story of Kullervo. I did so with growing annoyance if not anger as I became more and more convinced that the volume was a betrayal of Tolkien and his memory as well as being a betrayal of a ee principal of scholarship.

This volume is yet another in the ever growing collection of Tolkien’s posthumous titles, a collection certainly destined to grow as long as there is a single Tolkien grocery list left unpublished (on paper stock of ever declining quality) between hard covers. This particular slim volume consists in part of two rough versions of an informal talk given by undergraduate Tolkien on the subject of the Finnish folkloric pastiche The Kalevala. These talks were delivered at a time when Tolkien, by his own admission, was unable to read Finnish, and are based on his reading of W. F. Kirby’s translation published in Everyman’s Library in 1907. As well, the volume contains Tolkien’s very rough, unfinished, first and only draught of The Story of Kullervo, a recasting of one of the stories in The Kalevala. The volume concludes with a brief essay by Flieger about The Story of Kullervo as the seed of much that came later in Tolkien’s elaborately imagined mythology. Everything in the volume has been previously published separately elsewhere.

Tolkien’s abandoned project of adapting the story of Kullervo is interesting enough to a Tolkien fancier, but the commentary provided by Flieger is thin and seems to have been largely “phoned in”. And the two versions of Tolkien’s talk are — unsurprisingly — repetitive and, as might be expected of an undergrad talk, pretty juvenile and shallow. Tolkien is obviously excited about this new thing he’s found, but he is, at this point in his career, not yet an expert on anything, let alone on the language and literature of Finland.

While the forty pages or so at the heart of the volume are interesting enough, I find what Flieger has done with this text, or rather, what she has not done, to be a bit of a disturbing misrepresentation of both Tolkien and of this text which he obviously never intended to be published.

The Story of Kullervo is a very rough initial draught of an almost immediately abandoned project to transform a long disjointed verse story from The Kalevala into a coherent story told in prose interspersed with characters’ speeches cast in verse. Tolkien’s process, which was interrupted by abandonment of the project, seems to have been to write the prose passages in order and to write the verse speeches when he could, but to lift passages directly from Kirby’s translation to use as placeholders until inspiration came to him to create original passages. A few of the verse passages are wholey Tolkien’s. Others are made up of Kirby’s lines unchanged, Kirby’s lines modified, and Kirby’s lines intermingled with Tolkien’s own lines. And some few passages are transcribed virtually unchanged from Kirby’s translation. But, apart from one mention of two crossed out lines as being “transferred unchanged from Kirby” (p. 143), Flieger makes no mention of the fact that a not insubstantial portion of this book with “Tolkien” in big letters on the cover is actually verse composed by W. F. Kirby.

Consider the following passages, only a few that might be examples, the first from early in Kullervo’s story:

Now a man in sooth I deem me
Though mine ages have seen few summers
And this springtime in the woodlands
Still is new to me and lovely.
Nobler am I now than erstwhile
And the strength of five within me
And the valour of my father.

Tolkien, The Story of Kullervo, p. 13

“Now I first a man can deem me,
When my hands the axe are wielding.
I am handsomer to gaze on,
Far more noble than aforetime,
Five men’s strength I feel within me
And I equal six in valour.”

Kirby, Kalevala, Runo 31, ll. 239-244

Here, early in the text, Tolkien has already done much to make the passage his own. But as the manuscript proceeds:

Let no sapling sprout here ever
Nor the blades of grass stand greening
While the mighty earth endureth
Or the golden moon is shining
And its rays come filtering fdimly
Through the boughs of Saki’s forest.
Now the seed to earth had fallen
And the young corn shooteth upward
And its tender leaf unfoldeth
Till the stalks do form upon it.
May it never come to earing
Nor its yellow head droop ripely
In this clearing in the forest
In the woods of Sakehonto.

The Story of Kullervo, p. 14

“Let no sapling here be growing,
Let no blade of grass be standing,
Never while the earth endureth,
Or the golden moon is shining,
Here in Kalervo’s son’s forest,
Here upon the good man’s clearing.
“If the seed on earth has fallen,
And the young corn should shoot upward,
If the sprout should be developed,
And the stalk should form upon it,
May it never come to earing,
Or the stalk-end be developed.”

Kirby, Runo 31, ll. 283-294

A little more of Kirby remains in Tolkien’s draught. And then:

Let them herd among the bushes
And the milch kine in the meadow:
These with wide horns to the aspens
These with curved horns to the birches
That they thus may fatten on them
And their flesh be sweet and goodly.
Out upon the open meadows
Out among the forest borders
Wandering in the birchen woodland
And the lofty growing aspens
Lowing now in silver copses
Roaming in the golden firwoods.
. . .
If my herdsman is an ill one
Make the willow then a neatherd
Let the alder watch the cattle
And the mountain ash protect them
Let the cherry lead them homeward
In the milktime in the even.
If the willow will not herd them
Nor the mountain ash protecdt them
And the alder will not watch them
Nor the cherry drive them homeward
Send thou then thy better servants,
Send the daughters of Ilwinti
To guard my kine from danger
And protect my horned cattle
For a many are thy maidens
At thy bidding in Manoine
And skilled to herd the white kine
On the blue meads of Ilwinti
Until Ukko comes to milk them
And gives drink to thirsty Keme.
Come thou maidens great and ancient
Mighty daughters of the Heaven . . .

The Story of Kullervo, pp. 21-23

“Send the cows among the bushes,
And the milkers in the meadow,
Those with wide horns to the aspens,
Those with curved horns to the birches,
That they thus may fatten on them,
And may load themselves with tallow,
There upon the open meadows,
And among the wide-spread borders,
From the lofty birchen forest,
And the lower growing aspens,
From among the golden fir-woods,
From among the silver woodlands.
. . .
“If my herdsman is a bad one,
Or the herd-girls should be timid,
Make the willow then a herdsman,
Let the alder watch the cattle,
Let the mountain-ash protect them,
And the cherry lead them homeward,
That the mistress need not seek them,
Nor need other folks be anxious.
“If the willow will not herd them,
Nor the mountain-ash protect them,
Nor the alder watch the cattle,
Nor the cherry lead them homeward,
Send thou then thy better servants,
Send the Daughters of Creation,
That they may protect my cattle,
And the whole herd may look after.
Very many are thy maidens,
Hundreds are beneath thy orders,
Dwelling underneath the heavens,
Noble Daughters of Creation.

Kirby, Runo 32, ll. 37-82

Here Tolkien weaving himself through Kirby. But finally, at the end of Tolkien’s manuscript, he hasn’t done anything much other than place Kirby’s verse onto his own page with only such changes as might arise from incomplete memorization, as a place holder for future work in the end never undertaken:

Nay my race is not a great one
Not a great one nor a small one:
I am just of middle station:
Kalervo’s unhappy offspring
Uncouth boy and ever foolish
Worthless child and good for nothing.
Nay but tell me of thy people
Of the brave race whence thou comest.
Maybe a Might race has born thee
Fairest child of mighty father.

The Story of Kullervo, p. 37

“No, my race is not a great one,
Not a great one, not a small one,
I am just of middle station,
Kalervo’s unhappy offspring,
Stupid boy, and very foolish,
Worthless child, and good for nothing.
Tell me now about your people,
And the brave race that you spring from,
Perhaps from mighty race descended,
Offspring of a mighty father.”

Kirby, Runo 35, ll. 199-208

I have no patience for misattribution. In the case of The Story of Kullervo as published, W. F. Kirby is denied due credit for his creation, and Tolkien is, through dereliction of editorial and scholarly duty, given undue creative credit for what is at times nothing more than transcribing someone else’s work. I do not in any way think that Tolkien can be accused of plagiarizing Kirby: Tolkien had no intention that his very rough working document would ever be published. Tolkien became, and probably already was as an undergraduate, enough of a scholar that he wouldn’t have dreamt of taking credit for another scholar’s work.

It is unfortunate that Flieger, and Harper Collins, the publisher of The Story of Kullervo, seem to have no such scruples about proper attribution.

An open letter to (some) advocates for those with intellectual disabilities

Dear intellectual disability inclusion advocates who are anti-“segregation” & want full integration, always, everywhere:

Would you never let the intellectually disabled gather with peers? Must they always be integrated into the larger society? As physical challenges often accompany intellectual disabilities, would you prevent them from taking part in adapted physical activities/education? No Special Olympics? Would you prevent them from joining an artists’ collective (I’ve witnessed such a denial myself)? Deny them the opportunity to publicly exhibit their art?

Would you also ban self-support groups for the physically disabled? For Veterans? For cancer survivors? Would you ban the Paralympics?

Would you also ban GSAs? Gay and lesbian nightclubs? Ladies’ Art Nights? Chinese students’ associations? Native Friendship Centres?

I hope not.

But seems that when it comes to people with intellectual disabilities, some people’s idea of “inclusion” has as a fundamental tenet “isolation from peers at all costs, whatever the actual needs or desires of the individual.”

That is a tragically dangerous and damaging mission statement that would not be tolerated by any group that has a voice, indeed, would not be tolerated in a truly inclusive society. And it is a betrayal of a disparate group of too-often-isolated individuals that desperately needs its myriad of long-silenced and ignored voices heard.

Like any other group in our society, those with intellectual disabilities have a need and a fundamental human right to freely associate with their peers. Not enabling  that right — or outright banning it as some “advocates” and groups desire — is not inclusion. It is segregation as damaging to the individual and to the individual’s human spirit and potential as any other form of segregation.

I simply have to end with a song:

A Few Privileged and Hasty Notes on Two Edmonton Planning Concerns

I have a bit of time on my hands, unlike the majority of people in my neighbourhood. Most people around me are still students, parents, renters, workers, homeless, marginalized, seniors, mobility challenged, with an “and/or” between each item. With each passing year the proportion of well-off, privileged, work-from-home, non-parent, chronically healthy, house/condo-owning individuals increases in my neighbourhood. I confess I am one of the privileged, fortunate enough to have moved into the neighbourhood in the 80s and stayed on through the decades of change. I have time to sit and do online surveys where the City attempts to “engage” with citizens (but really just gives the time-privileged a place to vent about their pet projects) and write blog posts.

Right now I have two pet beefs: the “planned” Centre Line LRT and the ongoing “Renewal” of the infrastructure of Strathcona. I’ll begin with the renewal because it is the one that has actually had a concrete start on the avenue in front of my house.

Renewal in Strathcona

Over the last few summers, 83 Avenue, most thoroughly in the stretch between 99 Street and the Mill Creek Ravine, has been closed for long periods while the road has been rebuilt, sidewalks and streetlights have been replaced, and a dedicated bike lane has been added. Superficially and in principle I love it all. I will soon be able to cycle to my little bit of part-time retirement work in (confusion and) safety (sort of). I can walk safely to the wonderful amenities of Strathcona, in my case, particularly the theatres and restaurants, and pretty much only in daylight. Bus service is wonderful for all the places I need to get that are a little too far to walk or too cold to cycle. And I’m privileged to have a car for the further trips or when I’ve a little too much to carry. The neighbourhood is good to me.

But. There has to be a but.

When the planners came up with the bike lane design, they decided on a multitude of them, particularly if the 106 Street doubled, multi-level, skinny lanes are considered. Between the Ravine and 99 Street on 83 Ave the lane is painted, dedicated to bikes one way and shared with cars the other, with wacky little roundabouts at the intersections and no left turns for cars off 99th. The roundabouts are a dangerous and confusing menace to pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists. They limit access for emergency vehicles, city maintenance vehicles, and moving and delivery trucks. The restriction on left turns off 99th forces resident motorists and visitor motorists to make convoluted loops through the neighbourhood, or to make dangerous left turns down back alleys, merely to get to their home/destination.

Between 99th and 103 and beyond 104 it seems to be largely a physically separated two way lane with one way car traffic and greatly reduced parking, largely in front of walk up, largely rental apartments, rather than single family-owned homes. Clearly those who depend on cars, particularly renters and the mobility challenged, were not considered in this planning, or, if considered, dismissed as inconsequential.

Between 103 and 104 the bike lane is a slightly elevated abomination which I expect will lead to countless trips, falls, and injuries during summer festival season. Clearly pedestrian safety was not a consideration in this planning, or, if considered, dismissed as inconsequential.

The north-south lane on 106 street is an ugly and confusing collections of winding curbs and green pillars that make driving or cycling feel like flying an x-wing down the trench on the Death Star. With speed bumps. Bus stops are separated from sidewalks by bicycle traffic lanes, and busses are boarded from a thin curb on the edge of the bike lane, a virtual impossibility for those with walkers or in wheelchairs. Clearly transit users and the mobility challenged were not a consideration in this planning, or, if considered, dismissed as inconsequential.

I won’t even imagine the headaches of snow removal.

The sidewalks that have been rebuilt so far are very nice and walkable. A+ on the final concrete work.

The new streetlights on 83 Ave east of 99th are very pretty in the daytime, I expect they save energy at night, and the adequately light the road and bike lane after dark. But after dark the sidewalks are a pitch black abyss. Often when walking home after dark — which, face it, is any time after 4 pm for a good part of the year — I have been infinitely grateful for the home owner who has left a porch light on to help guide my steps. Clearly pedestrians with or without mobility issues were not a huge consideration in this planning, or, if considered, dismissed as inconsequential.

Given the inconsistency of the designs used in these really quite small and straight stretches of bike lanes and the confusion and danger this inconsistency will cause, I feel it clear that cyclists weren’t actually a huge consideration in this particular planning, or, if considered, dismissed as inconsequential.

Right now the City is “consulting” with citizens (who have the privilege of leisure and time to go online and do a survey or show up at open houses) about the future steps in this reconstruction of Strathcona’s infrastructure. Much of the open and less open thrust of what little discussion there has been has been a giddy push for more bike lanes, apparently whatever the design or consequences of that design.

The Centre Line

There seems to be a desire on the part of unnamed planners to have a surface, low-floor LRT line down Whyte Avenue between the University of Alberta and Bonnie Doon, replicating one of Edmonton’s wonderful old streetcar lines. Right now that stretch is well serviced by a fleet of convenient kneeling buses which are regularly filled with citizens of all social and mobility levels. But, okay. I like the LRT. I take it fairly regularly. Having a stop a block from home would be nice.

But.

Where are these planners? Have they ever been to Edmonton? Have they never even looked at a map of the current LRT lines? “. . . connections between Downtown, the Alberta Legislature, the University of Alberta, Strathcona, Bonnie Doon, east Edmonton and the wider LRT network” the blabbity says. But, Downtown, the Legislature and the U of A have had LRT connections for years. For decades! If you look at the map accompanying the “plan”, every bit of the proposed route, except the bit down Whyte Avenue, parallels/duplicates an existing and expensively constructed underground LRT line — through downtown it would be the third east west line! And a new bridge will have to be built almost on top of two existing ones. Why? What is the reason for duplicating that line on the surface and those bridges? Are they trying to justify the (inevitably monumentally disruptive) line down Whyte Avenue? Why not just build a surface line from Health Sciences station to Bonnie Doon and beyond? Even just between Health Sciences and Bonnie Doon the line would be significantly longer than the current continually troubled NAIT line, and it would be a good start on a long overdue commuter line to Sherwood Park. And no redundancy (if we forget about the buses which are doing so nicely on that route).

As someone who uses/has used all transportation modes in the city –car, bus, LRT, High Level Streetcar, walking, cycling, motorscooter — even unicycling in my younger days — but not those Segway river valley tours, I wish Edmonton’s planners would spend less time on narrowly focused dreams and misleading consultations with privileged single-issue citizen activists and a little more time actually walking, driving, cycling, LRTing, and bussing through the areas they’re treating like big sandboxes of expensive experiment.