Adding parking and bike lanes will be a waste of money
By Lethbridge Herald on April 14, 2023.
Editor:
Road conditions in Lethbridge are the worst I have ever seen in my 39 years of driving here.
One could say our city’s priorities are in doubt. They are still considering funding tearing up 3rd Avenue all the way to Mayor Magrath to add more parking and a bike lane when our roads look like Saskatoon’s!
This will be another waste of tax dollars if it is to proceed especially if our current road conditions are not remedied throughout the city.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a drive on 3rd Ave. downtown and picture this all the way to the water tower!
Scott Harvey
Lethbridge
8-7
I’ve got good news for you my friend! One of the answers to the terrible road conditions is to get more people riding bicycles. Road wear follows something called the fourth power law – the stress on the road increases in proportion to the fourth power of the axle load of the vehicle traveling on the road.
According to this law, an extremely light car + driver (3000 pounds) will do 10,000 times the damage to the road of an extremely heavy bicycle (300 pounds). So you want fewer tax dollars wasted on dealing with atrocious potholes? Thank your local cyclist.
Yes its all the cars faults, definitely has nothing to do with frost jacking…. I mean it’s not like this happens to our roads every spring haha
Are you under the impression they don’t get potholes in warm cities? Frost jacking makes it worse, but so do heavy vehicles. Less damage to begin with reduces the impact of frost. Not to mention the fact that our multiuse paths don’t get potholes every spring… I wonder what the difference is…
So dude, do we ban electric cars due to the weight of their battery or do we continue to let them off free when it comes to the road tax. Average weight of an electric is 4323-4960 pounds with 1200 of that battery. “Park them for winter”?? Bicycles smicycles. JUst in a warm climate city for a bit. Bike lanes everywhere. No one uses them. They ride the pathways.
That certainly is an issue with electric cars – they’ll only make road maintenance expenses worse, especially in a city as sprawling as Lethbridge. Another good reason to try to get people cycling rather than just using different cars.
And plenty of people cycle in Lethbridge all winter. Not sure where you’re from, but people in Canada tend to be used to the cold. Personally I use specialty gear when biking – you can get it in many stores in Canada – ask for things like a “coat” or “toque” and they’ll be happy to get you sorted.
By plenty of people you mean all the drug dealers on bicycles downtown riding their stolen bicycles.
You obviously are one of the City of Lethbridge’s propaganda media members who are trying to ram this down our throats.
I got news for you: we do not want it and if you try to ram it down our throats you and the others will be seeking new employment.
There are maybe 10-15 people who ride their bikes in the winter months and I will state that after 7th avenue south’s traffic flow was destroyed for bike lanes, rarely do I see bikes on it. I have pictures to prove it as I take walks often from 4th street south to 19th street south. I have not see a bike on it for months, but you destroyed traffic flow on it.
3rd avenue south is a major east-west artery for traffic and will be needed as the city grows. You city planners do not believe in traffic flow though after watching you come up with your brilliant ideas. You will not have people riding their bikes in winter, wiping out on icy streets and breaking bones.
Your ideas are foolish and that $44 million dollars can be spent better elsewhere!
Stop blowing our tax dollars on these projects! 7th avenue gets very little use by cyclists!
Oh no, not the job you’re pretending I have, anything but that.
I’d call you a liar given that 7th ave has a regular flow of cyclists, and yes I regularly use it in winter, but… maybe you actually don’t see them. If people like you were actually good at seeing other road users, we probably wouldn’t need the bike infrastructure in the first place. It’s there to stop reckless drivers like yourself from hitting us.
Not sure what $44 million you’re talking about. Lethbridge has invested essentially nothing in bike lanes – the few projects that might happen are coming from federal grants or private funding in the case of the Cor Van Raay pathway. I wish I was defending $44 million in active transportation funding, but that’s just another thing your active imagination created.
The $44 million for the whole project was announced several months ago and the monies whether municipal, provincial or federal all come from the taxpayers bank accounts! I have plenty of pictures of NO bicycles on 7 avenue in several stretches of that road that prove it is rarely used.
In a city of 100,000 you want the citizens to pay over $40 million for about 400 cyclists maximum using that pathway for 6 months of the year!
And to go where? Downtown to the slums, to Galt Gardens with garbage strewn, needles, addicts sitting at almost every table with several passed out on the grass and others dancing around in a hallucinagenic stupor?
The plans include tearing up the asphalt, putting in a new base, new asphalt, concrete, planters, more pedestrian crossing lights and lights, etc.
Just to do that type of work by Galt Gardens was over $10 million.
Go smoke another fatty!
I will say again, what are you even talking about? Show me specifically what you think $44 million is being spent on, who has approved it, where it’s being built. We absolutely should spend that, and more. Every dollar spent on car traffic leads to unsustainable maintenance costs – as a fiscal conservative, that doesn’t pencil out for me. We should spend money on things that save money in the long term. Like bike lanes.
Also you have… pictures… of 7th ave empty? I don’t know what I expected, but that is so much worse. Do you also take pictures of empty stretches of road to suggest they were a waste of money? You can take pictures of Mayor Magrath empty for crying out loud and that’s one of our busiest roads. That’s how vehicles work you see – they move. So if you see some, and then wait… you won’t see them anymore! You are a deeply unserious person.
Regarding where to go… it seems you don’t particular like people, or our city, or our beautiful downtown. Perhaps you should move somewhere else? Or avoid leaving your house so you can avoid all the people who scare you.
Pics were taken to prove to your types that it isn’t being used.
Maybe you should move back to BC since you only come here wanting to change everything that the people who were born and raised here appreciate, while welcoming those who come to appreciate the city and its people instead of dumping on its citizens and pushing multi-million projects on us when we need to be showing fiscal responsibility.
Fiscal responsibility, hmmmm what could that mean?
I’m not from BC, just like I’m not a city employee… you have a very active imagination. Perhaps that’s also why you don’t seem to be backing up your $44M spending claim.
And yes, I realize why you took the pictures. I was just hoping you would be able to understand why pictures of an empty road don’t prove anything. But it seems you’re too intent on flailing around in your ignorance and hatred to actually think things through. The world is changing whether you like it or not – I’m sorry that’s scary to you, I really am, but lying and raging on the Herald comments isn’t going to help you through it.
battery weight is more in electric cars, but engine weight is less, is it not?
i am not suggesting electric vehicles are anywhere near perfected, but they may be a step in the right direction…if we can improve efficiency enough. given where tech is at present, hybrids presently offer the best option. then again, so long as folk feel a need to drive trucks as recreational vehicles, and suvs, and vans, and stupidly trumped up horse power vehicles, we will have issues where we should not.
Like Trudeau, the leadership at City Hall thinks we have money to burn! Spend Spend Spend even if the public doesn’t want it! Force it on them, it will grow on them!
When is the next election! We need them replaced and new adminstration who listen to the people of this city who pay taxes and their wages!
have to say that yql has easily presented the most accurate and honest points. easily well out front on the high road.
and yql remains light “gears” ahead of those stuck so full of combustion