This ain’t no April Fools joke, folks! It seems as though the feds finally figured out that Jasper’s east entrance is in dire need of improvements.
The major boon, of course, will be the added through-lane. As it’s currently configured, the east gate is a painful pinch point. For the last umpteen years, motorists with entirely different agendas—be it a semi driver trucking all the way to the coast, a Valemounter just trying to get home before dark or a national park pass holder, wondering what the heck their annual admission is actually good for—were all stuck in the same queue. Now, those folks will be able to skip the line and the kiosk attendants can deal with the people that actually need attending to. What a novel idea!
It was in 2015 that Jasper National Park got a sh*t-ton of infrastructure moola to improve sight lines, expand parking lots, pave parkways and generally make Jasper National Park an easier place to get to, from and around. Not everyone agrees with catering to the driving public to such a degree but it must be said: many of the improvements were long overdue.
None of the renos, arguably, are as sorely needed as those at the east gate. How many thousands of hours have Edmontonians had to sit in their vehicles on a long weekend while their Jasper dinner reservations come and go, their kids get crankier with every motionless moment and the holiday they worked so hard to eke out is whittled down before their very brake-light-reflecting eyes?
Too many.
Even if this is a case of March Madness—that phenomenon of last minute spending by government departments, desperate to disburse their budgets by year end so they get the same allocation next year—it’s for the best. For too long we’ve done our guests a disservice by making them wait in line interminably, then asking them to support our shops, restaurants and tours when they finally get here.
The folks who represent Jasper’s bread and butter shouldn’t start their holiday with a bottleneck. And that’s not to mention the public servants who have to sit in those kiosks and wave apologetically to exasperated motorists who in all likelihood want to tear a strip off anyone in a green uniform.
The payoff of these improvements might not be felt acutely by Jasperites themselves, but the bigger picture is that we don’t risk testing our guests’ patience…right out of the gate.
