Residents air concerns over plans for 26th St.

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This article was published 12/04/2024 (898 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The City of Brandon is preparing to redevelop a stretch of 26th Street this year and several area residents are concerned about the impact to traffic, safety and access.

The street will be rebuilt from Park Avenue through Victoria Avenue and will include the replacement of sidewalks and some traffic signals along the way, as well as repairs to water services in the ground beneath.

Four potential options for the rebuilt street have been proposed, three of which include dedicated bike paths and another that includes a multi-use path. Those first three options would see just one lane of vehicular traffic going each way instead of two.

While the installation of bike paths would help the city achieve some of its active transportation goals and the project has been described as filling in a missing link in Brandon’s path network, the potential impacts on parking and traffic are what concern several residents who spoke with the Sun this week.

Tara Stokes, who lives on Cherry Crescent and is the parent of a student at J.R. Reid School on 26th Street, said she left an informal meeting on the project last week in tears.

“I just have some really big safety concerns about it,” Stokes said of the project. “And to my knowledge, they haven’t correctly connected with people in the area that would have valuable input.”

She said the traffic study the city used to develop its designs were taken in June. Because the weather is better in June, Stokes said she didn’t think the study was representative of the peak traffic that uses 26th Street during cold weather.

An online survey the city was running on the project asks residents to rank the four options in order of their preference. Stokes said her top choice was “none of the above.”

“None of these options are good,” she said. “I’m not against the bike lane. I think that is great. It’s just that little area of 26th Street that really concerns me because of the school and the kids and the drop-offs and pickups. It’s on a main artery in the city.”

Noelle Gabrielle lives on 26th Street and operates a business out of her home. Once a week, a semi-truck parks on the street outside her home and drops off goods.

If traffic is restricted to one lane and on-street parking is removed, she’s not sure what she’s going to do. She said there are some residents on the street who have visitors to provide medical care and don’t have driveways for visitors to park on.

“They can do the work,” Gabrielle said. “They need to fix the streets, they need to do the sidewalks. But as a resident on 26th Street, the amount of bikers I see on a day-to-day basis is not enough to add a bike lane to our street.”

Samantha Smart and her family live close to 34th Street, but their oldest child started kindergarten at J.R. Reid School this year.

If on-street parking is removed, she said she’s worried it will be hard to make sure kids enter the school after they’re dropped off.

“Now we have to park further down that street, then visibility becomes an issue and then that becomes a concern for those students walking to (Vincent Massey) high school,” Smart said. “Then you have traffic getting backed up from drop-offs at the crosswalk.”

Kara Plewes lives on 26th Street near the intersection with Van Horne Avenue. Her child also goes to J.R. Reid School. She said she first found out about the project as a member of the school’s parent council and was initially excited about the roads and sidewalks getting fixed before she found out more details.

When she brought up the question of how residents without driveways would plug their cars in during the winter if on-street parking was removed, she said city staff said they hadn’t thought about that.

Other issues she raised were access to picking up kids at the school during winter, how residents would get things like medications delivered to them

“Every time we would ask a question and the (answer was) ‘we hadn’t thought about that,’” she said. “It was a little frustrating, because if you’re going to change things, you should be thinking about them.”

Karen Purvis lives on Cherry Crescent. She went to J.R. Reid and Vincent Massey schools as a child and so did her kids when they were younger.

She said she didn’t understand why the city is looking to reduce traffic on one of its few streets with two lanes in each direction.

When she raised potential issues that the redesign would pose for her trying to pick up her niece and nephew from the school if there’s no on-street parking, she said staff suggested she park on either Park Avenue or 25th Street — both of which she said have no nearby parking.

“For example, if you get a train there by Hillcrest (personal care home) and it’s two-lane traffic, you’re going to have traffic backed up north into that intersection, then it’s going to be backed up into the crosswalks in front of J.R. Reid,” Purvis said. “That intersection is horrible to begin with.”

In an email, a spokesperson from the Brandon School Division said it had yet to discuss the impact of the redevelopment of the street with the city, but is interested in doing so.

“We are looking forward to an upcoming meeting to better understand the proposed redevelopment of 26th street and hopefully address questions that we have as well as discuss the impact on J.R. Reid School and Vincent Massey High School,” the division said.

All the residents the Sun spoke with said they felt like their concerns were not listened to at last week’s meeting, that a staff member was condescending and was trying to justify decisions that had already been made instead of being open to feedback.

Despite the public meetings held on the subject, several residents expressed concerns that the matter would be sent to Brandon City Council for approval without taking their feedback into consideration.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Brandon manager of development services Mark Allard said the proposals presented to the public so far are conceptual and there are still details that need to be ironed out before the project is approved and set for tender.

“We’re quite excited about the dialogue that we had and the number of people that have responded to an online survey that we had,” Allard said. ‘Those comments come both from a positive and I’m not going to say negative, but a position of concern.”

He said pick-ups and drop-offs at J.R. Reid need to be “accommodated in some way” and that city staff will be meeting with the school division to have detailed discussions.

“Specifically, the option of two travel lanes with no parking versus one travel lane with parking,” Allard said. “Those are still considerations that we’re giving. There’s no one solution that is going to resolve all issues and so I think our challenge is to look at all the concerns that are out there and find a solution that is kind of a best fit.”

As for the issue of residents having felt condescended to, Allard said he didn’t witness that personally at the meeting.

“If that is the case, I’d be happy to talk with them and attempt to address the issue, because that was not the purpose of the meeting.”

While he said the project was likely to be discussed at a city council meeting in May, he wasn’t sure if staff would be ready to present a final recommendation for the project for council’s approval that month.

Coun. Shaun Cameron (Ward 4), whose ward includes the west side of the part of 26th Street being redeveloped, said on Thursday that he has heard some great feedback from residents as well as insight into potential blind spots in the city’s proposals.

“Obviously, residents are concerned first and foremost about safety around the school,” he said.

“26th Street is sort of at the end of its life as far as quality goes, so this presented an opportunity to potentially look at the traffic flow and multimodal transportation differently there.”

He said he was hopeful that the city could find a path that accounts for residents’ concerns.

“I’m hopeful that we find a level of compromise that maybe isn’t perfect for everybody, but it’s something that everybody can live with and hopefully improves their neighbourhood as a result.”

Both Cameron and Allard said residents can reach out to them with feedback on the project. Allard’s email address is m.allard@brandon.ca and Cameron’s is ward4@brandon.ca

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