Door to door in Middle Springs 2

A couple of days ago, the CBC had a story about some research done by the University of Calgary.  Apparently, kids who live in newer subdivisions spend less time playing outside, because of the car-oriented design of those subdivisions.

Well, I wish the researchers could have seen  Sulphur Court last evening.  Kids playing in the cul-de-sac, dogs being walked, dads chatting in the driveways, the mouth-watering scent of dinner wafting from the kitchen windows -- it was great! 

At the doors, I got into lots of discussions about debt and even more about the proposed parkade.  Thanks to everyone who took time out of your dinner hour to chat with me, and thanks for all the encouragement!  I'm including some thoughts below about these two big discussion issues.

On debt:  frequently, we read in the paper that the increases in building costs outweigh the cost of borrowing.  "Build now," we're told, "because it will cost more to build in the future".  I think that this argument is a good one when what you're building is essential.  I've got no argument with the borrowing that was done for Banff Avenue downtown reconstruction.  Essential road work and utility replacements are worth borrowing for, if your capital reserves aren't up to the task.  A pedestrian bridge or a second parkade -- not so much, at the present time.  It's like borrowing to buy a house to live in versus borrowing to buy a summer cottage.

On a second parkade:  here are some thoughts I presented at the Community Plan review:

Parking is a multi-faceted issue.  First, it is an issue of way-finding.  When I come downtown by car, I can almost always find parking within a block of my destination.  I'll bet you can, too.  If we can do that, and visitors can’t, then we have a way-finding issue.  I’m delighted to see that way-finding improvement is an objective of the new community plan. 

Next, parking is an issue of reasonably balancing needs and demand.  It is unreasonable to expect that everyone will be able to find a parking spot within a block of his/her destination on July 1.  With that in mind, do we really have a capacity problem?  This summer, I watched the spaces indicator on the Bear Street parkade every time I passed it.  I saw it under 50 stalls of availability four times.  I understand that the Cascade Plaza parkade had space all summer. Yet this summer was probably as demanding a situation as we are likely to face in the life of the plan.   

Let’s not make decisions for the sake of four days a year.  We can “increase facilities”, not through additional stalls, but through the way-finding objective that is already in the plan and through the ways we manage existing parking to ensure efficient use.