Cochrane will soon see another community developed with one usable access point.

It was a close call in chambers as councillors debated whether or not the neighbourhood plan for  Precedence should be adopted. The upcoming community will be built with one entrance/exit and an emergency access road like many other communities in Cochrane...but should we?

Councillor Mary Lou Eckmeier says for years we have been building communities this way and we know the challenges it brings. Eckmeier brought up the point that if they can't provide a usable second entrance should they be allowed to proceed? "I am really stuck on having two access points for neighbourhoods, we've said for years we have to stop building communities with only one access. The congestion, the risk in an emergency, can be alleviated with better planning up front."

Eckmeier goes on to say that we are only going to continue to grow as it has already been planned and approved.

"It's not always the community plans before us, sometimes it's one community beside the other and the accumulation of communities without multiple accesses. We don't need to create these problems, these frustrations. Add to the one access school buses, city buses and construction traffic and you have people sitting and waiting or making unsafe passes because they cannot take an alternate route. We talk about the one issue, the single access in one isolate community. We have to look at the big picture."

Fire Chief David Humphrey says at least the town is getting better;  in fact he remembers days when they didn't even plan an emergency exit. "For many years, communities, not just Cochrane, were poorly set up and didn't provide secondary access in and out of these areas."

While the ideal answer would be to have two, and what point do you turn down development? "The better off we are is to have two primary ways in and out of the community but that is often curtailed  in the development simply by legal matters or maybe it has to enter onto a highways somewhere so you can't always have two bonafide accesses so that's where emergency or secondary accesses become critical."

Chief Humphrey says while it is rare to see communities that only have one access and no other alternative, there is definite concerns when it comes to providing service.

"It can have an impact slightly on our response time into different areas, also if we have to do some work on a primary road where there is no secondary access ot might mean that that community needs to stay in that community for a longer period of time so it restrains the community from being able to come and go to do the regular things with their life outside what the emergency is until we have dealt with it."

For Fire Services, Chief Humphrey states they already creeping over their 8 minute response time (90% of the time) for some neighbourhoods. "I have noticed now going back statistically that are response times are starting to creep up a  little bit." While no timeline has been identified it is a good indicator that Fire Services needs to begin exploring what, where, and when a second station will be required. "It is still manageable today but the response times are slowly starting to creep up. I am in the throws right now of creating a forward document for the executive staff  for the town for an eventual presentation to council to show us where we should be looking at for build out and some of things we could do to brighten up those response times closer to the 8 minute response."

The Precedence neighbourhood plan falls within the National Fire Protection Association guidelines which states an emergency access needs to provided when there are over 100 units and a second permanent access at 600. The 400 unit development located north of Riviera Way is slated to come in between 370 to 400.

Council adopted the Precedence (Riversong Stage 3) Neighbourhood Plan by resolution.