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Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths

The city is starting to warm up to raised crosswalks a LOT lately which is an amazing sign.
The Spruce Drive MUP (even though it unfortunately runs along short blocks) has a raised crosswalk at nearly every single intersection along the pathway:
Spruce_Drive_Image_1.png

The 11/12 St project in Inglewood/Ramsay also has raised street sections and a whole tabled intersection at 12 St/8 Ave. Basically the only thing that will make drivers slow the fuck down is a physical threat to their vehicle and having what's basically a gigantic speed bump will help a lot.
 
whatchyyc said:
The city is starting to warm up to raised crosswalks a LOT lately which is an amazing sign.
The Spruce Drive MUP (even though it unfortunately runs along short blocks) has a raised crosswalk at nearly every single intersection along the pathway:
View attachment 666162
The 11/12 St project in Inglewood/Ramsay also has raised street sections and a whole tabled intersection at 12 St/8 Ave. Basically the only thing that will make drivers slow the fuck down is a physical threat to their vehicle and having what's basically a gigantic speed bump will help a lot.
Click to expand...
Man this is where I have trouble. I drive a pretty low car and I’m totally for raised intersections to slow traffic, but they have to be actually constructed as being gradual changes and not shelves to high centre a car on. I angle my car if I need to but some are so poorly constructed.

My preference is to narrow the crossing to slow vehicles or to make sure that the QA/QC on the contractor is there to make sure it’s built well. I say that because there are commercial sites in the City that are built with these that are like driving over a curb wall because the PM and contractor sucked, I’ve dragged exhaust on a stock height Honda Accord FFS. Good thought though, just needs to be done well which i don’t trust haha
 
Calgcouver said:
Man this is where I have trouble. I drive a pretty low car and I’m totally for raised intersections to slow traffic, but they have to be actually constructed as being gradual changes and not shelves to high centre a car on. I angle my car if I need to but some are so poorly constructed.

My preference is to narrow the crossing to slow vehicles or to make sure that the QA/QC on the contractor is there to make sure it’s built well. I say that because there are commercial sites in the City that are built with these that are like driving over a curb wall because the PM and contractor sucked, I’ve dragged exhaust on a stock height Honda Accord FFS. Good thought though, just needs to be done well which i don’t trust haha
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I can't speak to all of them, but they're doing a raised intersection at 19th street and 2nd Ave. I contacted the city and they said the raised section is about half the heigh of the sidewalk. So it's not as dramatic as the ones they have in the YYC parking (full crosswalk height) and maybe other one offs but I don't have any on my normal commute. With a half sidewalk height, it's probably equal or less than most back lanes ramps
 
whatchyyc said:
Basically the only thing that will make drivers slow the fuck down is a physical threat to their vehicle and having what's basically a gigantic speed bump will help a lot.
Click to expand...
I mean this is it in a nutshell - it's the secret sauce for Vision Zero approaches the world over. Just physically make it so cars can't go fast enough to hurt someone and 95% of our road safety issues go away. No more (futile) call for more enforcement, people just police themselves by physically being difficult to even accidentally kill anyone.

For me, the front lines of this safety challenge is the collector streets like 26 Avenue SW or 19 Street NW. Local streets have tons of design issues, but the volumes are generally low enough they can hide that they are unsafely design for the most part. Collector streets are where the collisions start becoming an issue because the volumes are creeping up, transit starts arguing for wider lanes, and there's historically a reluctance to put any stops or traffic controls on them.

Collectors are also where our cognitive dissonance in road design is the highest - its where all of our stated goals to improve safety comes with an asterisk*.

We want these things to be super safe for pedestrians and bicycles* [*as long as traffic speeds, turning movements and throughput capacity aren't impacted]
 
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"McLean says he’d like the Eighth Avenue bike lane taken out, and wants to see others – including the thoroughfare on 12 Avenue – reviewed."
1753462204972.png

Buddy, this is your ward. How about you get out a shovel and pave impeccable roads in your ward before worrying about downtown traffic. There's literally two giant one way roads on 6th ave and 9th ave. I'm not a bike lane everywhere kind of person, I drive, and know it's important to have good traffic flow. But this is just ridiculous. Cars get wide traffic lanes, bike get a portion of a secondary street, and transit get their dedicated street. Everybody wins.

www.ctvnews.ca

Bike lane debate heats up as Dreeshen argues expansion could hurt traffic flow

Alberta’s transportation minister wants Calgary to tap the brakes on any new bike lanes, confirming the province is reviewing the ones that already exist.
www.ctvnews.ca www.ctvnews.ca
 
"In 2011, Calgary city hall rolled out a cycling strategy “to become one of the premier cycling cities in North America.” That strategy set a goal of building 30 kilometres of protected cycle tracks, “physically separated from traffic and pedestrians,” by 2020.

Five years after that target date, city hall has yet to meet that goal. Today, Calgary has 26.2 kilometres of cycle tracks.

The same strategy called for 180 kilometres of painted bike lanes by 2020. Today Calgary has a quarter of that, with 45.6 kilometres of painted lanes, according to city hall. To put those numbers in context, Calgary has nearly 7,700 kilometres of roads."

www.sprawlcalgary.com

The boom and bust of Calgary’s bike lanes | The Sprawl

No one is leading the cycling file at city hall.
www.sprawlcalgary.com www.sprawlcalgary.com
 
My kids go to daycare 2 blocks from here. I usually have to turn right across the bike lane to enter the laneway to the parking lot. I will often hold up traffic to let a cyclist pass before turning in, even if I could have safely crossed in front of the cyclist because they were far enough away.

This is not currently a safe stretch of road for cyclists (or pedestrians). I don’t know if a curb and paint would have saved this person since the truck hit them doing a right turn at an intersection. One thing the curb will help protect cyclists from is cars cutting into the bike lane to go around turning cars. The parking lot to the daycare is an area where this happens frequently as parents entering the lot often have to wait for parents leaving the lot to pull out before pulling in.
 
Mountain Man said:
People also seem to forget that every person on a bike is one less person in a car. People just have such a selfish mindset about this and are caught in an us vs them mentality.
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The same people that complain their neighborhood is overtaken by "luxury" condos and not affordable at all. When they'd be protesting even louder if it was low income housing.
 
Mountain Man said:
People also seem to forget that every person on a bike is one less person in a car. People just have such a selfish mindset about this and are caught in an us vs them mentality.
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The problem in trying to explain this to them in this manner is that they instantly think we're replacing car lanes for bike lanes to force people to ride bikes instead, whereas the goal should be to have bike lanes as an auxiliary mode of transport alongside car lanes. People don't like to think they're being forced.
 
Roaring Flames said:
The problem in trying to explain this to them in this manner is that they instantly think we're replacing car lanes for bike lanes to force people to ride bikes instead, whereas the goal should be to have bike lanes as an auxiliary mode of transport alongside car lanes. People don't like to think they're being forced.
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The ridiculousness of this type of thought in Calgary is we are explicitly not replacing car lanes with bike lanes. The major downtown one-ways, untouched, major arterial roads, untouched. Most cities of our size, would've had bike lanes on 17th already. I think the city should really be less reasonable. Plan to put bike lanes everywhere, then make concessions to the province by removing "planned" lanes. They started with the responsible, middle of the road plan, and is still being shaken down by the province.
 
Have we replaced any actual driving lanes with bike lanes? I don’t think we have. Just parking lanes, no? I can’t recall a single bike lane that’s actually replaced a previously permanent driving lane. 10th ST NW?
 
We have not replaced car lanes with bike lanes, but that doesn't stop folks from claiming otherwise.
The generally right leaning public who for the most part are the ones who are against bike lanes love a good government conspiracy. And when they see a generally left leaning council pushing to build bike lanes on what they think are already cramped roadways while councillors say things like more bikes = less cars... you can understand how we got here.
 
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