Why is it important to postpone the renewal of 105 Avenue?
An Interview with Dave Buchanan, Chair of Paths for People.
On July 16, 2020, Paths for People proposed to the City of Edmonton to postpone the renewal of 105 Avenue between 109 and 116 Streets. The current design and project plan are deeply flawed, making the updated street far less safe for people walking, rolling, cycling and driving.
In this interview, we talked with Dave Buchanan, Chair of Paths for People, to know more about the story behind this initiative.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Urban Narratifs: Why is it important to postpone the renewal of 105 Avenue?
Dave Buchanan: I think we need to pause this project on 105 Ave because the design is flawed. The design for this street is going to have bike lanes on both sides of the street but the bike lanes on this section are not going to be protected, there is going to be no physical barrier between the bicycles and the cars and that just makes the design unsafe. The City’s policy with bike lanes is ‘all ages, all abilities’ and once you take out the physical barrier, there are lots of people who are not going to feel comfortable riding their bikes on this part of the avenue. With parked cars on the south side of 105 Avenue, bicycles are going to have to navigate between moving and parked vehicles with no physical barrier protection on either side. It’s not safe.
There are lots of people who are not going to feel comfortable riding their bikes on this part of the avenue.
UN: How did this idea come about?
DB: Paths for People has been concerned about this design for a while now, and we tried to talk to the City of Edmonton, with Administration, to try to persuade them to change the design, but the message we got from Administration was ‘it’s too late, the timeline to the project had already begun, we are committed to it, and that there was no way stop it.’
We decided that we needed to take this fight to the public, to the media, and when COVID came along, we realized that it wasn’t just a matter of fixing the design flaw with 105 Ave, but the timing with COVID made it an opportunity for the city to save some money as well. So it seems like these two problems (the lack of public resources and the design flaws of 105 Ave) can be tackled together by pausing the renewal of 105 Avenue.
The lack of public resources and the design flaws of 105 Ave can be tackled together by pausing the renewal of 105 Avenue.
UN: What has been the reception of this idea so far?
DB: I think the response on social media has been pretty positive so far about the idea of pausing. Some attention in the conventional media, the newspapers, and social media but at this point we are trying to get some deeper traction, to try to get people in positions of political power to do something about this.
UN: What needs to happen next?
DB: Next we need to get some City Councilors to be talking about this, to the point where they can discuss our proposal. See the merits of pausing the project, saving some money in the short term, fixing the design so that when it gets built it can be good for everyone and not just for some of the users of the street. Getting some political traction, that is the next step.
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