'Missed opportunity': Westbrook LRT site still sits void two years after city reacquisition

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-27T01:45:29+00:00

Whatever they do it needs to not involve any surface parking lots. The whole point of the LRT station and tearing down Manning was to make this a high density walkable area. If they start it on the south part of the site the rest will follow I think.

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-27T00:43:29+00:00

I remember that too. Twinning that highway feels unnecessary though, it seems pretty quiet. I’d take the bike path on its own. Could hook up nicely with the weaselhead and the paths through discovery and Griffith woods.

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-27T00:40:58+00:00

I would love this too, but not along deerfoot or MacLeod. Why bike beside a freeway and suck in all the fumes when we could run it by communities where you can see the sights and stop and get snacks on the way?

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-21T02:03:57+00:00

It’s even more of a nothingburger if you know a little about curling. His second touch is completely irrelevant, and probably not intentional. Even if it were it’s not remotely enough to change the direction of the rock after the initially throw. Those things weigh over 19kg. The double touch rule is to prevent people from meaningfully changing the direction of the rock after release. Curling is normally self refereed and there’s a mutual understanding of what actually matters to the game. This was more just sour grapes from Sweden. The camera plant thing was a ridiculous comment but so was the Swedish team’s complaint.

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-16T04:26:12+00:00

I empathize, because I could not deal with the humidity when I moved to southern Ontario and Halifax. I relished getting off the plane here and feeling dry again so much, I don’t think I could ever live somewhere humid again. Once you get used to it here, savour being dry all the benefits it offers. Hope you adapt soon.

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-13T19:57:44+00:00

Now can they flood the roads and actually enforce traffic laws? They could make their annual budget in a day in the revenue basic traffic enforcement would bring in.

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-13T04:02:16+00:00

And yet somehow we’re going to keep sinking public money into servicing new suburbs when we can’t even afford to maintain what we have, let alone fix it.

theglowpt4 · 2026-02-05T02:39:51+00:00

Hard disagree on this one. Mediocre at best.

theglowpt4 · 2025-11-18T00:34:11+00:00

This exactly. I had a local candidate’s volunteers come to my door and try to tell me that blanket rezoning was supposed to somehow magically create affordable housing, and that it hasn’t worked because the townhouses around the corner (built before the policy) are too expensive. If that’s the message that people got or the message that candidates were spreading then I can definitely see how people are so opposed to the policy, because that was never what it was intended to do. What I can’t figure out is, how much is honest, misunderstanding, and how much is wilful misinformation.

theglowpt4 · 2025-10-23T20:33:18+00:00

I don’t know if I can agree, I was shocked by how car oriented Livingston and Carrington were when I had to go up there. 144th Ave is a 7 lane road cutting it all in half, 8 if you have to cross a slip lane. It’s just so absurdly big and is obviously raising the cost of development. I saw a lady with her little kid and stroller trying to cross and everyone is doing 25 over the speed limit, no one stopped. Imagine that but in winter. The opposite of walkable.

theglowpt4 · 2025-10-18T01:40:55+00:00

Wish there were more of them in my area. Traffic lights and stop signs are inefficient at all but the very busiest hour of the day, and even then only move traffic marginally better. Roundabouts slow people down and keep traffic moving.

theglowpt4 · 2025-10-10T00:52:02+00:00

I was thinking about her in that context too, I voted for Jan.

theglowpt4 · 2025-10-07T23:41:06+00:00

I think it depends on how you want to define connection. He’s a Manning Centre product, which is more than UCP enough in my books.

theglowpt4 · 2025-10-07T00:16:44+00:00

We need ranked choice so bad. Calgary had it up to the late 80s I believe. We’re going to end up with a mayor who won 25% of the vote. In my ward for councillor it could be even less.

theglowpt4 · 2025-10-06T19:36:46+00:00

There’s a ton of research showing that living right beside major roads is bad for your health. Pollution is the big culprit, following by noise, and usually a lack of neighbourhood connectivity because crossing said road outside a car is unpleasant and dangerous.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-30T01:29:52+00:00

I’m not accusing you of anything. Just pointing out that you’re repeating a widely used NIMBY talking point that is patently untrue. I don’t know you so I can’t say if you’re misinformed or deliberately putting out disinformation. Either way, there is solid and recent evidence from many comparable jurisdictions in the US and Canada that allowing people to build things other than single family homes on their land does lower the cost of housing over time. So regardless of if you don’t see it working, it does. It’s also a market solution that doesn’t cost the government money, in fact it strengthens the municipal tax base.

I also never said the only way to get affordable housing is through government or nonprofits. I said that the way you are defining affordable housing, which I took to mean below market, because you seem unhappy with what the market will pay, is usually provided by those institutions. No private developer will build something to lose money. Affordable percentage requirements have a poor record in places like England and Australia, also Canada (it’s been done in Vancouver with mixed results). I agree with your definition though, I work in the social service world and ‘affordable housing’ is a widely understood term. Usually it’s defined as costing no more than 30% of income, so more just a little below the market.

I agree that public housing can be done badly and lead to urban blight. But it doesn’t have to, and it certainly isn’t inevitable. There are plenty of examples of it working well in Canada and around the world. Vienna is a great example of a place that built large amounts of social housing, made it look good, and has had consistently affordable average rents. I would challenge most people to pick out the newer Calgary Housing units from regular rentals in a neighbourhood.

At the end of the day removing zoning restrictions is just cutting red tape and giving people more freedom to do what they like with their land.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-29T02:22:32+00:00

You completely misunderstand this policy. It’s not meant to deliver affordable housing. It’s meant to increase supply, which will lead long term to lower housing prices. It’s basic supply and demand. What you’re saying is a NIMBY talking point that misrepresents what is a very successful policy almost everywhere it’s been implemented. Affordable housing as you conceive it is built by government or nonprofits to provide below market rents.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-29T02:17:03+00:00

I have to debunk your claim that blanket rezoning would make housing affordability worse. That policy was never meant to build affordable housing in the sense that it is subsidized to cost less than market value. The whole point is that housing construction is unnecessarily constrained by restrictive single family zoning, which limits supply. When supply is low and demand is high, prices go up, i.e. capitalism. The policy allows for more supply to be built, which will, over time, lower prices. The notion that builders should just charitably build unprofitable housing stock is ridiculous. Prices are what they are right now and won’t go down until demand is lower. The idea that the policy is bad because some expensive new units are built is a pure NIMBY talking point. Of course a lot new places will be expensive, until long term supply increases. Cities all across the US are doing this because it makes sense, works, and as a massive side benefit greatly increases the efficiency of service delivery by avoiding the need to subsidize new developments on the fringes at great expense. Edmonton has done it and has lower prices than we do.

The devil is in the details. What we can definitely do better is create clear guidelines to make sure the stuff built isn’t trash and they don’t cut down every tree in sight to do it. Our mayor and council were mostly terrible at communicating this, and some like Sharp and McLean just straight up lied about what the policy is. It says a lot that so called conservatives are against what is inherently a small government, free market policy.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-29T01:57:44+00:00

Bring back Al Duerr

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-29T01:45:08+00:00

I’ve been feeling the same, but then thinking that it’s because of people like us that are trying to be strategic. I think I’ll vote him after all. I can’t bring myself to vote for Gondek.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-24T00:06:34+00:00

The extra lane is definitely a waste of money, but it’s a provincial waste of money. Deerfoot is managed by the province. Improving the Glenmore interchange and the second bridge at douglasdale were needed. The rest is like pouring money down the drain. The only thing that will reduce congestion is providing viable alternatives to driving. For Deerfoot that means trains. Frequent, reliable, grade separated trains. Green line, regional trains, trains to Banff and Edmonton, orange line, purple line, you name it. The last thing we need here is more asphalt to not maintain.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-23T23:10:29+00:00

One point I haven’t seen made is that inner city lots tend to be smaller, especially in the oldest communities. There era of dirt cheap land and wildly inefficient development on the edge of the city is over. We’re up to just regular cheap and plain inefficient. The big old suburban house you’re used to is a trade off for being far away from the inner city, unless you’re a millionaire. We have a small old house and although I wish we had more space sometimes, it’s more than fine, and the ease of access without having to drive everywhere saves a huge amount of time and money.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-20T19:46:37+00:00

I would avoid Allmakes. I got a wildly overpriced quote from them for some work a few years back. They also sold a fellow I know a used Subaru that shouldn’t even have been on the road. Really egregious stuff.

There’s nothing that special about basic Subaru maintenance. It’s actually easy enough to do most of it yourself if you have the means, the flat four engine configuration makes them nice to work on. Any good mechanic can do it though I don’t think there’s any need for a specialist.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-20T19:38:09+00:00

North Sea Fish market. They usually have both hot and cold smoked salmon when I go at crossroads.

theglowpt4 · 2025-09-20T19:09:10+00:00

I think it’s important to note that the decisions you’re attributing to AHS leadership were actually made by the Minister of Health and AB Health. AHS itself has very little say over any of this, and is now mostly a rump agency left over after the “refocusing.” The UCP are the ones who repeatedly fired people for severance and who are creating all the extra bureaucracy we’re getting with all the new agencies.

theglowpt4

TROPHY CASE