Man, this thing just won't go away. Here is a letter written to a city
councillor by a local citizen. This is a great example of how a
government can generate negative feelings from pretty much everyone by
proposing something and then unproposing it. From now on, whenever
anyone gets hurt at the old bridge they will hate the civic government
for almost building the new bridge.
Oh, and by the way, I am the local citizen in question:
Dear Councillor ******,
On August the 5th I was involved in an accident in Omand's park.
The experience raised some questions.
I was heading westbound through the park on a bicycle approaching
the bridge over Omand's creek. It had recently rained. After the
decent on the southbound incline I lost control in the curve and
crashed on the asphalt surface of the path. A person fishing in
the creek came over to offer assistance. He mentioned that he had
seen eleven people crash in the way I had. It turned out that my
injuries were in no way life threatening and consisted only of
frightening looking scrapes and bruises but the knowledge of the
crashes of the other ten people produced a social obligation.
Hence this letter.
I have been using the bridge at Omand's creek for a long time. I
have always considered the eastern approach to the bridge to be
unsafe. A steep grade followed by two steep turns followed by a
narrow bridge is challenging at the best of times. After my crash
I noticed that the surface was remarkably slick with what seemed
to be clay. I have a theory for why this was the case. The area
near the bridge is known to flood on a regular basis (it has
flooded there twice this year so far). During a rain I think that
clay deposited by the flooding on the ground above the path is
washed over the path. This would leave the surface very slippery
when there was any amount of moisture on the path.
There was recently a proposal to upgrade the bridge. I am now
quite curious to know about the thinking around the eventual
cancellation of the project in light of the fact that such an
improved bridge would of prevented my crash. There was a
community input meeting associated with the bridge proposal. The
cycle users of the existing bridge, the group that would most
benefit from the new bridge, were left unaware of the meeting.
The meeting notices were posted during the winter in only one
small part of the city. I only knew of the meeting because I
happen to take walks through the Wolseley area. Anyway, I
attended and know that there were no really compelling arguments
presented against the new bridge. As the events of the meeting
really can not be used as any sort of political justification I
address my question directly to the City of Winnipeg.
Specifically and more concisely: What rationale was used to
justify the cancellation of the Omand's Creek Park bridge
project?
Going forward, my other question for the City of Winnipeg is:
What actions are to be taken to improve the safety of the east
approach to the Omand's Park bridge? After all, the City is
promoting this route as part of the Active Transportation
Network. I would not like to think that we are encouraging people
to take a course of action that is likely to end up with them
lying painfully on the asphalt as I was.
I acknowledge the recent action of removing the metal posts from
the approaches to the bridge. This will likely increase the
number of collisions between bicyclists and pedestrians on the
bridge but I still support the removal. The resulting accidents
are likely to be significantly less damaging to all concerned
than a collision with a solid object.
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In a
previous
post I talked about a public input meeting I attended that was about a
footbridge. I ended by expressing some confusion about the scoring of
a survey handed out at the meeting. The survey had participants rank a
series of options but in the end only the first choices were reported.
I chatted briefly with the Active Transportation Coordinator. When
pressed lightly about the thinking behind the survey he attempted to
change the subject to the validity of the decision to cancel the
bridge. Struck with the sudden fear that I might accidentally cause
The Great Footbridge Survey Scandal I quickly bailed out of the
conversation.
I don't think I really understand the point of public
consultation. You hold a meeting and the people who come to the
meeting line up and say stuff. Some of the people who say stuff do not
have to stand in line and have access to a projector. Sometimes the
people talking will express an opinion on the issue that caused the
meeting. Often times people will talk about unrelated
things. Sometimes there are pieces of paper distributed. Sometimes you
are expected to write stuff on the distributed paper. Some of the
people there are there simply to be seen to be there (usually local
politicians).
Public consultation is all the rage these days. In general the results
of these things are used a bit like the conclusions of consultants. If
the result matches the politically determined conclusion it is used as
support of that conclusion. Otherwise it is ignored. That is OK as far
as it goes. The problem is that these things are touted as a way for
non-politicians to participate in the process for the small cost of an
evening. The actual participation is at at level of the employee who
submits an idea to the suggestion box only to have that suggestion
dumped in the trash at the end of the month. In this way I think that
the participants in public consultation meetings are being
deliberately misled. Rather than helping the process such meetings are
harmful in that they tend to distract people from participating in a
more effective and difficult political process. A thoughtful letter to
a city councillor is a much better use of a citizens time then sitting
around listening to people go on about random stuff.
If politicians really want to make it easy for citizens to participate
in low level decisions there are better ways to do so. They could just
hold a poll. Give everyone enumerated in the civic election a long
random number. Post the arguments for and against something on a
website somewhere. Let people insult each other on a forum for a while
and if any actual new arguments arise from the chaos post them
too. Post this all various places offline and see if any offline
people can add to the arguments. People would vote by quoting their
numbers either on-line or in the form of a letter. Votes with duplicate
numbers would be quietly discarded unless there were an excessive
number of them. If there were multiple options then the voters would
rank them and an appropriate form
of preferential
voting would be used. If it was felt that such a system would lead
to some sort of tyranny of the majority at the expense of local interests
voting could be restricted to a particular area or the value of votes
could be geographically weighted. Raw data would be made public as
well as any complaints of vote buying and/or other coercion.
I feel that the system described in the previous paragraph would be a
lot better than holding public meetings. As a bonus the professional
politicians would not have to waste their evenings sitting in an
uncomfortable chair. The results of such polls could still be ignored
if required. The results would be of higher quality than a bunch of
rambling speeches.
In the end the process with repect to the footbridge sort of worked. I
am just not sure exactly what that process was. The dangerous metal
posts on the existing bridge were removed. One day they were just
gone. I like to think that some low level civic employee with access
to an angle grinder heard about the controversy and just decided to
deal with the issue. More romantically; a rouge individual somewhere
out there in the dark who believes in direct action against civic
infrastructure for the greater good. Perhaps we need such a hero...
Speaking of direct action... Most of these stimulus projects are
funded by three levels of government. The tradition is to identify tax
money going to any generally popular and non-controversial project by
erecting a sign. As a result each of these projects ends up with 3
signs. There are many small projects so the city now has a lot of
these signs everywhere. Sort of the most
boring Burma-Shave
campaign imaginable. I was delighted to see that someone has given the
now irrelevant signs at the footbridge site purpose with the creation
of some textual art. Sometimes anarchy makes the world a better place.
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According to a local Winnipeg newspaper the Omand Park footbridge
proposal is effectively
dead.
I found some of the background and subsequent discussion interesting.
Apparently the federal government is keen to spend money because of
the economic crisis or something. They needed to spend it fast so they
went around and asked various other levels of government if they could
manage to spend some money relatively quickly on infrastructure. One
of the things the city of Winnipeg asked for was money for a new
footbridge in Omand's Park.
You can see the Google Maps satellite view of the disputed
area here. The
existing footbridge crosses the creek that goes from north to south to
the river. The proposed footbridge is shown on
this drawing.
The existing bridge has become part of a sort of bicycle green-way for
that part of town. Bicycle commuter traffic comes from the west and a
nearby footbridge over the river on the way to downtown to the
east. The problems with it are:
- It floods every spring (recently for an extended period). It is
flooded as I write this. Bicycle traffic has to detour 0.8km when the
bridge is out. The detour is not that great. Part of the detour
involves a steep hill to a blind T intersection. Another part of the
detour involves illegally riding on the sidewalk. Not that people seem
to mind the illegality...
- The approach to the bridge on the east side with the switchback up
the hill is not done very well. People often walk their bicycles to
avoid dealing with it. Those that can will sometimes just go cross
country to avoid it. It somehow manages to be bad both going up and
coming down the hill (Pic).
- Physics. Bicycles basically work by conserving energy. They speed
up going down hills which provides kinetic energy to help get up the
next hill. The approaches to the bridge are reasonably steep. As a
result bicycles are going at maximum speed going over the bridge. It
is a mixed use path. Pedestrians do not conserve energy going down
the hill and as a result are moving relatively slowly. The speed
difference causes problems. A past attempt was made to improve things
by installing barriers in the middle of the ends of the bridge
(Pic). The
barriers work the first few times but the bike rider eventually learns
how to avoid injury and manages to retain some precious speed going on
to the bridge. At this point the rider has dealt with a hill, a turn,
and the barrier in quick succession. They sometimes have nothing left
to deal with any semi-stationary people and/or animals and/or
things on the bridge.
In cities there is a natural tension between people in local
neighbourhoods and people who are simply interested in getting to the
other side of those neighbourhoods. The neighbourhood in question has
some interesting history with respect to transportation policy in the
story of
the Wolseley
Elm. These sorts of things normally do not end in the wildly
irresponsible use of high explosives, but, well Winnipeg is special
that way. People can stay really wound up about things that people in
other parts of the world might perhaps eventually let go of. At any
rate the Wolseley residents lost the tree but won the battle. The
street in question now has four-way stops every few blocks. In the
summer cars are not even allowed on it Sundays.
Which brings us to politics. The Wolseley area is famous for a high
level of community consciousness and activism. When some of the local
residents found out there was to be a bridge they had the city hold
another meeting to talk about the bridge. I attended that meeting.
At the "community meeting" there were four alternative proposals to
look at (most of which really didn't make a lot of sense). There were
places to write comments on the proposals. There was a sign in
sheet. There were forms you could fill out with your comments and a
ranking of the five options. Some people talked for a while. The
people who made the proposals mentioned that they did not think two of
them were actually practical. There were people from the local
community. There was a person who talked about the bicycle
issues. After a while a line formed and then a whole lot of people
talked.
The most compelling argument against the bridge was made by the the
"too young to vote" crowd. Some of the neighbourhood children stood up
and more or less said "Don't build the bridge. It would ruin our
toboggan hill.". In other words, building the bridge would destroy a
rare resource: an inclined surface on the prairies. Their directness
was refreshing as many of the adults triggered a pet peeve of
mine. When addressing an issue like the bridge it is really nice if at
some point you tell the audience:
- What you think should be done.
- Why.
Those two points make the rest of what you might say much easier to
understand. Particularly for members of the audience that do not know
you.
What I think should be done
I was actually part of the 4% who voted for the bridge as originally
proposed in the drawing. So build the bridge.
Why
I really think the engineering types got it right this time. All the
other proposals seem worse in some way. Using the existing bridge in
any reasonable way does not solve the physics issue. Improving the
approaches makes the speed issue worse. The proposed road level bridge
solves all the mixed use traffic problems permanently.
Raising/moving the existing bridge would tend to block the flow of the
creek due to the required earthworks. That would be at a time when
culverts upstream on the very same creek are being replaced with
bridges. A watercourse is a classic example of how local changes can
have non-local effects. The proposed bridge almost entirely avoids
unanticipated changes to the creek environment. For what it is worth I
think that a long narrow bridge as proposed would look pretty good.
As for the toboggan hill issue. There are other places to slide in the
park. A few minutes with a front end loader would produce an even
better hill.
Unless a grassroots "Save Our Bridge!" movement emerges in the next
few weeks arguments for and against the bridge are moot. The bigger
question is how much control should a local community have over things
of value to the larger community. I tend to the progressive side, I
really hate to see things left broken. Obviously a local community can
not have complete control of all aspects of their area. As an
semi-absurd example, I could get together with my neighbours and insist
that the street on our block be converted to a playground and parking
for the residents. It would remove the risk that the local kids have
to face from the large high speed traffic our street tends to
get. When ignored we could then complain we were not being consulted
on the parking/playground issue. I think most people would consider us
to be quite unreasonable in our desire.
So, yeah, in the case of the Omand's Park bridge I think the residents
were being a bit unreasonable. For a very small local cost we could of
had something of great general value. The process was quite bad. The
people from outside of the area who would of gotten the most benefit
from the bridge would not of seen the postings for the meeting because
it took place in the winter. Even if a whole bunch of bicycle types
had shown up and won the vote for the bridge would it really of
mattered? I don't see how these sorts of issues can be resolved by
majority rules. Someone has to decide at a level of government beyond
the community in the end.
Just a comment on the local media coverage. The Free Press is the more
respectable looking print newspaper in Winnipeg. They were being
deliberately misleading when covering this
issue. In this
article they state "Only four per cent approved of the
hilltop-spanning bridge.". The actual results
are here. There
is no "hilltop-spanning" bridge mentioned here. Which kind of makes
sense as there are no actual hills in the area. A better way to put it
might of been to say that 27% wanted a bridge as their first choice
and 68% wanted an option that did not involve a bridge. It still
sounds negative toward the bridge but it at least is sort of
correct. In defence of the Free Press they were reporting on something
that kind of sounded odd. The survey report said that people were
asked to rank preference (I was) but then they decided to just count
the first choice. It might be good at this point to ask for the raw
ballots and do the ranking as the people at the meeting expected.
I would be amiss if I did not reference a local blog that normally
covers this sort of thing, and
did. Here.
posted at: 18:56 |
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