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When I was a little kid, my dad loved to take us to Klondike Days. While my brother and I loved the rides, Dad loved to see all the new gadgets on sale in the SportEx. Every year, we left with some kind of new gizmo that had been sold to my dad on the promise that it would make our lives better. Every year, that thingamajig would end up in the basement, because either Dad couldn’t get it to work, or because it was more trouble than it was worth to use.

Oh Edmonton, you are so like my Dad. Every time some slick salesperson come along with a shiny new toy that’s supposed to make us “world class,” we rush to buy it, without stopping to ensure that we know how to work it — or that we need it at all.

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Example? Our ridiculous new funicular. We were told this $24-million installation, which has an operating and maintenance budget of $500,000 a year, would make it easier to get from downtown to the river valley trail system.

The sales pitch was that we could make the river valley parks more accessible to people with mobility impairments who couldn’t navigate all those stairs — and that we could make it easier for cyclists to commute downtown through the valley, since they could use the funicular to bring their bikes up the steep bank.