Last words on the CPR Bridge

I love how everyone is telling me what the CPR bridge is like. I live literally 100 metres away from the bridge.

​I think I have an idea of the traffic levels that took place on "The Stabby Bridge" or "Homeless Highway" before construction started. If you want a cycle across it, you do it in groups of 2 to 10 people, otherwise, you don't cross the bridge alone. As soon as the sun goes down, you don't cross the bridge. If you want to be solicited narcotics (as I have), or threatened by individuals with clear mental health issues (as I and my neighbors have), you don't cross the bridge. This bridge is primarily used for the transient population to walk from Cannery Row/Skid Row, (the homeless shelter and OPS), to the Mustard Seed on 60th Street and back. From the Mustard Seed on 60th to just south of the Superstore is referred to as 'the Red Mile'. Now whether that relates to the number of red flashing lights that frequent the area or the amount of blood spilt is debatable.

I'm very well aware of the 8-14 hours a day, 6-7 days a week of non-stop construction noise, which includes their brief attempts to work on holidays like Labour Day.

58th Street, 52nd Avenue, 53rd Avenue are all open to the public (for now), you're welcome to come down and see and hear what the residents of lower Riverside Meadows have had to endure.

Last night*, the video I provided of the compressor noise, went to just before 10:00 p.m. That has been going on for the last 5 months. Obviously this video is affected by a smartphone designed to filter background noise, a low-tech sound level app, and other noise. If you don't like my videos and have better equipment you're more than welcome to come down and record it yourself. I'm curious where you've been for the last 6 months if you're so interested in preserving the bridge. And if you want to talk sound levels, this neighborhood is relatively quiet, with the majority of the background noise coming from Gaetz Avenue two blocks away and a fire station, albeit closed far too many recently, to the north.

They are not preserving history with this Rehabilitation. They have removed the former 57th Street overpass, which was built at the same time as the bridge but curiously not historic. They are replacing the wood walking deck. They are replacing several of the steel girders. They're giving it a new paint job, the only good thing to happen since we spend years painting over the lead paint. They are picking up and moving the bridge about 20 m. They are replacing the concrete support columns. They are replacing the entry points to the bridge. They have replaced the street lights and are completely remodeling the parks at either end of the bridge. They are adding new lighting and security cameras. It was a historical Bridge, it won't be much longer.

Just because something is old doesn't mean we should spend millions of dollars trying to preserve it.
While other cities are looking to the Future, Red Deer has wasted time and money clinging to the Past.
To tear down the bridge would have cost $6-8 million dollars. To preserve the bridge is costing over $22 million ($11 million is Red Deer taxpayers portion). To replace the "critical bridge" (which we seem to be able to survive for 1.5 years without), we can probably use the c-b Bridge proposal as a guide, and that would cost $50 million. I did the math the other day, with $3.5 million dollars we could have bought 45 tiny homes to help shelter the homeless in a transitional program. Since this money was earmarked for infrastructure, I'm sure there were other projects, that Council won't tell you about, that the money could have been used for. Or we could have just held on to it.

It is interesting how at the time they claimly had no other infrastructure projects to be concerned with, yet just a few years later we're spending tens of millions of dollars on infrastructure projects. Perhaps this is because our municipal development plan is 13 years old?

They claim we would have lost the Federal Grant for active infrastructure upgrades. You and I both know that the Federal government hands out billions of dollars each year in Grants. If we didn't accept this one another one would have come along. I'll bet there's even a Federal Grant to help remove dangerous infrastructure.

It's curious that a bridge, which should have been inspected every 10 to 20 years, went from needing a paint job one day to 2 years later being ready to collapse and having to be replaced. Either there's more going on than we're being told, or several people really dropped the ball when it came to doing their jobs. I'm going to guess it's the first one.

Either way the money is wasted and the outgoing council members will have their legacy to speak of for years to come. This paragraph for their future autobiographies will only cost about $100 each to every man, woman and child living in Red Deer.