Prairie Sky Gondola | 76.2m | ?s | Prairie Sky | DIALOG

[CplKlinger]

Lots of hypocrites in Rossdale too. I wonder how many dead indigenous people are buried under their backyards. Perhaps some bones were found when their foundations were being dug up. I think it's a bit naive to think the burial grounds didn't extend beyond the powerplant area. I also don't think the NIMBYs in Rossdale actually care about the burial grounds. It was a great thing to anchor their opposition to, though.

From my (very limited understanding) though, that argument wasn't being raised by people living in Rossdale. The community league, for example, loves that the Riverhawks have been so successful and rent the ball diamond out for events when there's no game going on. To the contrary, I think a lot of people there would love to have something like the gondola stop at the plant because it would alleviate some of the parking demand - both reducing the tension regarding infill (since a lot of the densification will be on the surface parking lots), and helping avoid a repeat of the event earlier this summer where residents were boxed in by attendees who didn't realize that they weren't allowed to park in the neighbourhood itself.

A lot of the pushback has been from two groups: the papaschase cree first nation, and descendants of settlers buried in the Fort Edmonton cemetery. The papaschase in particular have had a really rough go of things; given less land for their reserve (located approximately where Mill Woods is today) than they were entitled to, saw bits of their reserve eaten away as settlers illegally moved on the fringes, had their numbers dwindle as Canada tried to starve them away, then they were displaced altogether after Canada used some legal maneuvering and revoked its recognition of papaschase altogether, with the remaining members scattering across Canada. I had a classmate in university whose great grandfather was among those people displaced, and he didn't make it back to the area for 30 or 40 years I believe.

In the late 1990s-early 2000s, around the time they started to organize in the area once again, EPCOR was trying to expand the power plant. There was a multi-year legal and PR fight as papaschase members and Fort Edmonton descendants demanded that an independent expert be allowed to investigate for human remains on the land in question, EPCOR said "we checked and there's nothing there, trust us" and so on until EPCOR finally relented. And wouldn't you know it? There were indeed humans buried there, and EPCOR was lying all along.

Just think about that for a second; within our lifetimes, EPCOR was trying to expand a power plant onto lands they knew were sacred burial grounds, and lied about it time and time again to the ancestors of those buried there. I think *anyone* in that position would expect better treatment going forward, particularly once mainstream society recognized that what was done to Indigenous peoples at the time the papaschase were displaced was literally a genocide ("cultural" genocide isn't a legal concept, and as one residential school survivor told me, genocide is like pregancy; you either are, or aren't, there's no in between). And considering that land has been a sacred burial ground for longer than Canada has existed as a country, they're darn well entitled to a say in the future of that land going forward.

Should they be able to veto literally everything anyone proposes? No. But they deserve meaningful consultation—not a repeat of what EPCOR put them through not even thirty years ago. I should reiterate that I am all for the gondola and want it to be a thing (it'd make it so much quicker and more enjoyable to get between central Edmonton and Old Strathcona), I just want it to be done in a better way than previous projects were.

 

[ChazYEG]

I'm an advocate of respecting and protecting the appearance of the Walterdale Bridge and you're worried about your god damn bicycle path. You have such a typical cyclist's self centered view of everything.

LMFAO I don't even bike, due to a knee injury.

You're an advocate against anything that might benefit the city as a whole. The park, the bike lanes, transit... If it's not car-centric, it's bad.

 

[TagYEG]

I honestly can't see any kind of redevelopment at the power plant being very successful without something like a gondola. There isn't a lot of space for parking on site and there shouldn't be any plans to allow for public parking at this location, if they want it to be successful. The area doesn't need a parkade and having a novel way to get to whatever the power plant becomes would add to the experience of getting there. Taking the bus just doesn't have the same excitement.

If the gondola were to go bust for some reason, and I don't think it would, if the power plant is to become a destination, then either ETS could take it over and run it or the City could sell it. These are modular systems that are scalable and can be moved/sold from one ski resort to another. After the Whistler Olympics, a chairlift was moved from Whister to Sunshine Village in Banff. Sunshine Village sold their 35 year old Angle Chair to Castle Resort in southern Alberta. Lake Louise gondola came from Palisades Tahoe in California, and lastly, the Polar Peak chair at Fernie was previously installed at Nakiska. These things hold their value, even when they are decades old. I know some people brought up the concrete foundations as a remediation issue, but maybe the City could have interpretive art installations around each tower or something to turn it into its own destination, which could then be incorporated into the concrete so that it could just be left in the ground in the event of a removal. I', not saying this is the best solution, but there are ways around this.

I don't think the City should be on the hook for rescue services, in the event of a failure. Ski resorts have trained staff for emergency evacuations and do not rely on the local fire department. Whistler has the Peak to Peak gondola, which is over 400m above the ground and a rescue on that would be far more complicated than anything in Edmonton.

 

[lemongrab]

I don't think the City should be on the hook for rescue services, in the event of a failure. Ski resorts have trained staff for emergency evacuations and do not rely on the local fire department. Whistler has the Peak to Peak gondola, which is over 400m above the ground and a rescue on that would be far more complicated than anything in Edmonton.

EFD would almost certainly have to do any rescue. Ski resorts employ patrollers for other purposes, and they just happen to be perfectly suited to this task, too. Prairie Sky ain't employing a bunch of people to sit around all day for years and probably never be needed. The city could certainly charge for a rescue operation.

But it's exceedingly unlikely that it will ever have to happen.The challenge for ski resorts is that they'll have 5+ totally different lift systems, each with a bunch of unique parts. And they don't always have an extra one of the needed parts on hand, and even if they do it may not be right at that site, so its a comms process and snowmobile ride to get it to a station. But sometimes they'll have to fabricate/modify what they need then and there. Either way it can take hours to fix, but they can almost always do it without a rescue.

The advantage for Edmonton is that they'd have a bunch of stations running identical parts, and it would be easy for them to have a bunch of spares on hand, literally waiting in the truck that the head mechanic would drive right to the problem station.

That said, the perception of a possible rescue over the river will always be a challenge. And any mechanical delays (even relatively short ones not requiring rescue) can do a lot of damage to trust in the system. 10 minutes suspended 60 feet in the air feels like a hell of a lot longer than that!

 

[Wax]

I do remember reading somewhere that the gondola would provide its own emergency response team if it were to get stuck. I think it was in its website before it got taken down.

 

[Out of Towner]

Hope that something doesn't happen isn't a public safety strategy. Besides maintaining a response team that is trained for land and water rescues, the necessary equipment for a response needs to be readily available. No point having firemen if they don't have a truck and there's no point having a response team if they don't have watercraft for a response. Another expense. Since passengers will be traveling over water, federal safety protocol may require the gondola cabins to have flotation devices for its passenger. Another expense. And on and on for the price of a bus fare. It's difficult to see a banker interested in funding a venture like this.

 

[an_edmontonian]

There are certainly hurdles to a river valley gondola. Rescue is one of them. The supposed infringing on the Walterdale's precious view is absolutely not one of them haha.

 

[an_edmontonian]

Hope that something doesn't happen isn't a public safety strategy. Besides maintaining a response team that is trained for land and water rescues, the necessary equipment for a response needs to be readily available. No point having firemen if they don't have a truck and there's no point having a response team if they don't have watercraft for a response. Another expense. Since passengers will be traveling over water, federal safety protocol may require the gondola cabins to have flotation devices for its passenger. Another expense. And on and on for the price of a bus fare. It's difficult to see a banker interested in funding a venture like this.

Just curious OOT, what exactly are your credentials? You are speaking like you are an authority on many things, but are you actually? Do you know the state of Edmonton's rescue services? I would expect that Edmonton already has a team trained in water rescues, you claim it doesn't. What exactly is your background when it comes to the permitting process for transportation projects of this nature. Do you have a background in it? Do you have a background in emergency rescue operations?

Thanks.

 

[Out of Towner]

Just curious OOT, what exactly are your credentials? You are speaking like you are an authority on many things, but are you actually? Do you know the state of Edmonton's rescue services? I would expect that Edmonton already has a team trained in water rescues, you claim it doesn't. What exactly is your background when it comes to the permitting process for transportation projects of this nature. Do you have a background in it? Do you have a background in emergency rescue operations?

Thanks.

No, I'm not an authority in any way. And while you may be a critic, I notice that you're not a critical reader because if you were, you would have noticed that I was questioning the cost of conducting an emergency response. But further then, has there been a gondola rescue over the North Saskatchewan that you know of?

 

[EdwardEdm]

No point having firemen if they don't have a truck and there's no point having a response team if they don't have watercraft for a response.

EFR has watercraft based at Station 21 in Rossdale, and the technical rescue team with their dedicated and specially equipped truck is based at Station 3 on 76 Ave and 112 St.

 

[Out of Towner]

EFR has watercraft based at Station 21 in Rossdale, and the technical rescue team with their dedicated and specially equipped truck is based at Station 3 on 76 Ave and 112 St.

So you're saying that the response team would have all the necessary equipment and require no training to conduct a gondola rescue of passengers. Ok. I defer to you then. I wouldn't have assumed that that's within their scope of operational readiness but ok, if it is then it is.

 

[ChazYEG]

It's difficult to see a banker interested in funding a venture like this.

And yet, there was an assortment of investors ready to pull the trigger should it have been approved by the City Council. The business case is there, even if at a fare slightly higher than an ETS bus fare, and mind you, that was back in 2022, still during COVID, when the investment landscape was abysmal, and prior to the recent population boom numbers and the addition of so many residents to Winketowin and Downtown.
I was part of the financing team on this project and we had it fully funded. Your objections were also all addressed in the technical memorandums, which were provided to the council for appreciation, and at no point any of these items was an issue. The biggest concerns were the financial risk for the City of Edmonton should the private enterprise go under and the indigenous burial site hurdles. The environmental assessment was also a point of contention, and the understanding of the project's team was that they would have to provide a more substantial environmental protection framework to get building permits approved.

 

[Out of Towner]

What was ETS's position since the project would be tied into its operation?

 

[an_edmontonian]

No, I'm not an authority in any way. And while you may be a critic, I notice that you're not a critical reader because if you were, you would have noticed that I was questioning the cost of conducting an emergency response. But further then, has there been a gondola rescue over the North Saskatchewan that you know of?

Ok, your not an authority, thank you for confirming. I suspected as much as you assumed the city needed to create a water rescue team for a gondola despite the city already having dozens of water crossings. Just throwing out speculative cold water it would seem.

 

[inclusion]

So you're saying that the response team would have all the necessary equipment and require no training to conduct a gondola rescue of passengers. Ok. I defer to you then. I wouldn't have assumed that that's within their scope of operational readiness but ok, if it is then it is.

You could offer solutions and criticisms instead of just criticizing all the time. I don't see the issue with EFS having to receive new training for something new to the city. They had to buy new equipment when Stantec and the JW Marriott opened, and surely required new training. Many places around the world have gondolas and have received funding for them. I'm not sure why you're implying that Edmonton would be any different. Surely a City of our size with dedicated Hazmat teams that can respond to biological and chemical hazards could figure out how to support Gondola rescue operations. You went from not liking the gondola destroying the view of Walterdale to a gondola being new and unable to be supported by our emergency personnel because it would be too expensive or something. I'm beginning to think you are simply a detractor of the overall gondola project, which is fine, but there are plenty of people who would love to see one here and want to find solutions to make it a reality.