Alberta Politics & Government Thread 3.0

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by you&me

I'm not super familiar with Canmore and the land use regulations (and restrictions), but... What if the town grew (responsibly, of course)?

What if it became something like Boulder? Like people could actually live and work there, beyond mostly service jobs?

The problem is there just isn't much space to grow. You can't really expand west much(Nordic centre, Banff Park, river wetland). They've already built north and south to the valley edges, so no room there. That leaves east, which they are rapidly reaching the farthest they can go there. In the process they've eaten up the animal corridors and a huge amount of trails(the very reason many would want to live there).

There really isn't all that much developable land, which is why they try to force developers to at least have some affordable housing, but it is never near enough, so the balance gets worse with every development. And it seems most of the new developments are for weekenders/investors so families miss out.

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

What is your argument? These places already have cars parking everywhere and so we should just let drivers decide where a safe place to park is on there own.

For what its worth, there are already trail heads with parking attendee's who turn cars away when they're full and write down license plates of cars that park where ever. It happened to me, and then you are stuck, out of reception looking for a new hike. My bad, I get that you need to show up earlier ect... but the parking lot could only fit 12 vehicles. In the 10 minutes it took us to turn around, that many were already being turned away.

It's less of an argument and more of a question.

So the parking lot can only fit 12 vehicles and as many were being turned away. So do we need twice as many spots? You don't think we should pave, but cars are going to be there. So what solution is being proposed?

I guess if I'm making an argument, it's to reduce the number of cars that go into the park. We either have to pave to accommodate them, or prevent them from coming in increasing numbers in the first place. Build a train that makes access to the park easy and enjoyable. Provide shuttles, hell even trams, to the popular sites. And significantly increase the cost of a vehicle pass to the park. I guess that's what I'm arguing for.

[Flames0910]

I have found there is a direct correlation between the more expensive the outdoor gear the lower the outdoorsing abilities. It's also like when it's -32 out. You have a bunch of office dwellers running around in Canada goose jackets, mitts and Uggs. Meanwhile, the Native guy is rocking a jean jacket a pair of Adidas and he's changing a car battery with no gloves on.

Did the goretex jacket / hydration pack wearing people hurt you? Sure painting with a broad brush there.

You might be fine on your hike to Rawson Lake but there's a reason people don't wear a jean jacket and adidas in the bush and even though you're patting yourself on the back for finishing ahead of the group and having time to smoke, a 2-3hour hike is pretty much the beginner end of the "outdoorsy" spectrum.

I'm not going to gatekeep and say you need to go on big excursions to enjoy the mountains, but you scored a goal on the Timbits team and are acting like you know what it takes to win the Stanley Cup so maybe cool your jets a bit?

[GGG]

For people who want more access the answer is less cars and more shuttles. Mass parking lots in banff townsite and Canmore with really good bus service inside the park.

The problem isn’t as simple as Zion or Yosemite where the 20k long Canyon of Zion was relatively easy to make vehicle free or Yosemite where El Cap to the falls trailhead is only about 5 miles but these places increased visitor ship with shuttles. I think Zion has 4 times the visitors from when it introduced shuttles in 1990.

We don’t need trains from Calgary to Banff or Gondolas or large capita investments. Simply buses, frequent enough that you don’t need to wait in line and frequent enough that you don’t care about schedule. Spend the investment where getting rid of cars as the most impact right inside the park.

Once you have shown that car less banff works then you can look at the get people to banff problem but busses can easily handle current Car less demand.

Also if people want Mountain towns we should develop Castle Mountain area that is already heavily impacted. The goal should be to provide alternatives to the Bow Valley Corridor.

[Torture]

No GGG, sorry to break this to you but we have reserved that area for the Australian open pit coal mines.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Flames0910

Did the goretex jacket / hydration pack wearing people hurt you? Sure painting with a broad brush there.

You might be fine on your hike to Rawson Lake but there's a reason people don't wear a jean jacket and adidas in the bush and even though you're patting yourself on the back for finishing ahead of the group and having time to smoke, a 2-3hour hike is pretty much the beginner end of the "outdoorsy" spectrum.

I'm not going to gatekeep and say you need to go on big excursions to enjoy the mountains, but you scored a goal on the Timbits team and are acting like you know what it takes to win the Stanley Cup so maybe cool your jets a bit?

Not to mention that those other office workers with their hiking boots, hydration packs, and goretex probably had no idea they were running a race to the lake for first prize best outdoorsman of all time. Stupid idiots probably thought they were going for a nice easy hike with their coworkers.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Torture

No GGG, we have reserved that area for open pit coal mines.

Loggers and coal miners leave excellent roads. All the shell gas roads essentially created the highway 66 area.

So if extraction could deal with the selenium issue then it wouldn’t be that terrible.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by you&me

I'm not super familiar with Canmore and the land use regulations (and restrictions), but... What if the town grew (responsibly, of course)?

What if it became something like Boulder? Like people could actually live and work there, beyond mostly service jobs?

2 obvious problems based on nothing more than a quick look on google maps:

1. Boulder is only bound on one side by mountains (Canmore is bound on both sides + BNP to the west).

2. The only road in the country doesn't run straight through the middle of Boulder.


Which actually leads me to a fantastical idea: TC1 should be cut and covered for all ~5km that it passes through the town. Ideally you realign the train tracks to follow the same trench. Boom, you've erased the two biggest blights in the town and created a half million sq meters of incredibly valuable real estate without expanding the town's footprint at all...not to mention hugely increasing the value of everything currently backing onto the highway.

I can't be bothered to do napkin math, but said real estate should pay for the project. Obviously there are myriad practical challenges. Maybe it would have to start after Cougar Creek, or maybe it goes very solidly under there.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

It's less of an argument and more of a question.

So the parking lot can only fit 12 vehicles and as many were being turned away. So do we need twice as many spots? You don't think we should pave, but cars are going to be there. So what solution is being proposed?

I guess if I'm making an argument, it's to reduce the number of cars that go into the park. We either have to pave to accommodate them, or prevent them from coming in increasing numbers in the first place. Build a train that makes access to the park easy and enjoyable. Provide shuttles, hell even trams, to the popular sites. And significantly increase the cost of a vehicle pass to the park. I guess that's what I'm arguing for.

Hard to argue aganst your point. Other infrastructure would develop tourism better and reduce the number of vehicles making everything safer and more enjoyable. It is already busy as hell there, and there will only be more and more traffic year over year.

[Yoho]

Trudeau giving free campaign help to Danielle Smith.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1612813689157029888

[D as in David]

Could Kananaskis Village be turned into a town and have development encouraged there?

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by D as in David

Could Kananaskis Village be turned into a town and have development encouraged there?

There isn't a lot of good land there. You can see the village is built on a terrace:

https://goo.gl/maps/98qNryisY3yZJ2LSA

South of that the golf course got absolutely annihilated in the floods. That should be a good warning to heed. Below that is lowlands not well suited to building. And then, mountains. There are pockets of areas you could develop, for sure. But I don't think you could get a Canmore in there without flood and groundwater issues.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

Meloche is sooo bad ever since they switched to TD Insurance. Just terrible. I've been with Meloche since 1997.

Originally Posted by D as in David

Could Kananaskis Village be turned into a town and have development encouraged there?

At the moment I don't believe it could. It is inside Kananaskis Country which as far as I know is off limits to that sort of development.

[Harry Lime]

I'm late to the conversation, but I always wondered why Sparwood was never transformed into a tourist area. It's beautiful, sits between Lethbridge and Cranbrook and has good access for Americans. Close enough to ski hills. Wasted space, and sits there as a 'future mining town.'

[Two Fivenagame]

The answer to the "third mountain destination" question is simple:

Dead Man's Flats

[PepsiFree]

If the choice is between bigger parking lots near Lake Louise and bigger parking lots where the shuttle picks you up from and people casually just litter the highway with vehicles, I choose the closer option.

There are lots of areas like that where vehicles end up spilling into the highway. Acknowledging that a bunch of public transit infrastructure would possibly be even more disruptive, significantly more expensive, and is not likely to be build before these areas reach a breaking point, maybe we could just accept reality and make this places easier to visit in the short term, too?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

If the choice is between bigger parking lots near Lake Louise and bigger parking lots where the shuttle picks you up from and people casually just litter the highway with vehicles, I choose the closer option.

There are lots of areas like that where vehicles end up spilling into the highway. Acknowledging that a bunch of public transit infrastructure would possibly be even more disruptive, significantly more expensive, and is not likely to be build before these areas reach a breaking point, maybe we could just accept reality and make this places easier to visit in the short term, too?

It isn’t just parking capacity. It’s road capacity into the parking lots. You also would need these massive parking lots in more sensitive areas and parkade a would be much more obtrusive at LL or Johnston Canyon then out side the Banff Rec Center. Getting the number of cars up and down moraine lake road that the shuttle can accommodate is a difficult task. So instead of upgrading infrastructure at multiple locations you do it at one or you use existing infrastructure like the LL or Sunshine parking lots.

Lake Louise is a really good example of using an already impacted area of the ski hill to provide excess parking for an area short on parking Moraine lake and Lake Louise. More buses from existing parking infrastructure doesn’t take years to implement. It reduces congestion now.

[Izzle]

Alberta affordability goes to households whose combined income is <180k. Is this the line 15000 in the 2021 tax return?

[Tron_fdc]

I would go to Crowsnest Pass if you guys are sick of tourist crowds and puffy coat NIMBY's. Yeah it gets windy from time to time but that area is largely undiscovered and offers a lot of the same experience as Kananaskis for WAY less.

You could probably sell your condo in Canmore and buy a new 4 br house there for the same price.

[powderjunkie]

It's weird how averse we are to using pricing to solve/mitigate problems. Of course pricing alone wouldn't fix this in a reasonable way, but it could help fund improved alternative service.