Riverbend resident knows how to fight City Hall
Riverbend dentist proves there really are effective ways to fight City Hall
Do you want to know how to effectively fight city hall? It can be done. In fact, it’s being done right now. Just ask Alexis Desrosiers.
Desrosiers, a dentist who lives and works in the southwest suburb of Brookview, is leading a campaign that has rocked City Hall. She and her growing network will almost certainly kill a plan that would have greatly limited commuter access to Terwillegar Drive in Riverbend.
Terwillegar Drive is already a mess for commuters. It can take an hour to get from the deep southwest to the city core on a morning commute, mainly because traffic jams up on both the drive and its access roads.
The city is looking at unclogging this situation, mainly by starting construction of an arterial road down the centre of the glorified off-ramps that now constitute Terwillegar Drive. But when city administration and its consultants presented initial concepts to citizens, one major option was to cut off the existing northbound access to Terwillegar Drive from 40 Avenue.
Instead of getting onto Terwillegar there, commuters would have to take Riverbend Road to the 53 Avenue access to the north, or head down to the Rabbit Hill Road access to the south.
What would adding hundreds more vehicles in rush hour do to those connector roads?
“It would ruin a half-dozen neighbourhoods by not having that access,” says Ward 9 Coun. Tim Cartmell. “Not only would it limit access to the communities immediately adjacent to 40 Avenue, but it would cause unbelievable congestion and angst and rancour all along Riverbend Road.”
A few weeks ago, Desrosiers went to the city’s poorly attended information session on proposed changes to Terwillegar Drive and was shocked to see the city and its consultants were presenting this option.
Desrosiers, who had some experience dealing with the city as a community league board member, decided rapid action was essential. “If nobody is aware of what is going on and nothing is done early, you get to the point where it’s the point of no return,
I find the whole city ‘public engagement’ process very sneaky … I went to the meeting and was blindsided they’d even propose such a terrible option.
where five years from now, there are bulldozers that come to take out our exits and people are outraged and fighting it, but it’s too late, and (the city) will say, ‘There was a public consultation process. Where were you?’”
To kick off her campaign, Desrosiers alerted friends and neighbours by email, then headed out in -20 C weather to distribute a letter.
“I live in Brookview and I am fuming mad the city would propose removing one of our only two exits out of the community!” she wrote in an email. “I find the whole city ‘public engagement’ process very sneaky … I went to the meeting and was blindsided they’d even propose such a terrible option!”
At City Hall, Cartmell and his staff were suddenly inundated with calls and emails, many of them extremely angry and profane. “People are apoplectic,” Cartmell says.
Cartmell was never in favour of shutting off access from 40 Avenue to Terwillegar. Indeed, he’s been involved in discussions about fixing Terwillegar Drive for 17 years now and has been frustrated by the lack of action.
When he saw how outraged folks were by this latest proposal, he saw an opportunity to take all that energy and use it to push ahead some rational changes, such as actually improving 40 Avenue access to the drive.
He is asking Riverbend residents to sign a petition rejecting any more consultations and asking the city to proceed with design work. If the drive can be improved in stages, each costing about $75 million to $100 million, Cartmell hopes over time, this main route through the southwest can be properly upgraded.
“If we don’t get started on this corridor now, which is arguably 30 years behind in its development, when do we?” he asks.
Will Desrosiers and her group, along with Cartmell, get a win here? With this kind of passion and organization, as well as the force of their argument, I’d suggest it’s close to a sure thing.