Traffic in Edmonton...

I started working at the University Health Centre again this month, and I've been finding that the traffic is horrendous - even just compared to last spring. I drive almost downtown then take the LRT across to the university, and had been cutting it really close leaving the same time I was previously used to leaving. So, the other day I left earlier - but the traffic was even worse so I ended up 20 minutes late for work :-( . I was somewhat stressed over that, felt a need to apologize to the assistant director, was reassured that they understood etc. etc. - but still felt badly.

It's somewhat comforting in a way to know that it's not just me hitting bad patches of traffic, everyone's complaining - there was a whole series of articles in the paper this week about it. Presumably because of the economic boom in Alberta and the population growth here ... and that Ralph Klein recently admitted the provincial government had no real plan to handle the growth spurt ... from a column today in the Journal by Paula Simons:

It is, says Statistics Canada, absolutely unprecedented.
Alberta is in the middle of the strongest period of economic growth ever recorded by any province, in all of Canadian history.
This isn't just the biggest boom in Alberta's long and checkered history of booms. It's greater growth than Ontario experienced in its 1960s glory days or than B.C. saw in the 1980s during the great Hong Kong diaspora. It is, quite simply, the biggest boom Canada has ever seen.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, even if Klein didn't have any plan for the economic boom, he did manage to entrench the idea of the one-party state within Alberta, Frank Dabbs writes in the Tyee that

"Klein has consolidated the unwritten constitutional framework for a workable one-party state, now so deeply entrenched in Alberta's economy and political culture that it may never be dislodged.
He has completed the creation of the first functional post-democratic government in North America, run by elites for elites -- with the citizenry left on political standby to profit from a predatory economy if it can, and otherwise to fend for itself".

(and any Albertan who wants to pay to join the PC party can vote for Klein's successor as party leader/premier, plus out-of-province supporters can donate to the candidates' campaigns because there are no rules controlling the leadership contest...)