Nimbus
Active Member
No no, McLean is at the level of reading Clive Cussler novels at best and is probably scared of books like The Paper Bag Princess.
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Calgary Bike Lanes and Bike Paths
- Thread starter Cowtown
- Start date
I support bike lanes, and I think they have numerous benefits, but I also think that the idea they would remove enough traffic from any single road enough to make any material difference in the paving budget is wishful thinking. I know that most road wear is caused by heavy trucks and delivery vans anyway, which everyone needs on the roads one way or the other.
More than that, I think this idea that people who disagree with you just aren't thinking for themselves is so lazy. It absolves you from actually understanding other perspectives. I see conservatives do it to, say, NDP voters, and vice versa. It does not increase understanding.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I agree that you cannot make the less traffic argument to drivers who because of population increase don't feel that there is less traffic.
The argument, to me, is that bike lanes might not be for you but they are still used by people. The same way you might not take the bus but that doesn't mean your portion of property taxes shouldn't go to transit. This isn't choosing between the public or catholic school boards. We're trying to live in a society.
I suspect this effort will go nowhere. There are enough votes on council to not let an initiative like this actually make it into the budget. Dan will get what he wants and be the hero to his base for championing this but "the others on council who don't know what Calgarians want," will keep the 5A funding (which I actually believe is separate?) alive at least until next year's election.
Roads are below the national average because they have been underfunded, scapegoating bike lanes is easy. Taking responsibility for underfunding roads is hard.
The argument, to me, is that bike lanes might not be for you but they are still used by people. The same way you might not take the bus but that doesn't mean your portion of property taxes shouldn't go to transit. This isn't choosing between the public or catholic school boards. We're trying to live in a society.
I suspect this effort will go nowhere. There are enough votes on council to not let an initiative like this actually make it into the budget. Dan will get what he wants and be the hero to his base for championing this but "the others on council who don't know what Calgarians want," will keep the 5A funding (which I actually believe is separate?) alive at least until next year's election.
Roads are below the national average because they have been underfunded, scapegoating bike lanes is easy. Taking responsibility for underfunding roads is hard.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
As you said it's a false dichotomy, set up for political value. You could divert all money planned to be spent on pathways and bike lanes for the next 4 years and it wouldn't even close a single year gap in the roads maintenance budget.
Most ironically, lots of bike infrastructure gets stalled or cancelled because the road it's planned for is up for repaving and maintenance in a future year so the corridor is skipped or forgotten. The repaving schedule seems to have an in-ordinate control over the timing and location of bicycle improvements. In one sense this makes sense to align things, but in another sense it's totally backward - essentially letting maintenance drive project locations, not demand, demonstrated need or long-term network planning.
If road maintenance is so important and we actually want to address the issue at scale, we can divert capital from new and expanded roads to maintaining existing ones as every year we spend hundreds of millions on new road projects. Or we could cancel a bunch of smaller but ultimately "nice to have" road amenities like sound walls. Or make all roads smaller and narrower everywhere so there's less pavement to maintain. Or slash the number of and design standards of arterial and skeletal roads so we are closer to a normal city in proportion of these roads to the overall network and they are cheaper to build. Or sell off all "future-proofing" road setbacks we will never use, for interchanges that will never exist. Or simplify our intersections so they aren't always huge with have complicated turn movements, tons of signal equipment and cost $1M+ each. Or raise taxes. or ... etc.
Fun fact: Calgary has about 550,000 properties and 17,000 lane-kilometres of roads. Assuming my math is correct, that works out to about 100 square metres of road per household that needs maintenance, or about the size of large 2 bedroom apartment.
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Interesting. I tried this for San Francisco... 360842 households and 5383 lane-miles (8663 lane-km) = 72 sq m/775 sq ft per household.
trtcttc
Active Member
For these kinds of analysis how much of it is influenced by city boundaries? And then I assume they only count cities of a certain size, otherwise small towns would all be top of the list. Vancouver may be low, but is Langley? Similarly, Toronto will be low but is Oakville? The US is even more divided, that's why their city populations are typically lower than what you'd expect.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Boundaries can matter, both in the way you describe and in other ways.
A big one is if you run out of greenfield - or sprawled in a previous era that was less generously car-oriented with smaller road standards - growth typically doesn't come with much road expansion. As long as you still grow with intensification, you are likely to reduce your total road assets per household. Most older central cities have this - even a sub-geography like the Beltline has this happening, where the population grew significantly and the road network remains relatively unchanged the past 30 years. So it does matter where the boundary is.
But... *in coming deep-dive/rant warning*
Just because you mentioned it, I wanted to dive into Oakville because I have never thought of it before. Data is from this report ( 2015 Traffic System Report ) - Oakville claims to have 1,900 lane-kilometres of roads and 125 signalized intersections. Oakville is a famously sprawly car-dependent suburb in the GTA that saw it's rapid growth phase in the car-friendly 1970s - 2000s, much like most of suburban Calgary.
I was curious on how we compare to Oakville, so for some surface level analysis, let's run the numbers. I'll do my best to line up dates, but this information is from a few sources and a few different years. So take it as reasonably, but not perfectly accurate hot-take based on some googling. Calgary's numbers are from 2021 to 2023, Oakville is 2015 and 2016 depending on the source. Here's the comparison:
So clearly, just being car-dependent suburb isn't actually enough - by these measures Oakville has fewer lane-kilometres, and fewer signalized intersections per household (and property taxpayer). So at the surface level, Calgarians are supporting more road infrastructure per house than Oakville-(ians?). What's going on here?
Among many possible theories, the one that jumps out to me is arterials and skeletal roads. Calgary's love-affair with this style of road is unusual in other parts of Canada. It's a huge source of our outsized car infrastructure total - Crowchild, Glenmore, MacLeod, Anderson and our countless multi-lane arterials everywhere. Oakville - and many other cities and suburbs, simply don't have anything quite like these, and no where near as frequently.
Further - and also unique to Calgary - all these huge arterials are built by the city and operated by the city. In Oakville, many of the larger roads are actually the region's responsibility so are not counted in their totals. Here's a map from the traffic study. Blue lines are regionally operated:
In fact, I am not even sure if Oakville maintains a single 4-lane road, although I assume some tax-sharing goes on to fund this stuff. This is a data caveat to remember, but also opens up a critical political point on all this - why does the Calgary invest it's own taxpayer money in Calgary to support regional travel movements? Isn't that outside it's mandate?
Historically Calgary seems to have done this. So our numbers look worse - but they are actually worse too. Many of our lane kilometres are built and maintained by Calgary taxpayers to benefit non-Calgary drivers. Much of our future-proofed right-of-ways on the edge of the city are only ever needed if we assume regional traffic demand triggers road expansion in an area - we are removing tax-paying land potential to accommodate future traffic of non-taxpayers.
As an example, I found a dozen wasted lane-kilometres right here in the far NW in Rocky Ridge - none of these roads need to be 4 lanes. None of the right-of-ways need to be preserved - future expansion in this direction is not feasible and it's low-density acreages of Bearspaw everywhere north and west of here. Apart from rigidly applied generous road width standards, there's no reason for all this infrastructure that Calgary taxpayers will maintain in perpetuity:
The other one is the size and complexity of intersections considered "normal". Here's a big 4-lane meets 4-lane intersection in Oakville - about 38m diagonally across, turn lanes on all directions. 12 total traffic lights - and importantly - no right-turn slip lanes:
Here's a reasonably similar Calgary one (88th Ave and 60 Street NE). It's about 60 metres diagonal when accommodating the lanes for right-turns. Interestingly, it's got a few single lanes that are double-wide (assumes future dual-turns) and while it doesn't have protected turns yet in all directions has 12 traffic signals too.
Of course, it has the Calgary-classic right-turn slip lanes on every corner - this balloons the paved surface amount, but also adds complexity and cost - all those additional curbs to build and maintain!
I could go deeper but that's enough for now. In conclusion:
Partly, our outsized infrastructure is a product of itself - we "need" bigger roads and more costly intersections, because we have bigger roads. But it isn't some immutable law of physics - we are choosing to have really expensive and huge infrastructure everywhere and then are shocked when it turns out it costs a lot - in absolute numbers and per taxpayer - to maintain. A likely source of our excess is the city historically oversizing everything, in every area, for dubious local benefits.
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lemongrab
Active Member
A lot of good stuff to unpack there. One thing that comes to mind is how many residential roads we have running parallel to arterials
So in addition to 5 lanes/20m wide Bow Tr, you've got another pair of 7-8m wide roads and 6m of grass median (and a sound wall on the other side). Because who wants to live right beside a 60 limit road where people often drive 70kph when its clear enough?
So in addition to 5 lanes/20m wide Bow Tr, you've got another pair of 7-8m wide roads and 6m of grass median (and a sound wall on the other side). Because who wants to live right beside a 60 limit road where people often drive 70kph when its clear enough?
jhappy77
Active Member
Or you get areas like this near where I grew up:
Scenic Acres Blvd never has much traffic, and is only 50 km/h, but it obviously needs 2 lanes in each direction, PLUS slip lanes, PLUS 2 separate ultra wide residential roads on either side. The amount of excess is quite ridiculous. I've often thought it could be a good idea to reconfigure this whole stretch and add a strip of townhomes (it's walking distance to the LRT even!)
Scenic Acres Blvd never has much traffic, and is only 50 km/h, but it obviously needs 2 lanes in each direction, PLUS slip lanes, PLUS 2 separate ultra wide residential roads on either side. The amount of excess is quite ridiculous. I've often thought it could be a good idea to reconfigure this whole stretch and add a strip of townhomes (it's walking distance to the LRT even!)
HudsonA08
New Member
certainly not very 'scenic' along there 
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
Ahh, the arterial road to nowhere, the 80's must've been a fun time. This road dead ends after one kilometre. There is so much opportunity to reimagine these roads through this age of communities. Removing the centre boulevard, keeping the same lane diet but tightening up the lanes to 50km/h widths and you have a large green corridor through the centre of a community. In some places it would be very easy to create space for homes. You do one or two of these a year and after 10 years you've made some headway.
trtcttc
Active Member
Thanks for the deep dive, was an interesting read. Partially regarding the arterial roads, Calgary also has more industrial compared to Oakville, so dividing purely by residential is probably under counting road users (industrial users pay taxes as well). I do agree Calgary has a lot of arterial roads and at a minimum, E-W crossings like Glenmore should be uploaded to the province. It's probably inertia more than anything and the only way we'll get rid of that is if there's lots of news about the poor quality of the road just before an election, and the AB government as a vote buying measure decides to take over the road.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
12 Ave cycle track east of Macleod about to be reopened, they’ve repainted the lines and returned it to one-way traffic. Also a pic of my beautiful girl on the Lindsay Park path 
Mountain Man
Senior Member
trtcttc
Active Member
I'm supportive of bike lanes but I find this type of "research" misleading. It's not the bike lanes that made the drive faster, but rather the installation of a left turn lane, which is possible without any installation of bike lanes. And looking at specific roadways obscures the impact on other roadways. Similar to how an additional lane induces demand, a reduction in lane would reduce demand. I find it disappointing we have to create these somewhat manufactured data to support bike lanes when it really should be an equity argument. We gave 30,000 cars 3 lanes, and there was 10,000 bikers on this route per week so they should also get a lane.
"For example, in New York City, the authors shared figures from the city's transportation department that showed in 2010, before bike lanes were installed on a major midtown thoroughfare, it took the average car 4.5 minutes to travel from 96th Street to 77th Street. After the bike lanes were installed, it took just three minutes — a 35 per cent decrease. One of the reasons they cited for the change was the installation of a left-turn lane, which not only kept cyclists moving but also stopped cars from holding up traffic."