On Saturday I attended the Green Transportation Plan consultation workshop. Although I had anticipated a lower turnout than for the Recreation Management Plan consultation I was wrong; there were about 50 people in the room. There was a major difference though. Earlier in the day during the Recreation consultation the room had been about evenly split between Anglophones and Francophones, the afternoon Transportation session was nearly 90% Francophone. The reason for this was two-fold. Some of the attendees were concerned or distressed with the prospect of the closure of Rue Gamelin; presumably being regular users of that route. Others were sufferers from the sounds of high speed drivers screeching up the parkways at all hours of the night, plus attendant vandalism.
There’s no help for the Gamelinites, but for the squealing tire sufferers there is talk of closing the parkway to cars every night at 10 or 11 PM.
Heavy traffic congestion under three circumstances were brought forward accompanied by a range of possible initiatives to address each case: fall foliage weekends; summer swimming parking; and winter ski day weekends.
One of the proposals to manage traffic jams during fall colours was a (possibly mandatory) bus that would trundle foliage viewers up and down the parkway.
Similarly ski starting point hot spots might be serviced by busses (this time likely optional) during those times when now cars are spilling out of parking lots onto the roadways.
No joy for the parking deprived swimmers though on a popular weekend—if the parking lot is full then the beach is full too.
Various proposals for enhancing public transit accessibility to the park were also offered and I personally gave them high marks, though in truth I don’t have extremely high hopes that they’ll get used too much.
The scene-setting information for the session also made note of climate change and vehicle contributions to it. Correctly it was pointed out that overall such contributions were marginal in the scope of things but I personally still marked this as a very important issue for the following reason: The issue is infinitely more important than parking challenges. The reason it is a problem is because each of us keeps turning the car key day after day. If we can’t take such a serious issue seriously in preparing a plan for green transportation in Canada’s conservation park how can we expect anyone to take it seriously anywhere?
The online portion of the consultation is live until February 19th. The NCC are also taking written submissions at their info email address.
