West Village Towers | 149.95m | 42s | Cidex Group | NORR Dubai Yahya Jan

[Mountain Man]

That area is currently closed and is a park, thought it was weird but I guess it's going to be permanent.

 

[CallmeCatbread]

This idea that we need to stop cars from driving downtown goes against how the majority of Calgarians get into and out of downtown. We can build all the transit and bike lanes possible, people are still going to drive. Instead of pitting one against the other, maybe we should try to find a way to incorporate all modes.

Calgary has done some things to improve pedestrian safety, and I hope that continues. 1st street before, 1st street after is a great example, lots more of this should be done.

Give me a break. Quit it with that defeatist attitude. "you can build all the transit you want, Calgarians will still drive" is flat out wrong.

People will use whatever mode is easiest, fastest, and safest. Catering exclusively to cars in infrastructure planning damages every other mode on all 3 metrics. I know youre not advocating for an exclusive approach to planning, but too often in Calgary we happily sacrifice the safety and efficacy of every other mode of transit to min-max the shit out of driving. If we fix that problem that will help the other pieces fall into place and people's decisions on how they travel will adjust accordingly.

 

[CallmeCatbread]

11th is fine either way - open or closed to vehicles. I don't really see the park working out, but with some clever design, anything is possible. The local population is incredibly high so you will get a ton of use of any public space as long as it's safe, well-lit and programmed well to support children. People underestimate how many children and families live in nearby buildings.

Starting from first principles about whether or not we should go car-free, let's acknowledge that obviously all roads are useful for all modes to some degree. The question isn't that though: the question is what modes should be prioritized where, especially when constraints exists (space or money).

The majority of downtown roads are out of balance in this regard, where car capacity and priority vastly overwhelms local movements and pedestrians, despite the highest density areas of pedestrian traffic in the city. To reset that balance to something more reflective of the existing and future pedestrian demand, it will require change on nearly every inner city road. It doesn't mean closing roads them, but it does mean trading off car capacity and priority, to allow for wider sidewalks and pedestrian priority throughout the core.

Back to the 11th Street example, it's ironically not evidence of this rebalancing, the whole thing is car-centric thinking about this idea. The only reason closure was even floated at all was 11th Street is the least important of all crossings into the downtown for vehicles from the Beltline, not because 11th is the most important for pedestrians. Yes, the area does needs more park space, but the only reason the idea didn't die quietly and early was because the traffic volumes are relatively low and reasonably manageable whether or not 11th is open.

Car-free underpass is only an option here because even our car-biased processes and thinking can't overwhelmingly conclude we absolutely need a vehicle grade-separated crossing here given the constraints - in this case, an extremely high construction cost for a vehicle underpass. Therefore it's possible that car-free option continues to be considered.

In practice, the city centre's design flow chart works seems to work like this - essentially, you really can only get sidewalk and pedestrian improvements if the road is so incredibly unimportant for cars, you probably don't actually need the pedestrian improvements anyways:

View attachment 637497

How it should work in the city centre is this:
View attachment 637500

The flat out refusal to even begin to entertain the idea doing things differently, as evidenced by the attitudes being expressed here is stifling this city.

Both options, open or closed to cars is fine. But people seriously need to have an ounce of imagination and ambition. It's what this city was built on and we have clearly completely lost it.

 

[haltcatchfire]

The flat out refusal to even begin to entertain the idea doing things differently, as evidenced by the attitudes being expressed here is stifling this city.

Both options, open or closed to cars is fine. But people seriously need to have an ounce of imagination and ambition. It's what this city was built on and we have clearly completely lost it.

It’s not about ambition or imagination. It’s about being honest to the true real life impacts of a decision.

 

[DiscoStu]

The friction of inner city life is what often leads people to leave, or not come in the first place. Gets too pricey, gets too small, parking is too hard, traffic is too busy etc. This would be one of those decisions that needlessly adds friction. I think it's fine to prioritize pedestrians and bikes in the Beltline (just like its fine to prioritize cars in the burbs), but I just don't see any viable reason to get rid of the car lanes here. The "alternate" proposal does everything well, while still clearly giving a much improved preference to bikes and pedestrians. Getting rid of the car lanes, for a very dubious underpass park, is just flat out dumb.

Honestly, for me it just comes down to thinking that having options is good! Just like many great cities have a wide option of housing styles and budgets, a great city allows for multitude of travel modes that gives a wide cross-section of users (residents, visitors, businesses etc) to chose what fits their purpose. I think we all appreciate having the option to travel via whatever is most efficient at the time...whether it's biking, walking, transit or driving. Usually the people who want to force people into this car-free utopia are in their 20s and/or have no kids. They typically don't yet appreciate that priorities change as you start a family, or you have a business, or you get older. It doesn't mean that being car-free is a bad way to live...it just means that for many people, that's just not realistic or desirable.

Choice good!

 

[Cgloins]

The friction of inner city life is what often leads people to leave, or not come in the first place. Gets too pricey, gets too small, parking is too hard, traffic is too busy etc. This would be one of those decisions that needlessly adds friction. I think it's fine to prioritize pedestrians and bikes in the Beltline (just like its fine to prioritize cars in the burbs), but I just don't see any viable reason to get rid of the car lanes here. The "alternate" proposal does everything well, while still clearly giving a much improved preference to bikes and pedestrians. Getting rid of the car lanes, for a very dubious underpass park, is just flat out dumb.

Honestly, for me it just comes down to thinking that having options is good! Just like many great cities have a wide option of housing styles and budgets, a great city allows for multitude of travel modes that gives a wide cross-section of users (residents, visitors, businesses etc) to chose what fits their purpose. I think we all appreciate having the option to travel via whatever is most efficient at the time...whether it's biking, walking, transit or driving. Usually the people who want to force people into this car-free utopia are in their 20s and/or have no kids. They typically don't yet appreciate that priorities change as you start a family, or you have a business, or you get older. It doesn't mean that being car-free is a bad way to live...it just means that for many people, that's just not realistic or desirable.

Choice good!

I think this argument ignores every example of urbanism outside of North America and even some within North America. It’s possible to create a city where the driving experience is simultaneously better and there are fewer lanes downtown. Walking, biking, public transit all bring cars off the road and the better you make these options the more people will do them. This decision by itself is small but shows a commitment to walking/biking infrastructure that could be part of a much better future network. Especially with how many units are going up in the west end. I don’t even necessarily think the playground is the best option here but we can build biking and walking infrastructure pretty cheaply compared to driving infrastructure and we need to take advantage of that and take some lanes out of downtown. Also the assumption that people have to move out of downtown is because we build so much of it to leave at the end of the day. In a future where the downtown is lively with people not cars then maybe it can be a place to raise a family.

 

[potatopizzafan]

The conspiracy side of my brain is telling me that they used the playground option as a sacrificial lamb, that the usually suspects can freak out about and then go with option 2 thats is the more "traditional" approach.

Hard to get riled up over a bike lane when the other option is complete removal of 2 car lanes

 

[lemongrab]

It's definitely going to have to close for a significant period during construction, so why can't we trial say 6 months of active-only crossing before making a final decision? Ideally getting some IRL use-case data for the status quo first, and then we can evaluate how things change. (I suspect the answer is that once we close the level crossing to cars 'temporarily' it might be tough to reopen again, but that shouldn't be a huge deal)

It would be interesting to know the cost differences here...we can have a pretty good idea of the all-modes option from 6th St SE...the 4th St one cost about $70M in 2011, so easily 9-figures now.

 

[CBBarnett]

It would be interesting to know the cost differences here...we can have a pretty good idea of the all-modes option from 6th St SE...the 4th St one cost about $70M in 2011, so easily 9-figures now.

I think this is the key issue with this debate people keep skipping over- cost v. Benefit.

If a minimum width pedestrian/cycle underpass costs a few million, but a vehicle one costs $20M is it worth it? What about $100M? When does the cost outweigh the vehicle access benefit?

11th Street can be definitely be useful for local vehicles, but it’s not so important to the network that grade-separation is worth it at any cost.

If CP rail closes the crossing, and we have to decide between the two options, I could see the cost-benefit between a simple and reasonably cheap ped/bike tunnel looking attractive to the cost/benefit of a full vehicle underpass.

Run the same analysis on a busier and more vehicle dominated corridor and the cost/benefit for an expensive vehicle capacity upgrade may be far more obvious.