Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths

[Red Star]

Once the 15th Ave and 8th Street cycle tracks are complete. I'd like the city to implement the following:

1. Turn 5th street into a one-way street and extend the cycle track to the Elbow River

2. Construct a Cycle Track on 1st Street from the Bow River to the Elbow River:

3. Construct a cycle track on the north side of 5th Ave from the West End to Bridgeland.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Ya, what is with the future traffic light poles being positioned right in front of where the cycle track should cross Macleod Trail? That seems dumb. Am I missing something here?

I think the idea is to dismount at the intersection and or at least slow down.

I did find it funny the person in the article about the 15th Ave bike lane complaining about how they have to think when driving down the avenue now. People think driving is supposed be easy and involve no critical thinking. That's not how I see it, forcing people to slow down and pay attention is what traffic calming should do.

 

[kora]

IMO 15th and 14th should have been managed with speed humps, diverters, and daylighting.

They are inherently slow and quiet streets already. Create the expectation that a motorist should never even have the opportunity to pass a bike on here, because a motorist should never even drive more than 2 consecutive blocks.

They did this successfully in Victoria and it radically reduced car traffic on the street. Local access for cars was unaffected. On Vancouver St and Richardson St they deadended the street for cars and replaced it with a small plaza of sorts in the middle of the street complete with sidewalks and bike lanes for through access. This is perfect for those quiet Beltline streets.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Once the 15th Ave and 8th Street cycle tracks are complete. I'd like the city to implement the following:

1. Turn 5th street into a one-way street and extend the cycle track to the Elbow River


2. Construct a Cycle Track on 1st Street from the Bow River to the Elbow River:


3. Construct a cycle track on the north side of 5th Ave from the West End to Bridgeland.

Those would be great top see. Especially 5th street all the way to Elbow. For the one downtown, myself I would like to see it go through 6th ave and into EV and connecting to the main river pathway. But I can see the benefits of 5th also.

 

[trtcttc]

They did this successfully in Victoria and it radically reduced car traffic on the street. Local access for cars was unaffected. On Vancouver St and Richardson St they deadended the street for cars and replaced it with a small plaza of sorts in the middle of the street complete with sidewalks and bike lanes for through access. This is perfect for those quiet Beltline streets.

View attachment 677120View attachment 677118

The city did something like that in the Balmoral Circus Park redesign and quite a few of the Kensington streets are deadended. Agreed the city should be doing more of these.

 

[kora]

The city did something like that in the Balmoral Circus Park redesign and quite a few of the Kensington streets are deadended. Agreed the city should be doing more of these.

The Richardson St. example is more like the Kensington context. The Vancouver St. example is more applicable to how we can change the Beltline for the better. When I think about it, the Beaulieu Gardens park already provides a great example of what could be. 6 Street was shut off between 13 and 14 Avenue. Let's have more of these great urban spaces

 

[Harpz]

1. Turn 5th street into a one-way street and extend the cycle track to the Elbow River

I think 5th can still work as a two way road, with the cycle track extended from 17th to the river.

To be honest I have no idea how the 5th st cycle route at 17th ave was approved though. When traveling south to continue on 5th st you need to:

1. Cross the northbound cycle lane
2. ride your bike onto the sidewalk at a very busy pedestrian corner
3. cross the north side of the intersection to the west
4. cross the west side of the intersection to the south

At the very least they should have built one of those waiting areas for cyclists to use when waiting to cross the road, like they have when traveling west on the 12th ave track at 5th street. Better yet would be a cycle light which allows cyclists to use that southbound cycle lane and make a diagonal cross to continue onto southbound 5th on the right side of the road, similar to 50th ave and 5th st at the corner of Chinook Centre.

I'm probably bringing up a grievance here from a while ago in the thread, but I just cannot believe this one every time I use this intersection.

 

[potatopizzafan]

I think 5th can still work as a two way road, with the cycle track extended from 17th to the river.

To be honest I have no idea how the 5th st cycle route at 17th ave was approved though. When traveling south to continue on 5th st you need to:

1. Cross the northbound cycle lane
2. ride your bike onto the sidewalk at a very busy pedestrian corner
3. cross the north side of the intersection to the west
4. cross the west side of the intersection to the south

At the very least they should have built one of those waiting areas for cyclists to use when waiting to cross the road, like they have when traveling west on the 12th ave track at 5th street. Better yet would be a cycle light which allows cyclists to use that southbound cycle lane and make a diagonal cross to continue onto southbound 5th on the right side of the road, similar to 50th ave and 5th st at the corner of Chinook Centre.

I'm probably bringing up a grievance here from a while ago in the thread, but I just cannot believe this one every time I use this intersection.

Yeah its so dumb, and what most people do is just cross 17th on the east side when the pedestrian light comes on, then go onto the sidewalk, then cross 5th at some point when the coast is clear. Its a gong show.

 

[CBBarnett]

The bike lane is already going to Macleod, they finished building a new intersection across it connecting to the CTrain at vicpark
View attachment 676991

Ya, what is with the future traffic light poles being positioned right in front of where the cycle track should cross Macleod Trail? That seems dumb. Am I missing something here?

This is hardly our worst designed corner, but to deep-dive into this one, here's my argument of what might be going on:

If I was to hazard a guess - it’s an outcome of the block-by-block battle in roadway design that pits the corner curve radii, drainage flows and pedestrian/cycling desire lines against each other.

Simplifying, but the three positions are roughly this:

1. Cyclists and pedestrians: desire to just cross straight with no deviation of the path of travel. To do this, you'd need the pathway to hit the curb at 90 degree angle, meaning the corner curve has to be much smaller, effectively a right angle squared corner. We can see the wheelchair ramps do this, including the one crossing 15th Avenue, which also blocks the direct path of the cycling path. The reason this is done is probably because for whatever reason they wanted to fit two-way traffic on this block (but 1-way on the rest of the corridor). This means they need another lane, and can't fit a bump-out here so ramp gets pushed back into the pathway.
2. Drivers vehicle and truck turning: design is to allow for vehicles to make a right-hand turn at an assumed speed, while importantly, assuming the design vehicle is a big, poorly turning truck. To do this, this pushes the curve wider to allow for that larger vehicle so it doesn't drive up on the sidewalk. Larger curve radius is preferred to accommodate this and we see countless examples of these wide, sweeping corners all over the city. In this specific case of MacLeod and 15th it's interesting though - there are no turn movements to assume here - Macleod is a one-way northbound, so no vehicle will ever make that right-hand turn. Why we don't do nearly right-angles on corners in these situation are unclear to me.
3. Stormwater: desire is to move the water from the centre of the road to the drains. Calgary has bizarrely "steep" roads - where the middle of the roadway is much higher than the curb compared to other cities. It's never been clear to me why we do this - perhaps someone a long time ago got terrified of ice so really wants the road to drain fast (doesn't explain why Montreal or all other winter cities have "flatter" roads though). The result of the geometry often means the lowest point in near the corner of two intersecting roads, which we see here, directly in the path of the cycling pathway. Now it's possible to fix this and relocate the drain - but it's very expensive and would probably be charged to the cost of the project (the cycling improvement project). So the cycling project has to do a big trade-off - spend a huge portion of the budget moving drains around or compromise and get more pathway improvements overall. The question remains why we should be putting drains in these critically important spots in the first place - many other cities simply don't have this problem.

All this pushing and pulling of desires ultimately moves the corner curve back and creates a more sweeping corner than is necessary for cycling and pedestrian crossings. This is the root of the problem as it forces the traffic signal pole back even further, now even more in the way of the path of travel. Unclear if this is the case here, but sometimes this is exacerbated further because the base of the pole actually conflicts with the underground stormwater system location so the pole gets shoved in an ever more seemingly random spot (due to conflicts beneath the ground). Calgary also uses bizarrely large gravity bases for the street poles, so they stick out more than other places and takes an extra 10 -30 cm of real estate from the sidewalk, again exacerbating the problem for sidewalk and pathway users.

So best guess in this specific case, is it's an unwillingness to move a drain that caused this problem, exacerbated by road corner designs that aren't flexible to acknowledge there's no need for a curved corners here at all as there are no turn movements possible that require them.

Other cities just do something like the below with a drain in the roadway, meaning you don't need a curb at all. Unlocks part of the gordian knot by getting the drains out of the way, and uses a narrowing pole so sidewalk is less disrupted even if the pole remains in the path of travel. Also most places have lower-height curbs than Calgary, further minimize the issue.

We just tend to have overly-rigid, overly-engineered standards for corner design which, unfortunately, does not favour pedestrian and cycling objectives.

 

[outoftheice]

Speaking of odd design, has anyone been through the intersection at 15 Ave and 11 St SW recently? I had a buddy venting about the poor design of this in regards to the cycle tracks but haven't seen it for myself.

 

[Red Star]

Speaking of odd design, has anyone been through the intersection at 15 Ave and 11 St SW recently? I had a buddy venting about poor the poor design of this in regards to the cycle tracks but haven't seen it for myself.

Yeah.

I'm really interest to see how it will function once the 15th Ave cycle track opens up.

 

[whatchyyc]

Why we don't do nearly right-angles on corners in these situation are unclear to me.

The only one I've seen before is a corner at 33 Ave and 22 St in Marda Loop

 

[CBBarnett]

The only one I've seen before is a corner at 33 Ave and 22 St in Marda Loop

I think what other cities do - particularly the ones where they have substantial pre-car development as a legacy - is when they assume a truck won't turn down a local street, they really mean that and set the design vehicle and speed to such low numbers as to render the curve effectively a right-angle corner. These older cities might not be that progressive in a design sense either - they just have so many narrow streets examples from the pre-car era that they can't really ignore the fact that tight corners and narrow streets do indeed still work in 2025.

We have fewer examples of narrow streets with tight corners, and I think are generally seem as a exception, not an example in which to emulate. We seem to ignore or discount real examples that work quite easily, instead opting for yet another custom-designed corner with bizarre one-off geometry.

It's a bizarre part of local street design culture and industry - we have something that works fine for 100+ years and uses way less space and resources, it's seen as aberration, not the bloated over-built monstrosities that clearly cost more, kill more and are generally unpleasant to be on.

Another thing on the long list in city design projects that fit in the category: "this thing is really great and a loved asset in the community. Let's make sure we never build another one!"

 

[Surrealplaces]

Bell: Danielle Smith government 'very serious' about a bike lane crackdown

Alberta Premier Smith's government now more committed to stop the growing number of bike lanes and remove some lanes in Calgary and Edmonton

calgaryherald.com

This will probably put people in an ornery mood. another dumb article from the village idiot, but it's a good reminder of why people need to get out and vote next election.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Mayoral candidate Jeff Davison said he'll pause bike lane development, what a fact-less, go where the wind takes you position that is.