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Originally Posted by Ricopedra
No, winter really sucks, so much so that for long periods of those six months it's hard to cross the street. I'm a Saskatonian and one of my strongest memories is coming home from kindergarten with my feet so frozen I went to the floor radiator to warm my toes, but the heat just made them burn and hurt even worse. I cried and wanted to be transported, far away asap. Just saying. Tunnels, skywalks, covered streets and walkways: Bring them on! Even igloos have one! It's only not prudent because of sprawl. Downtown could be a winter paradise. Are you reading this, Mr. Mayor? Have we said how much we love you and support your ideas for downtown and a new arena, diversification, inclusion and density? Cheers!>)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by roryn1
Imagine living in the Revera or Parkville manor downtown at age 70+ unable to go for a walk half of the year in your last few years of life - hence why so many move to BC in their golden years. With bearable pathways downtown Saskatoon could be a great year round retirement community instead of treated like a 4 month summer retreat for the retired that planned their finances properly. My 70 year old cancer prone condo neighbor went to greece all winter.
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The hyperbole here is a bit much. Simply put, the costs would be astronomical and the infrastructure would serve too few people to achieve broad, necessary, public support. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, Saskatoon's downtown is too small and too spread out for a pedway system to be an option except in specific, small-scale instances, like between a hypothetical arena and neighboring hotel. Seriously --- there are white elephants, and then there's what you're suggesting. Until Saskatoon builds a subway/lrt system or doubles in size, it won't happen in the kind of SimCity-ish way you both want.
If a person's quality of life were so compromised by Saskatoon's winters that they couldn't go outside for over half the year, then yeah, I'd suggest they move, if possible. Bellyaching about pipe dreams isn't the solution. Raising ambiguous concerns about Saskatoon's sprawl or lack of "bearable pathways" isn't the solution. There are reasons why Saskatoon is small, and winter has always been one of them, since the beginning. Even the most elaborate downtown pedway system wouldn't change a thing for the vast majority of the people who live here and somehow manage to survive without being inside 24/7 365.
Continuing to focus on pedways is unfortunate because there are more immediate, real-world priorities that the city needs to focus on to improve our collective experience of the winter. Fortunately, the city already takes care of a lot of those priorities (though we might complain about the rate at which streets are plowed, etc.). What I'd like to see is a more sustained focus on improving the city's transit options, beginning with a BRT system (yes, with heated stations!) fed by networks of neighborhood buses. Pedways are a discussion for another decade, in my opinion, but building the city's transit system now will help us get there by focusing on a broader mode of public mobility that can then become increasingly granular as demand dictates (including, say, pedways between BRT stations and major hubs like an arena, hospital, university, etc.). Even better, the city wouldn't be starting from scratch, unlike with a pedway system. I'd also like to see more attempts at public engagement, such as these examples from Edmonton and Winnipeg:
https://www.wintercityedmonton.ca/
https://www.tourismwinnipeg.com/winter-experiences