Tag Archives: parking

Most Of a Million Dollars

The province is wasting more money on a single-owner vehicle parking structure at General Hospital in Regina, when it could buy a bus for the cost of the the cursory dig and the project’s budget for 2022:

“The excavation is also not anticipated to strain the project’s allocated $750,000 budget for this year, as surveys were included in the planning.”

There’s a shuttle that travels between health facilities in Regina, stopping at parking lots, but the ridership is restricted to Sask Health Authority employees. If Regina Transit was offering the service instead, everyone going to or visiting the hospital would be able to ride it. Our city would get better transit, and the province wouldn’t be spending any additional money. And we could probably have the hospital there without constructing another stranded asset, which is what a parkade is when built during a climate crisis.

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General Parking Woes

I’ve a simple solution to the parking problems at the General Hospital:

Do the opposite of what Mayor Fougere says.

“I think that the employer should be providing safe parking for their staff,” Mayor Michael Fougere said after a budget vote on Tuesday. “It’s just so obvious to me it’s painful to say it.”

The employer shouldn’t be the one providing safe parking, it’s the CITY the employer provides healthcare in, that should be providing safe transportation, and it’s so obvious that it’s painful for me to say it.

His Worship is doing a disservice by putting the focus on a parkade and away from his responsibilities. To meet the Mayor’s transit shortfall, the SHAuthority is providing a park & ride shuttle service at some hours of the day. This hasn’t eliminated the problems, in part because the shuttles are not useful to the general public who also needs to attend the hospital as patients or visitors. If the provincial money going to the staff-only shuttle went instead to Regina Transit, then fewer people would be parked as more would take a free & convenient bus to and from their home or their place of being parked.

The Mayor is being dishonest by focusing on a parkade. It’s not the best advice given to him, it appears to be another gift to the construction industry that he had close ties to in his previous profession outside of Council and the Mayoralty.

Wascana Calls Back

I took a call from Wascana’s CEO who explained their position on spending $193000 to expand the parking lot[PDF] at Candy Cane Park. Their view is more cars that already park illegally on the street will use it, and as a result kids will be safer because they won’t run out between illegally street-parked cars, presumably.

Can’t say that’s how it will work, I said “mark my words, there will still be spill-over onto the street, and more cars overall”. She had to concede at busy times, that’s how it will go. It’ll take more than my voice to end this #strandedasset project. Oh, it also increases runoff by replacing soil with pavement, reducing the water quality in Wascana Creek.

It’s 2017, and if we don’t limit air pollution quickly, our kids will have a rough go of things. Putting a dollar more into auto infrastructure before cycling and pedestrian infrastructure makes kids less safe, not more.

On the upside, Wascana is putting some trails through the arboretum near Wascana Rehab and Hillsdale St.

Also they will now consider manually clearing Broad St. Bridge which wasn’t being swept clear of snow like everything else the last two Winters. I explained that the City of Regina builds nothing for cyclists, so it’s really up to Wascana Centre to provide cycling infrastructure for Reginans.

Added two more important points:

4 New Councillors Could Shift The Balance

I’m more optimistic today than I was yesterday about the new Council. Although a majority 6 Councillors were returned, with 4 new faces it’s possible that some of the incumbents could be convinced to change their votes on a number of issues.

Lori Bresciani is new in Ward 4. I’m concerned about her current view on downtown parking.

If we want to people to come downtown Parking has to available and convenient.  I do not believe we have adequate parking and we need to provide more parking options for residents.

Contrast her view with Joel’s below. I hope her perspective will change with experience.

Jason Mancinelli, a highly rated auto mechanic, is new in Ward 9. I couldn’t find his campaign page. He appears to want action on environmental issues. If he makes his first impact on changing the culture of transit by turning down his Council parking pass, and insist upon a Transit pass instead, that will be great.

Andrew Stevens in Ward 3 wants a bus route to the airport, first thing. That’s long overdue, and low hanging fruit. He also wants a housing first strategy that works, like Medicine Hat has. That’s great! He wants to “work towards water conservation and stewardship.” Excellent! He’ll focus on implementing the Transportation Master Plan, and Official Community Plan.

Fixing our infrastructure: The current Council has prioritized sprawl at the expense of maintaining and improving our existing infrastructure. Instead, we need to develop a strategy for improving public transit, bike infrastructure and recreation facilities, while fully implementing the Official Community Plan and Neighbourhood Plans.

When it comes to infrastructure, we need to talk about dedicated bike lanes and a better public transit systems. Cars are expensive and damaging to our health. We need to change, and that’s why I’d look to recommendations in our Transportation Master Plan for guidance.

Joel Murray in Ward 6 seems to understand that parking in downtown cannot be solved by adding more car parking. He gets bonus points for knowing about car sharing.

If we can invest more into options other than a private car (bike lanes, car sharing, and transit) we can keep rates low and have more parking available.

Protecting out environment is paramount. As a community we need to work together on diverting more from our landfill, expanding transit, increasing bike lanes, shopping local, and working from home if possible.

Is approval of the Blue Dot motion forthcoming from this changed Council? Time will tell.