News   Apr 03, 2020
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General Construction Updates

I've raised this issue before. Someone said that that terminal itself needed to be a certain distance away from the city centre due to noise pollution issues (because of all the taxiing).
When the terminal project was conceived, planes were much much louder than they are today, and one way to project into the future was the planes were going to get louder as supersonic travel took over. We should count ourselves lucky that we didn't end up with one 20 km further out like Halifax, Edmonton or Montreal (or Toronto's which hasn't been finished).
 
Well Telus Spark is a complete letdown and failure in every regards. Terrible design and layout, bad location, mediocre exhibits, atrocious exterior. It’s basically an industrial wear house box with sheet metal cladding. It’s our version of the Milner library in Edmonton. Honestly, the old science Centre is still more futuristic and awe inspiring than this junk. I would argue that it is Calgary’s biggest letdown and definitely the least impressive of any public or institutional building built in the past 100 years.
 
Calgary does TOD very poorly, instead opting for an approach more akin to Transit-Adjacent Development (TAD).
Hopefully we see better results through the Green Line than what has materialized on either the Red or Blue.
Once the green line is built up Centre street (eventually *eye roll*) the density boost and development the follows along that corridor up to, but not limited to around 41st Avenue will be amazing, I imagine lots of low and mid rise developments with street level retail around the 16th Ave area.
 
A station like Sunnyside still have the potential to become a complete TOD because the station stops right in the heart of the community, Unfortunately the extreme NIMBYism of the locals in the area has prevented the area from seeings its full potential. We need more buildings like Annex being built. I also hope the Safeway lot is redeveloped into a denser development with the retail better integrated with the station. Westbrook station is another one with potential but I've almost given up on it. On the flip side, Im stoked about the Green line because theres quite of few stations integrated into the communities rather than stopping in the middle of a highway or an isolated parking lot/plot of land.
 
A station like Sunnyside still have the potential to become a complete TOD because the station stops right in the heart of the community, Unfortunately the extreme NIMBYism of the locals in the area has prevented the area from seeings its full potential. We need more buildings like Annex being built. I also hope the Safeway lot is redeveloped into a denser development with the retail better integrated with the station. Westbrook station is another one with potential but I've almost given up on it. On the flip side, Im stoked about the Green line because theres quite of few stations integrated into the communities rather than stopping in the middle of a highway or an isolated parking lot/plot of land.

While there are plenty of NIMBYs in Sunnyside, I don't see a lot of evidence that it has materially impacted development around the station. The Russell RED project next to Vendome was rejected at SDAB, and the Osteria project didn't survive Council. But there are approved projects out there that haven't been built yet for economic reasons, like Graywood Theodore, Truman Archer, and the second Minto site on 9A. Batistella Lifesport was headed towards approval as well before they backed out.
 
A station like Sunnyside still have the potential to become a complete TOD because the station stops right in the heart of the community, Unfortunately the extreme NIMBYism of the locals in the area has prevented the area from seeings its full potential. We need more buildings like Annex being built. I also hope the Safeway lot is redeveloped into a denser development with the retail better integrated with the station. Westbrook station is another one with potential but I've almost given up on it. On the flip side, Im stoked about the Green line because theres quite of few stations integrated into the communities rather than stopping in the middle of a highway or an isolated parking lot/plot of land.
I am most excited to see the low/mid-rise TOD keep improving (Sunnyside, Bridgeland, and now Shaganappi Point on the board with a few TOD-oriented apartments) while we struggle with the larger scaled projects (Banff Trail, Brentwood, Westbrook etc.) The smaller scale walk-up oriented TODs have had much more success, but again much has to do with the fundamentals of the design and layout and lack of TOD-thinking in our development culture. Let's dive into Saddletowne for an example of what not to do it what could have been another awesome low/mid scale TOD.

Saddletowne is actually a fairly logically TOD built in 2012, well into the periods when the benefits of TOD and transit are widely known. The neighbourhood was built somewhat before that (early 2000s) however had the LRT planned in from the beginning. Unfortunately no material parking relaxations (in practice), a weird 3 lane one-way road loop, and rigid adherence to the standard box store design were also baked in early - effectively negating reasonably smart macro-level planning and turns it into another TOD wasted opportunity.

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For comparison, here's a Dutch suburban neighbourhood in the city of Almere - about 25km outside the city centre of Amsterdam (similar travel time to downtown Calgary from Saddletowne). Pretty much the same land uses and density (low-mid residential, grocery, parking lot, schools, parks). It's slightly older - the station opened in the late 1980s when the neighbourhood was being developed.

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Here's Saddletowne adjacent to the station in the bus bay:
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Here's the neighbourhood in Almere adjacent to the station from the parking lot:
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Ignoring the Dutch example is just a nicer and greener place, the TOD-thinking is just so much more advanced (even in the 1980s) at this small low/mid density scale. Most of these are just choices: they don't cost any more money to make things "fancier" (they might actually be cheaper), they are just bad designs and ideas that undercut our TODs before we even start. I should qualify - it's not because of a lack of interest, expertise and passion people have to get it right here, it's that the compromises, priorities and accepted designs are far less transit-friendly than anything you'd see in places with the culture to put TOD first.

Some examples:
  • In the Dutch example, while private vehicles can park adjacent to the station, no major roads are within 200m, and even then "major" road is a two-lane road with dedicated bicycle paths and sidewalks on either side. Compared to our 3-lane, highway scaled circle road directly next to the station in Saddletowne complete with slip-lanes to allow for high-speed turns (for some reason)
  • Both examples have a grocery store. The Dutch one (Albert Heiji in the labelled picture) has it's entrance directly at the train station on that diagonal covered walkway. Saddletowne's Safeway is just off the aerial photo to the right, faces the other way and towards a big parking lot of it's own like any Calgary suburban store, near a train or not.
  • The Saddletowne example aerial has a straight worn out dirt path cut around the north side of the park because of our weird love of curvy pathways that leads to pointless deviations that many people would rather walk in the dirt rather than follow the path. Relatedly a bunch of unnecessary fences, the random narrowing and widening of the sidewalks and no alignment between the path and the ramps occur throughout Saddletowne's example across the roads, parking lots and bus bay. In the Dutch example, there are no dirt path desire lines because the pathways are straight and efficient direct to destinations (hell, even the grocery store has a diagonal access carved directly through it to the station).
  • Given there are 3 lanes in the Saddletowne example, I am surprised we even needed the bus bay at all. The inside lane of the 3-lane road could easily be bus parking and the pointless road-adjacent green strip could easily be used for shelters and other needed amenities. The Dutch example has a bus-only BRT that is the bus bay, put directly next to the station on the right side (before another bicycle only facility). Note the straight lines and no provisions for bus parking or passing as it's not needed.
  • All the regular critiques not-TOD specific apply as well (Calgary's ultra-wide/overbuilt car lanes, wild amounts of fencing preventing logical straight-line movement, surface parking all over, buildings facing away from the station or where a person would walk, random sidewalks that just end at parking lots, no bicycle infrastructure etc.)
My conclusion:
We do TOD expensive and wrong, largely due to caring more about things that are actually antithetical to TOD such as big wide roads, curvy pathways and way too much parking. Our best stations and the ones seeing the most development - Sunnyside for example - has none of those things thanks to it's traditional grid of streets, no parking and design compromises that actually favour walking and transit. We should be more like Sunnyside and less like Saddletowne at the low/mid scale.
 
My conclusion:
We do TOD expensive and wrong, largely due to caring more about things that are actually antithetical to TOD such as big wide roads, curvy pathways and way too much parking. Our best stations and the ones seeing the most development - Sunnyside for example - has none of those things thanks to it's traditional grid of streets, no parking and design compromises that actually favour walking and transit. We should be more like Sunnyside and less like Saddletowne at the low/mid scale.
You summed it up very well, and are spot on. Those large freeway style roads that seem to home with every new subdivision development in Calgary, are a large part of the problem. Unfortunately a vicious circle. They are there due to our auto oriented culture, and our auto oriented culture perpetuates due to those types of designs. I would like to see a development in Calgary or anywhere in NA tailored after that Dutch example.

As someone who cycles a fair bit, that Netherlands TOD looks 1000x better.
 
I love this Dutch example. Thanks for sharing. I love the diagonal arcade cut through the shopping centre. You can actually look inside via streetview. Something like that would have been perfect for the Safeway next to Sunnyside Station. Just have a diagonal arcade going from 3 AVE and 10 ST to the middle of the covered section of Sunnyside Station. In fact, just close 9A Street to cars, and build a roof connecting the Safeway to the LRT station to protect people from the elements.

sunnyside.jpg


Also, seeing the width of the Dutch roads makes me cry. Their arterial roads are the same width of the residential side streets in Saddletown.
 
I love this Dutch example. Thanks for sharing. I love the diagonal arcade cut through the shopping centre. You can actually look inside via streetview. Something like that would have been perfect for the Safeway next to Sunnyside Station. Just have a diagonal arcade going from 3 AVE and 10 ST to the middle of the covered section of Sunnyside Station. In fact, just close 9A Street to cars, and build a roof connecting the Safeway to the LRT station to protect people from the elements.

Also, seeing the width of the Dutch roads makes me cry. Their arterial roads are the same width of the residential side streets in Saddletown.

I just remembered that this is the second Dutch grocery store example I used after my critique of midtown COOP. I think we have just stumbled upon another thing they do better than us apart from bicycles, urban farming and reasonable lane widths - add 1980s-designed grocery stores to the list :)
 
I remember visiting my cousin in some rinky-dink non-entity of a town in Holland about 20 years ago....and the level of urban design they had going there felt like the future utopia that big city urban-designers here dream of today. The level of design in Holland is not flashy, but it sure is good. I distinctly remember thinking how high-quality even the Public housing projects were.
 
You summed it up very well, and are spot on. Those large freeway style roads that seem to home with every new subdivision development in Calgary, are a large part of the problem. Unfortunately a vicious circle. They are there due to our auto oriented culture, and our auto oriented culture perpetuates due to those types of designs. I would like to see a development in Calgary or anywhere in NA tailored after that Dutch example.

As someone who cycles a fair bit, that Netherlands TOD looks 1000x better.

One way to ease out of this vicious cycle is to accept that suburbanites are going to be driving in and out of their neighbourhood everyday, but design the neighbourhoods in such a way that all travel within the neighbourhood can be done on foot. That means putting commercial and institutional spaces in the centre of the neighbourhoods, and leaving the wide, arterial roads on the outskirts. Newer suburbs like Mckenzie Towne and Saddletown are almost there, but they just can't help surrounding their commercial/institutional centres with massive arterial roads and oceans of parking lots.

Marda Loop is a good example of how this could work. About 66% of the neighbourhood commutes by car. Crowchild and 14 ave offer major roadways on the outskirts that facilitate travel in and out of the neighbourhood. However, once you're in the neighbourhood, you can access the grocery store, parks, schools, drug store, library, etc. all on foot. There are no major arterial roads that create barriers within the neighbourhood.
 

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