WEEKLY UPDATE - SEP 3

Welcome back to the Weekly Wrap Up! Hope you had a lovely long weekend and got to enjoy the late summer heat.

At Urban Planning, we discussed the City’s Emergency Shelter Best Practices Guide. The guide brings together years of experience and engagement that help make sure shelters provide safe and dignified space for those accessing them. It’s equally important for us to ensure shelter design considers the needs of neighbours too. I’m pleased that City staff will look into limits to the size of congregate sleeping spaces. This can help provide better outcomes for everyone.

Urban Planning also saw the first big milestone in Edmonton’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan with initial analysis of the two proposed routes. BRT will complement LRT expansion to provide fast, reliable transit connections to communities across the City. There's a lot more analysis and engagement to be done as these routes get finalised. I encourage you to get involved in this important work, especially O-day'min residents living in Downtown, Central McDougall, McCauley, Spruce Avenue and Westwood where one of the routes will run.

Find out more on Edmonton.ca: https://www.edmonton.ca/city_government/initiatives_innovation/bus-based-mass-transit

Transit was also on the agenda at Executive Committee for our Ride Transit program. I was proud to speak in favour of maintaining our fare schedule as is, rather than increasing the cost for low income Edmontonians. Accessible transit is a vital way to keep our city affordable and I'm glad we'll be looking for other ways to keep the Ride Transit program rolling.

That’s all for this wrap up. Have a great four day week and see you next week!