Communities brooded by the concept of rapid leapfrog development are waiting longer for emergency services in deep suburbia, and an amended budget set to bolster front-line services won’t help.
The “blowback” of urban sprawl in Calgary revealed another unintended consequence of rapid growth when recent reports said emergency response times are up across the board.
We are outgrowing our services, no question about it.
While Calgarians deal daily with poor urban planning, the city seemingly put safety on the shelf as emergency teams are left chasing the dangling carrot, battling an infrastructure supply that is being squashed by demand.
Lack of stations, longer distance and traffic congestion are only a few of the obstacles facing emergency service teams.
EMS target responses are at eight minutes for life-threatening calls, but are only meeting that target about 75 per cent of the time. Fire Chief Bruce Burrell says 22 additional fire stations are needed over the next 10 years to accommodate ballooning population and sprawl, but the current budget has only room for four.
Dr. Bev Sandalack, professor and director of the urban lab at the faculty of environmental design at U of C, says arguments backing compact developments and denser communities would ease the access to citizens in crisis.
“Emergency vehicles likely have the same problem in finding the right drive, crescent, close, way, circle, loop, grove, rise — all with the same name,” she points out.
Most experts come to the same fledgling conclusions that patterns of growth need to be systematic throughout in order to improve the fiscal, social and environmental run-offs of urban sprawl.
We can only hope city hall is listening.
As it stands, the city, and not the developer, holds most of the responsibility for constructing stations within acceptable time frames and proximities of new communities, but the mark is being missed.
Brave homeowners settling deep in suburbia need to be told the straight goods — it might be 10 to 20 years before adequate infrastructure is in place.
Perhaps contract revisions between city and developer should bestow more responsibility on the developer to construct fire and police stations and EMS outposts rather than merely pencil in the space.
Urban sprawl is a complicated monster, and shouldn’t be confused with growth.
City officials need to slow down and think things through.
