Abbeygael KuchmakNothing will make you more willing to pay to live on or near campus like the overwhelming construction in Edmonton.
If you live near Whyte Avenue and are relatively close to the university, you might enjoy your quaint walk to summer classes. Any further from the university than that, and you face a battlefield of cars and bicycles. The summer construction season only makes the usual traffic worse. Not only are Jasper Place and downtown littered with road closures — South Edmonton also has an infestation of road maintenance that delays travel on every corner.
Besides going to school or work, drivers have to fight through clogged streets to get to West Edmonton Mall and South Edmonton Common. Hoping for a fun day at the mall with your friends? Think again. I hope you like taking 20-minute detours and merging into one lane. Better practice playing “I Spy,” because traffic delays might add 30-minutes to your car ride.
Speaking of merging, let’s take a moment to bless the heaven-sent drivers who let cars into the lane ahead of them. If not for them, we would be sitting beside that cursed single lane for hours.
On the bright side, we can rest easy knowing that the city is finally constructing something. Although, no one really knows what it is that’s taking months to complete. Don’t get me wrong, the construction teams are hard-workers. It’s not their fault that the city doesn’t use them efficiently. For example, the City of Edmonton delayed work on the 95 Avenue renewal project from summer 2023 to spring 2025. Obviously the initial timeline was unrealistic. Not to mention, several businesses on Stony Plain Road reported that the city repeatedly extended the deadline for the Valley Line West LRT construction. These fluctuating timelines prevent workers from completing major parts of their projects and create delays. City staff are able to enforce deadlines, so you have to wonder why they aren’t doing so to speed up construction.
In fact, I once saw five people shoveling gravel on the road into a bucket. Technically, it was two people shoveling, two people supervising the shoveling, and one person on their phone. No doubt, the latter three were monitoring the precarious situation that shoveling often brings. Whether they were mismanaged with confusing deadlines, or weren’t given a tight enough timeline, Edmontonians are clearly the ones suffering.
But until the city becomes more efficient with construction crews, we are stuck with the dreaded summer construction season. If you’re calm and patient in the construction madness, good for you. Thank goodness, someone is safe and happy on these roads. I wish it were me.
