MacLac
Senior Member
Agreed, back in the early 80's for sure. But this is 10 blocks long by 6 lanes wide plus underground utilities plus planter boxes - that never existed when I was a kid etc etc......big project....
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- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
thommyjo
Senior Member
3 years for 10 blocks isn’t a big project.
Other cities build whole metro lines in 3 years with tunnelling…
We are just incompetent and ok with laziness.
kcantor
Senior Member
Can you imagine how many years it would take to do a new subdivision if you could only do 3-4 blocks of arterial or collector streets per year?
MacLac
Senior Member
"Other cities" with "NO unions" - sure. Agreed - unions have turned the average hardworking bloke into a bloated, lazy piece of crap....no doubt about that......
buildings
Active Member
union bashing? that's what you got?
kcantor
Senior Member
Nonsense.
You do realize there is no requirement for contractors working for the City of Edmonton to be “closed shop“?
MacLac
Senior Member
Is the city itself and their unionized members not doing the work?
kcantor
Senior Member
No.
But even if they were, I’m pretty sure that doesn’t make all of the multi-thousands of unionized employees working for the city “bloated, lazy pieces of crap” and more than it makes their non-unionized employees “bloated, lazy pieces of crap” either.
As an organization the city does a lot of things wrong - and we’re discussing one of those things here - but that doesn’t mean you’re not way out of line with your conclusions and accusations. For what it’s worth, the decisions being criticized here are likely made by management and not union members.
MacLac
Senior Member
I could really care less, I was merely trying to add some context as to "maybe here's a reason why it will take 3 years." Frankly, I was actually trying to support the city and but it back fired......learned my lesson lol
Seamusmuldrew
Active Member
Not saying this is necessarily a reason for it to take so long, but if you look at what was built in that time, it makes sense why it was done fast. In other words, many of those roads were/are pieces of garbage with very little thought put into their design. I’m thinking of most streets downtown and Whyte, particularly with the state of the street trees.
TAS
Senior Member
Curious who you say is showing 'laziness' in this scenario? The city and workers could get the whole project done in a shorter time period but if the money for the entire 10 blocks is not allocated, they have to work within the scope they've been given.
As was noted previously in this thread, city admin did recommend the entire project 109-124st be completed within the previous budget cycle (in 3 years) but previous council rejected that for probably what they would describe as a balance of spending priorities. I would have loved to see it happen. Previous council also kept property tax increases at 0 or minimal during covid and provided financial incentive for 9 downtown residential projects which many people were happy about. There's always things that can be questioned though - I doubt the budget process and juggling act is as easy as it appears on the outside. But not denying things can and should get better in how we tackle projects. I just question use of terms like laziness or incompetence.
thommyjo
Senior Member
I think the quality of work done on many city projects is concerning. See MIP and their huge delays on the valley line west. See TransEd and the numerous errors on the VLSE. That’s engineering, sure. But it’s also the on the ground workers not executing projects with excellence and efficiency.
This project is incompetence and laziness in the sense of it likely taking more work to align complex construction projects, labour, budgets, etc, yet if the work was done to do that, it would significantly serve the businesses/residents/commuters of this area. But instead of the extra effort and intelligence it takes to effectively plan these things, I think the outcome we’re seeing is the easy/lazy approach.
Again, it’s just priorities and values. How much do you care about forcing retailers to endure 3 years of construction? How much do you value people being turned off of coming downtown due to never ending construction? It’s no different than our LRT safety issues. Does it require money? Complex collaboration between multiple orgs? Creative thinking? Yes. It does. But it’s possible because other cities do it.
We just don’t have the skill, will, or money to do stuff better it seems. And it sure doesn’t help that people criticize anyone that suggests it could be better. We are a town that often feels like the stereotypes of government bureaucrats, through and through
trevorhayden
Active Member
This argument is too silly.
roe_
Active Member
You raise good points and you may well be correct, but you are also assuming (incorrectly in my opinion) that contractors have limitless capacity. If it were that simple, why not mobilize 10,000 workers to complete the WLRT in one season because that would be cheaper, right?
I would suggest that there are likely good reasons (including financial and human resources) that lead the City to break the Jasper Ave. project into components. You can believe what you want, but assuming the City is necessarily foolish or incompetent is lazy thinking.
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itom987
Active Member
Guys, remember when they were renewing Jasper Ave in the CBD? Their excuse that time was the LRT tunnel underneath it, there is no LRT underneath Jasper Ave in Oliver and they want to take the same amount of time.