You’ve heard of the ‘elephant in the room’ … euphemism for an uncomfortable topic that everyone’s aware of, but no one wants to address?
Well, at last week’s Athabasca County council meeting, Fred Martin exposed the elephant in the intersection.
Martin appeared before county council as a private citizen, asking for their support, in principle, for a truck route around Athabasca.
He received the support he requested, just as he did earlier from Athabasca town council. (Support in principle is usually freely given by councils, since it does not have a price tag attached.)
Now comes the tricky part: turning support in principle into some kind of tangible action. And that’s where the full weight of this elephant becomes apparent.
While it’s easy to promote a truck route as a far safer alternative than the current situation of large trucks making wide turns around the Grand Union Hotel, there are myriad other factors that come into play.
First and foremost is the cost. Building a truck route around Athabasca will likely cost in the tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. It’s certainly more than the local municipalities could bear, and the challenge then becomes making its construction a priority for the provincial government; no easy task, as evidenced by how long we’ve been talking about the Highway 55/813 interchange project.
Then there are the geographic challenges. Athabasca, as we all know, sits in a valley of undulating hills separated by creeks and rivers; all factors that would already make the design of a truck route a significant challenge for engineers. But add to that the fact that Athabasca is virtually surrounded by the county’s residential subdivisions and the challenging job of routing a truck bypass is rendered nearly impossible.
And then there are the political challenges. While it’s virtually a given that a truck route would be safer, the fact remains that many Athabasca businesses rely on revenue that comes from the traveling public. And while a truck route might keep commercial transport trucks out of the downtown core, it would also provide a bypass option to other traffic, which could harm the viability of local businesses.
Local politicians are fully cognizant of all these dilemmas, which is probably why they haven’t pursued the issue of their own accord.
It will be interesting to see how they handle the situation now that Martin has placed the elephant squarely on the table.
