Alcohol in Regina Parks - Will you have to drive home after your drink?
Taking a deeper look at the accessibility of Regina's newest proposed drinking spots
This week, Regina seemed to be on the cusp of allowing alcohol to be consumed in public parks. Changes to provincial legislation introduced last year, and approved this spring, gave Saskatchewan municipalities the choice of opting-in to imbibing in parks, and this week’s City Council meeting will possibly see the approval of a draft bylaw to let you BYOB in a handful of locations.
While some residents are filling up their Yeti coolers as I write this, not everyone is thrilled. At its meeting, Council faced an onslaught of delegations opposed to the idea. Some of the public commentary focused on issues around public order, proximity to children, and dangerous broken glass waste in parks. The report from administration does admit that the City would face increased costs from these issues.
Meanwhile, others have raised the issue of accessibility of these parks for people who aren’t driving.
In theory, this makes sense. You should want people to be able to get home from drinking in the park without getting behind the wheel.
Yet downtown’s Victoria Park — Regina’s most centrally-located park that, since this summer, has also been surrounded by transit stops, and now e-scooters — wasn’t on the initial list brought forward.
These people raise a good point — when designing a policy to allow drinking in parks, it should probably be somewhat easy for people who walk, take transit, pedal, or roll to get to (or, most importantly, from) the parks that are being opened up to alcohol use.
But will it be?
Bring it Home
Rather than just offer yet another a hot take on drinking in parks, I decided to try to take an objective look.
To do this, I looked up the street addresses for each of the proposed Alcohol-friendly parks on the city’s Regina.ca website. Then I plugged those addresses into the Walk Score website — a site used by real estate search engine Realtor.ca, among others, to estimate how accessible a location is to walking, biking and transit.
Administration proposed 12 city parks to Executive Committee, but allowed councillors to suggest changes to the list. Two new parks were suggested : Rochdale Park in Ward 9, and Alport Park in Ward 7.
By getting an objective assessment of each park’s accessibility, we can check whether our hunch is correct. Is a car ride really the best way to get to your beach blanket and Bud Lite?
Walking Away With It
Here are the results —
Not surprisingly, parks in Regina’s suburban wards are less accessible on foot, bike and transit than those in central neighborhoods.
But overall, these alcohol-friendly parks stand out as modestly more accessible on foot than you’d expect from Regina as a whole. They’re also quite a bit easier to get to on a bike than most places.
And you’re about as likely to catch a bus home from of these parks as you are anywhere else in Regina.
Some parks in particular raise eyebrows — Tutor Park in Ward 2, Horizon Station Park in Ward 4, Alport Park in Ward 7, and Hopson Park in Ward 10.
For example, if you were drinking a few nice hoppy IPAs in Hopson Park — perhaps a fine product from Rebellion Brewing Co, District Brewing Co. or Pile ‘O Bones — you might be forced to take a taxi home, as the park is really not very accessible, with a Walk Score of only 28 out of 100.
Swapping out Ward 7’s centrally-located Regent Park and picking Alport Park instead doesn’t seem to improve things much. In fact, it’s drastically less accessible on every score. But this isn’t surprising, as it’s located in the far north-east corner of the city.
When we add downtown’s Victoria Park to the mix, it bumps up the average of all the parks quite a bit. Victoria Park itself has a Walk Score of 95 (out of 100), a Transit Score of 57, and a Bike Score of 70. This is easily the best Walk Score and Transit Score of any of these parks, and a very respectable Bike Score. Yet as I mentioned earlier, Victoria Park is not included.
In any serious discussion of opening up parks to drinking that attempts to minimize the harm from drunk driving, it seems pretty clear that Victoria Park deserves to be in the mix.
A Word of Caution
Walk Score.com measures the proximity of places like homes and businesses to various amenities — think of the grocery store, coffee shops, parks, and the like. While it also considers how close parks are, when we’re talking about coming home from the alcohol-friendly park, this is captured by only one component of the Walk Score.
That is to say, a park with a low Walk Score might be perfectly fine for walking home, especially if you live right next door!
Also, it’s worth pointing out that some of these areas are newly-developed, and the Walk Score information might be out of date.
For example, the map surrounding Horizon Station Park is missing some of the newer businesses in the area, such as the great new Mortise + Tenon and Dandy’s Artisan Ice Cream shops down the street.
Whether or not Regina actually does become the first Saskatchewan city to open up its parks to alcohol consumption, it can’t hurt to consider the accessibility of these parks to non-drivers while as we continue to improve transit, biking and walkability overall in Regina as a whole.
We have a long way to go.