11th Street Underpass | ?m | ?s | City of Calgary

[Woosh]

I wish Calgarians were as passionate about pedestrian safety as they were about vehicular access.


I'll gladly take making downtown more frustrating to drive in if it means fewer cars are speeding through the city and hitting people.

 

[Beltline_B]

I’d love to see less cars and/or slower traffic around the core, but 11th isn’t a road that has a lot of traffic or high speeds and for a road that’s not very busy. It’s highly useful.

Personally I’d rather it stayed open to vehicle traffic, if only one lane per direction.
There are a number of other roads around downtown that could be changed to slow down traffic or decrease the volume.

 

[Woosh]

There are a number of other roads around downtown that could be changed to slow down traffic or decrease the volume.

Specifically which street would you support closing down to cars that wouldn't face the exact same criticism?

 

[BKha]

Specifically which street would you support closing down to cars that wouldn't face the exact same criticism?

Why do we need to close down roads? Nobody wants that. Many of us would like to see downtown roads made nicer and more pedestrian friendly, but nobody is advocating closing them.
Some would like to see cars go away altogether, but it is never going to happen. Cars are here to stay forever, you’d be better focusing on ways to make the pedestrian realm improved, rather than the binary approach of cars or no cars.

 

[Woosh]

Why do we need to close down roads? Nobody wants that.

Many of us would like to see downtown roads made nicer and more pedestrian friendly, but nobody is advocating closing them.

Weird thing to say to someone who is actively advocating for closing down the road.

 

[Chinook Arch]

Putting a playground there seems incredibly stupid to me. Allow for cars and active modes, but get rid of this "destination" nonsense.

Agreed, for one thing the park will never ever get used. It’s absolutely the least desirable place to put a park in my opinion. You couldn’t find a worse place to put one. That and closing 11th to vehicle traffic is also stupid.

 

[Beltline_B]

Specifically which street would you support closing down to cars that wouldn't face the exact same criticism?

I wouldn’t choose to close any roads down. I want to see better pedestrian and cycling infrastructure but I’m not supporting the closing any roads.
If I had to pick closing one, I would say close 17th Ave. during the summer I’d be fine with that.

 

[Dkeirle]

Agreed, for one thing the park will never ever get used. It’s absolutely the least desirable place to put a park in my opinion. You couldn’t find a worse place to put one. That and closing 11th to vehicle traffic is also stupid.

The park isn’t a good idea, it looks good on renderings, but I agree it’s not a good place for a park. It would never get used except, as a homeless hangout, and would be an epic fail.
As far as vehicles go, I would be OK with one vehicle lane in each direction

 

[Mountain Man]

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.

 

[CBBarnett]

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:

How it should work in the city centre is this:

 

[haltcatchfire]

Specifically which street would you support closing down to cars that wouldn't face the exact same criticism?

Deerfoot.

 

[MichaelS]

It looks like a portion of 10th Street SW, between 13th and 12th Avenue SW, is in for closure:

DMap

DMap

dmap.calgary.ca

 

[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.