Medicine Hat committee recommends abandoning transportation master plan

Medicine Hat's Development and Infrastructure Committee agreed Thursday to send council a staff recommendation to abandon the city's Transportation Master Plan, Active Transportation Strategy and Transportation Safety Strategy until the Municipal Development Plan is reviewed.

Pat Bohan, the city's managing director of development and infrastructure, said public engagement in the Riverside corridor showed the plans were out of step with residents. "What became apparent during that public engagement is there's a significant misalignment between the municipal development plan and what's acceptable for the public in terms of roadway and safety and the master plan, as well as the active transportation strategy," Bohan said.

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Staff were directed to produce the three documents in the 2023-24 budget, and council later paused further work on them. Bohan said staff will prepare a scope for the Municipal Development Plan review and bring it back to committee and council in the third quarter of 2027.

In the meantime, the city would go back to its 2013 roadway system master plan and an older cycling master plan. "It's not ideal," Bohan said, adding the older plans don't reflect some Transportation Association of Canada best practices. "But there's no point in us bringing forward designs that are misaligned with what council's wishes might be."

Coun. Dan Reynish asked whether any projects would be lost and whether the plans would simply be renamed and brought back. "If I was a folksy small-town doctor, I might say putting lipstick on a pig doesn't change the fact that it's still a pig," Reynish said. Bohan said the documents guide staff rather than fund specific projects, and that some of their findings may be used once the Municipal Development Plan is updated. That plan requires public hearings and far more public engagement than the transportation plan did, he said.

Asked by committee chair Coun. Yusuf Mohammed about risk, Bohan said the impact on infrastructure would "probably" be nominal and roads would keep being rebuilt much as they are now, including the curb extensions council recently approved on Riverside. Sandeep Pareek, the city's director of municipal works, said the 2013 plan is "very vehicle-centric" but already lists the needed capital upgrades. He said the new plan was mainly meant to add newer needs such as micromobility, and he did not see a major risk.

Mohammed said council should hear what would be given up. "If we're saying no to something, what's the risk of not doing it? And risk doesn't only mean danger. Risk in my mind is also the opportunity cost of not doing certain things," he said. He said he expects an amendment at council so that the work is not completely discarded. "I just feel like abandon is a very strong word."

Bohan said amenities such as active transportation networks help attract investment because employers' workers want them. "There is a cost associated with abandoning an active transportation strategy," he said.

The recommendation goes to council on Nov. 17, where Bohan said councillors can decide whether to debate it then or at a later meeting.