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

[Surrealplaces]

I'm happy with plenty of wide space for bikes and pedestrians and one lane of vehicle traffic each way.

 

[lemongrab]

I think most of us agree the park option is a bad idea.
As someone who cycles around downtown in the Beltline from time to time, I would love to see more infrastructure for cycling or pedestrians, but I think taking vehicle access away from 11th St. is the wrong approach. Why do we need to take away vehicle access in order to make pedestrian and cycling infrastructure better, when both can be accommodated?
Especially when 11th St. is one of the few east West crossings between downtown and the Beltline.
I feel like the people who want vehicle access closed on 11th St. want vehicle access closed everywhere if they had their way, and aren’t looking at the realistic option that all modes will be used.
Even in the two poster card cities for cycling such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen they still support all modes.

Vehicle access is going away sooner than later. The question is whether it's worth an extra $50-70M to restore it for vehicles when that happens

It's worth noting that 11th St is only 1200 meters long, from the Bow River to 17th Ave. It's not like there are a ton of trips starting and ending on that stretch. Most cars are going to end up near or past 8th/14th St sooner or later on their trip.

At low traffic times we're talking about a 1 minute penalty here. At gridlock o'clock maybe it's more like 2-4 minutes compared to the status quo - if there isn't a train crossing at that moment!

Anecdotally, I think I've run into a train 3 of the last 4 times I tried to use 11th. So I took another route and it was fine.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

Anecdotally, I think I've run into a train 3 of the last 4 times I tried to use 11th. So I took another route and it was fine.

This is probably what they saw in their traffic study. So as much as people cannot believe losing this crossing people perhaps do avoid it. I'm not pro park underpass. I'm pro scaled down 5A underpass.

 

[DiscoStu]

I'm advocating for an option that caters to all modes!

There's your problem! Like much of public discourse today, it's not enough for your side to win, it's also important for the other side to lose. For the hardcore, hating cars is part of the ideology, so it's just as important to punish drivers as it is to champion their own thing. Forget diversity of options, forget people outside of their bubble, and forget mixing-and-matching good ideas to fit the local context...it's the Amsterdam/Copenhagen wet dream or death. If we're not all cargo biking 12 months of the year, than what the hell are we even doing here?

 

[Mountain Man]

Haha yeah, everything is a zero sum game now apparently.

 

[badc0ffee]

It's worth noting that 11th St is only 1200 meters long, from the Bow River to 17th Ave. It's not like there are a ton of trips starting and ending on that stretch. Most cars are going to end up near or past 8th/14th St sooner or later on their trip.

11 St connects to Bow Trail. If you're heading west on 11 Ave SW and need to go southbound on Crowchild, you need to connect to Bow Trail/or 6 Ave SW at 11 St or east of there. You can't get there directly from 14 St and you can't get there from the Bow/Crow/10 Ave interchange south of the tracks. So without this track crossing, you cross over the tracks at 14 St, and then double back to 11 St to get on to Bow Trail.

That detour would be a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but I want to point this out as a relative common traffic movement that does involve 11 St.

Another one to consider is coming from Bow Trail into downtown. 11 St is the start of the street grid. If you destination is 5 Ave or north of it, you're probably turning north on 11 St to get there. 11 St is designed for this volume, but 10 St is not (it's full of stop signs). 9 St goes the wrong way, you can't turn north on 8 St from 9 Ave, 7 St is the wrong way again, and then 800 metres later we're at 6 St which you could use.

Again, this can all change, but it shows drivers do use this stretch of 11 St.

 

[haltcatchfire]

Probably every street could use an underpass in practice for vehicles and/or pedestrians. Pedestrians will benefit the most from additional crossings as they have such a high time penalty to go to another underpass. There's obvious benefit to drivers too, but less as drivers aren't as impacted due to higher travel speeds - they can get to an alternative route reasonably quickly.

By it comes to resources available and priority. If the choice is between $100M to get 1 vehicle underpass at 11th Street or 10 x $10M pedestrian underpasses for all remaining downtown streets without pedestrian underpasses, the pedestrian mobility improvement would be the no brainer. Of course, if we are forced to engineer pedestrian underpasses to the standards of vehicle ones (i.e. must be big enough to fit a fire truck on a bike path) then the cost savings disappears and you might as well build a single all-modes one.


I think the playground space is the red-herring here among the choices - it's practically free compared to underpass costs. Even if there was no playground, all-mode or car-free options have connectivity trade-offs and different cost impacts.

My best guess of what will actually happen is we build nothing until CP rail forces us too actually lock down a plan.

I'm not debating pedestrian vs vehicles across the broad spectrum of the corridor. 11th is a very unique situation and highly beneficial for various routes since those adjacent to it have limitations as brought up and added to by badc0ffee.

11 St connects to Bow Trail. If you're heading west on 11 Ave SW and need to go southbound on Crowchild, you need to connect to Bow Trail/or 6 Ave SW at 11 St or east of there. You can't get there directly from 14 St and you can't get there from the Bow/Crow/10 Ave interchange south of the tracks. So without this track crossing, you cross over the tracks at 14 St, and then double back to 11 St to get on to Bow Trail.

That detour would be a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but I want to point this out as a relative common traffic movement that does involve 11 St.

Another one to consider is coming from Bow Trail into downtown. 11 St is the start of the street grid. If you destination is 5 Ave or north of it, you're probably turning north on 11 St to get there. 11 St is designed for this volume, but 10 St is not (it's full of stop signs). 9 St goes the wrong way, you can't turn north on 8 St from 9 Ave, 7 St is the wrong way again, and then 800 metres later we're at 6 St which you could use.

Again, this can all change, but it shows drivers do use this stretch of 11 St.

Another limitation is no southbound access to 14th from westbound Memorial which makes 11th St. (after you take the Louise Bridge) very useful.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Vehicle access is going away sooner than later. The question is whether it's worth an extra $50-70M to restore it for vehicles when that happens
It's worth noting that 11th St is only 1200 meters long, from the Bow River to 17th Ave. It's not like there are a ton of trips starting and ending on that stretch. Most cars are going to end up near or past 8th/14th St sooner or later on their trip.
At low traffic times we're talking about a 1 minute penalty here. At gridlock o'clock maybe it's more like 2-4 minutes compared to the status quo - if there isn't a train crossing at that moment!

For me using 8th street or 14th street is usually more of a 5-10 minute penalty, even in light traffic. 5-10 minutes doesn't seem like much, but the basic goal is still getting all modes moving efficiently, so for me, I'm fine with seeing all modes using 11th st.. As a guy who cycles around that area a fair bit I'll be happy as long as the pedestrian/cycle infrastructure is improved. Realistically I know cars won't be going away, and I'm not losing sleep over it, as long as all modes get improved.

 

[bgarneau]

Anyone have any info on when we might expect the 3rd tower to start construction?

How dare you try to keep this thread on topic!



I live in Sunalta and only ever use the 11th crossing (by car) to get to Staples - but that's if I'm coming from Beltline, which is most easily accessed vis 12th - coming from the SW, you will always take 14th street and 9th Ave to get to downtown.

I think people are so conditioned to getting held up at the train that they avoid this crossing altogether - losing this wouldn't have a net impact IMO

 

[maestro]

For me using 8th street or 14th street is usually more of a 5-10 minute penalty, even in light traffic. 5-10 minutes doesn't seem like much, but the basic goal is still getting all modes moving efficiently, so for me, I'm fine with seeing all modes using 11th st.. As a guy who cycles around that area a fair bit I'll be happy as long as the pedestrian/cycle infrastructure is improved. Realistically I know cars won't be going away, and I'm not losing sleep over it, as long as all modes get improved.

I'm not sure how you can realistically improve all modes within the existing surface infrastructure framework and the rapid increase in number of travellers as the population grows. Widening sidewalks and adding bike lanes will remove lanes of traffic and that need to remove lanes of traffic may play into whether a sidewalk is widened or a bike lane is added in addition to a widened sidewalk. I can see prioritising avenues for either cars, transit, bikes and/or, pedestrians providing greater efficiency of movement in the context of not enough room. 11th may be one of those streets for everything but cars

The number of cars on the road will only increase as hundreds of thousands move to the city regardless if the percentage of the population owning cars declines.

 

[trtcttc]

I'm not sure how you can realistically improve all modes within the existing surface infrastructure framework and the rapid increase in number of travellers as the population grows. Widening sidewalks and adding bike lanes will remove lanes of traffic and that need to remove lanes of traffic may play into whether a sidewalk is widened or a bike lane is added in addition to a widened sidewalk. I can see prioritising avenues for either cars, transit, bikes and/or, pedestrians providing greater efficiency of movement in the context of not enough room. 11th may be one of those streets for everything but cars

The number of cars on the road will only increase as hundreds of thousands move to the city regardless if the percentage of the population owning cars declines.

Isn't that why the majority of people have a preference for reducing to 3 lanes (one per direction + 1 turning) with widened sidewalk and bike lanes? As long as the street have a wide sidewalk and protected bike lanes, why does it matter if there is a vehicle lane as well? If we are in a situation where there is not enough room on the sidewalk and bikes are backed up in traffic, then we can eliminate the car lane for these other lanes. That's clearly not the case so I'm not sure why it's so necessary to remove the vehicle lane for no reason.

 

[whatchyyc]

I would rather the city save money and build a cheaper active modes underpass, and the park thing can be up for debate. There's no need to spend nearly $100M on a connection cars don't even use that often relative to other roads. From 1996 to 2019 Calgary gained 500k population but vehicle count downtown dropped by 8%, while transit and walking doubled and cycling tripled. There's no room to meaningfully scale car access so I'm not losing sleep over one underpass.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I'm not sure how you can realistically improve all modes within the existing surface infrastructure framework and the rapid increase in number of travellers as the population grows. Widening sidewalks and adding bike lanes will remove lanes of traffic and that need to remove lanes of traffic may play into whether a sidewalk is widened or a bike lane is added in addition to a widened sidewalk. I can see prioritising avenues for either cars, transit, bikes and/or, pedestrians providing greater efficiency of movement in the context of not enough room. 11th may be one of those streets for everything but cars

The number of cars on the road will only increase as hundreds of thousands move to the city regardless if the percentage of the population owning cars declines.

11th currently has 4 lanes and would be reduced to one in each direction, and maybe a middle lane for left hand turns.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I would rather the city save money and build a cheaper active modes underpass, and the park thing can be up for debate. There's no need to spend nearly $100M on a connection cars don't even use that often relative to other roads. From 1996 to 2019 Calgary gained 500k population but vehicle count downtown dropped by 8%, while transit and walking doubled and cycling tripled. There's no room to meaningfully scale car access so I'm not losing sleep over one underpass.

Just for verification purposes, what are the two cost estimates for Recommended and alternate option? I recall seeing them here somewhere on SRC, but can't seem to find them.

 

[lemongrab]

I was curious about relative traffic in the other underpasses. (important caveat: these are not from the same day or month, but pretty sure they are all between Tue-Thurs within the last 2 years or so)

NB / SB

14th = 22700 / 24500

11th= 2300 / 6300

8th = 2800 / 2600 (I wondered if this might be an anomaly so I checked the previous study which was 2018 = 3100 / 2600)

5th = 0 / 12500

4th = 10400 / 0

1st SW = 5800 / 5300

1st SE = 0 / 24800

Macleod NB = 22000 / 0

4th St SE = 3900/7600 TUE; 4200 / 7400 THU; 3500/7000 SAT. - All 3 studies were Flames home games from last October...couldn't find an event free day but didn't look very hard


In total there are about 14k more cars going SB than NB (but again, flawed total from a bunch of different days). I would guess that is drivers using 9 Ave to get to the beltline or Macleod Tr, but then their return trip uses another route? This applies to me fairly often as I live near Bow Tr. There's probably more to it than that...


1st SW and 8th St SW are similar to some degree, but of course 8th goes under 9th with a funky entrance from the west approach, but 8th should have a lot more capacity available.

Unfortunately there is a data hole at 11th St and 10 Ave, so we can't really determine where those 6300 SB cars are going

22 Aug 2024 Rush Hours:

Only a 6 hour count available from 2017 for the 11th St and 10 Ave, though the numbers line up pretty well with the 2024 rush hour above

Hard to make any big conclusions here, but we are talking about 2-5 cars per minute NB, and 7-8 cars per minute SB