Entry Points to Gatineau Park – Design Consultation
7:15 am in Uncategorized, audio, video by Charles Hodgson
The requests for public input are coming fast and furious from the NCC.
Only last week it was the Green Transportation Plan for Gatineau Park.
This week they’d like your opinion on changes they have planned for the entrances to the park.
And this time the deadline is shorter; November 20, 2009.
One of the reasons that this is interesting is that part of their preliminary design includes the possibility of gates at some park entry points and so would clearly relate to possible traffic control in a Green Transportation Plan.
Worth noting also was a reference from the Recreation Management Planning process which called the park “porous” because there are so many ways to get in.
The planned changes to the entrances do not indicate gates at all these many access points so doesn’t seem like the place is about to be fenced off.
The NCC put emphasis on making people more aware that they are actually entering a park. The notion is that by being more aware they’ll respect the environment more.
Here’s a copy of the questions from the survey so you can think about your answers before you begin.
The exercise seems to boil down to four things:
- They’d like to make people aware that a change is coming.
- They’re happy to hear people’s opinions on the design so far.
- They wonder if people agree with the principals behind the change; that is that being more in-your-face about park boundaries will make people behave more responsibly in the park.
- Finally, they want to hear if you have any better ideas.
Here’s a link to their background paper on the new design and here’s a link to the survey itself.
GuideGatineau.ca how has the ability to host discussion forums so at one of those discussion forums I’ve posted some questions that might stimulate some more discussion on this
Plus I’ve put up some thoughts about the Green Transportation Plan so I invite you to give your two-cents-worth.
Earlier comments relating to the Recreational Management Plan were made at the blog post I did after that initial consultation but I’ve opened a forum topic for that issue too.
I’ve been in touch with officials at Gatineau Park and they seem to quite welcome GuideGatineau as a way to hear more directly from actual park users.
