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Considering that downtown has two massive fountains at City Hall and the Legislature as well as water features at Violet King Henry Plaza and Alex Decoteau makes me think it's probably OK. Tbh I think Edmonton does pretty well in the "parks that are good for pondering in" department, so I don't see the issue with prioritizing programming and activities.
Bike lanes have added to the vibrancy of the urban environment in the city imo but so would a fountain at a much cheaper cost. Exactly how a city in excess of 1 million people can find $170M for bike lanes but cann't handle the cost of one fountain is preposterous. I'd agree that a fountain in a park in a remote part of the city would be wasting money but Warehouse Park is right downtown and a fountain would show case the park and the city. It doesn't necessarily need to be a fountain comparable to the ones found in the great parks of the world, but the park will be around for generations to come, so there should be something.
Bike lanes are not an amenity that is a nice to have that "adds vibrancy", they are core transportation infrastructure that is required for safe movement through the city for a wide variety of folks. Bike lanes are comparable to an overpass, not a fountain. A fountain is an amenity, and while it would have been great it isn't comparable. Bike lanes save lives and facilitate movement, fountains add vibrancy.
Yes, a lot of money will be spent, but it will end it may end up looking cheap and diluted. A signature park? I guess that's the signature of the city. We've cut back on crap, but we still like to cheap out.
And completed well with attention to detail.
Bro. Don’t create a false dichotomy. This is like all the people that suddenly cared about the homeless when we started building bike lanes but said $0 about any other financial decision ever. 160mil for an overpass concern you at all? 1 bill for yellowhead?
I'm never sure what construction that $170M or $100M covers. A lot of the bike lanes are constructed as part of neighbourhood renewal. Does it cover the cost of asphalt and gravel? That would be part of the road rehab already, even the concrete curb and gutter would be a part of road rehab. For those bike lanes of residential streets, the only additional infrastructure is the concrete barrier curb between road and bike lane plus some signs. I could read up on it but not that interested.
That does sound like a big number until you put it in context and realize it's actually a minuscule slice of our transportation spending and is well short of the cost of the 23 Avenue Interchange, and how this city is full of neighbourhoods that don't pay enough in taxes to cover their servicing and infrastructure.
When the city cited the cost of the downtown bike network at over $11 million while it was being built, they included the cost of all of the traffic lights that needed to be replaced anyways at a cost of ~$250,000 per intersection. I'm expecting we will find many, many more cases where money which would have been spent anyways for car infrastructure gets lumped into bike infrastructure costs.
While I would love a water feature in said park comparable at least to the one in Paul Kane Park, you can get admittedly get quite a bit of bike lane for the cost of a decent sized water feature, and the bike lanes don't really suck up as much maintenance. I LOVE the water feature at Paul Kane Park, but it seems very labour-intensive what with pumps to maintain, the whole process of mothballing it for the winter, and getting it started back up in the spring (which involves replacing all of the cat tails and such). I mean even putting a pond in your yard is an expensive undertaking, a whole bunch of work, and stuff goes wrong with them all of the time, and troubleshooting leaks with them is anything but fun.
