The St. Anne Street extension story in the Wednesday Aug. 19 Gazette needs some clarification. City management spokesman Gilles Prefontaine claims that the roundabout would produce two new lots is nonsense. The lots already existed and, in fact, the roundabout encroaches into the lot on the east side of St. Anne as to greatly reduce its value.
Roundabouts have a limited value and work best for an intersection with balanced traffic from four directions. In the case of St. Anne Street, the roundabout will impede traffic on an important interior roadway that serves to move traffic downtown because it reduces traffic to one through lane. Secondly, there is no traffic access from the east side and no proven demand for traffic access from the extension over to TachĂ© Street. A colossal waste of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in my view.
And finally, chamber CEO Linda Moffat wasn’t listening when I praised the chamber for attracting additional venues for fruit and vegetables this past season; something I have advocated for years. That is the main attraction of the market because otherwise it is just a glorified flea market.
I have been a strong supporter of the market since its inception and in the early days, used to work down there helping with the set up as a volunteer and conducted interviews and surveys so I can vouch for the interest in truly farmers’ market food venues.
The claim by the chamber chair that they would have to reduce the market to a third is also not correct because there is plenty of space available not only on the roadway but also on the empty lots adjoining the roadway and adjacent to the Taché Street portion. When I first learned that the market would have to be cut back for the construction during 2016 of the St. Anne extension I originally came up with the idea that the chamber should consider moving down to the new area created by the roadway and I was pleased to find out that the city is proposing just that.
Coun. Bob Russell, St. Albert
