BMO Centre Expansion | 25m | 5s | CMLC

Zoom said:
Would you still need 50k? I don’t know anything about traffic stats but I am guessing they have been down lately due to the higher vacancy downtown, plus the amount of people working remotely.
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2019 is 50,000
2009 is 58,000
2000 is 63,000

Even in 1973 it is 42,000.

Imo an entirely reasonable road diet can be done without going from 9 lanes to 4. Going to 6 plus select turns will still provide a lot of room for amenities for other users while retaining capacity.

Plus 6 is an easy sell - lots of the corridor pinches to 6 very close by. It doesn’t need to be as large as it is as traffic coming around from spiller and 25th just aren’t as prominent as when the road was put in place
 
darwink said:
2019 is 50,000
2009 is 58,000
2000 is 63,000

Even in 1973 it is 42,000.

Imo an entirely reasonable road diet can be done without going from 9 lanes to 4. Going to 6 plus select turns will still provide a lot of room for amenities for other users while retaining capacity.

Plus 6 is an easy sell - lots of the corridor pinches to 6 very close by. It doesn’t need to be as large as it is as traffic coming around from spiller and 25th just aren’t as prominent as when the road was put in place
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Just to reiterate my earlier thought on some other thread I forget... If you were to put north and southbound on the southbound lanes and do a lane reversal you could very easily scale for capacity as needed. Start the lane reversal south of Elbow where it splits and turn the current northbound lanes into a complete street.
 
darwink said:
2019 is 50,000
2009 is 58,000
2000 is 63,000

Even in 1973 it is 42,000.

Imo an entirely reasonable road diet can be done without going from 9 lanes to 4. Going to 6 plus select turns will still provide a lot of room for amenities for other users while retaining capacity.

Plus 6 is an easy sell - lots of the corridor pinches to 6 very close by. It doesn’t need to be as large as it is as traffic coming around from spiller and 25th just aren’t as prominent as when the road was put in place
Click to expand...
6 lanes in total is fine for now, and if traffic slows down even more 20 years from now we can revisit.
 
Widening of some sidewalks along Macleod should have priority over bike lanes IMO.
Screenshot_20220603-130545_Maps.jpg
 
Duck Lightning said:
Widening of some sidewalks along Macleod should have priority over bike lanes IMO.
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The roadway is about 14.7m wide for 4 lanes = 3.675m / lane

A quick search from the American's NATCO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) website here on lane widths.

Lane widths of 10 feet ( 3.048m) are appropriate in urban areas and have a positive impact on a street's safety without impacting traffic operations. For designated truck or transit routes, one travel lane of 11 feet (3.3528m) may be used in each direction.

4 * 10 foot lanes = 12.2m roadway (save 2.5m and no vehicle capacity reduction)
4 * 11 foot lanes = 13.4m roadway (save 1.4m and no vehicle capacity reduction)

And assuming there is an actual requirement for all 4 lanes - not at all clear - you can easily get a wider sidewalk or a full pathway with a simple prioritization of it. If you go to 3 lanes you can do literally anything you want with sidewalks, bicycle lanes and trees etc.
 
CBBarnett said:
The roadway is about 14.7m wide for 4 lanes = 3.675m / lane

A quick search from the American's NATCO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) website here on lane widths.

Lane widths of 10 feet ( 3.048m) are appropriate in urban areas and have a positive impact on a street's safety without impacting traffic operations. For designated truck or transit routes, one travel lane of 11 feet (3.3528m) may be used in each direction.

4 * 10 foot lanes = 12.2m roadway (save 2.5m and no vehicle capacity reduction)
4 * 11 foot lanes = 13.4m roadway (save 1.4m and no vehicle capacity reduction)

And assuming there is an actual requirement for all 4 lanes - not at all clear - you can easily get a wider sidewalk or a full pathway with a simple prioritization of it. If you go to 3 lanes you can do literally anything you want with sidewalks, bicycle lanes and trees etc.
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I have quite a bit of experience with line marking in Calgary. Most roads (downtown excluded) are 3.5m wide or larger. Depending on speed limits lots are 3.7-4.3m. Downtown is a large variety of widths. Some of the avenues get as small as 2.6m. The city doesn’t like putting widths less that 3.3m unless it’s for a special reason
 
Golfing guy said:
I have quite a bit of experience with line marking in Calgary. Most roads (downtown excluded) are 3.5m wide or larger. Depending on speed limits lots are 3.7-4.3m. Downtown is a large variety of widths. Some of the avenues get as small as 2.6m. The city doesn’t like putting widths less that 3.3m unless it’s for a special reason
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I mean that's the whole problem in a nutshell right there. Loads of space available, way above national and international standards but a reluctance to use it because of ..... reasons?

Macleod Trail sucks and is a car sewer, but it's hardly a highway off-ramp or some situation where contextually larger lane widths are appropriate - I mean even what's in place today is too large and above standard for the urban context.

It's pure gaslighting - 4 oversized lanes stubbornly stuck to a 1970s highway manual, designed wide enough for a highway and highway speeds, but with 2,000+ people's homes metres away in all those towers and a few hundred new residents joining every couple years. On top of this, there are no plans to ever increase speeds (and therefore no plans in which wider lanes would be appropriate), nor are there any policy or land use plan in the past several decades that suggests higher speeds or widths are appropriate in this highly urban area.

Why must it always be this way? Countless policies, engineer industry best practices, and the evolving urban context all point to a different outcome but yet the lanes are too wide. For 40 years and counting. Why ? What's there logic that roads need to be wider than the national and international standards?
 
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darwink said:
2019 is 50,000
2009 is 58,000
2000 is 63,000

Even in 1973 it is 42,000.

Imo an entirely reasonable road diet can be done without going from 9 lanes to 4. Going to 6 plus select turns will still provide a lot of room for amenities for other users while retaining capacity.

Plus 6 is an easy sell - lots of the corridor pinches to 6 very close by. It doesn’t need to be as large as it is as traffic coming around from spiller and 25th just aren’t as prominent as when the road was put in place
Click to expand...
The bottleneck seems to be the 7th Ave LRT corridor, so I question why so much road capacity is needed from the south. I propose consolidating both directions of traffic on what currently provides northbound traffic on Macleod Trail. Pedestrian connectivity is already limited by the LRT tracks, so focus on opening up 1st St SE (Macleod Southbound) to other uses. Maybe the CPR underpass could be widen so that Macleoad could be 5 lanes (2 each way. Other lane used contraflow during rush hour and open to pedestrains and bikes outside rush hour).
 
Are the main hall areas (in the foreground of the last picture where the cranes currently are) going to be steel construction as well or concrete? I remember a big deal being made when the Telus Convention Centre was built that the exhibition floor needed to be able to carry high loading to support vehicles so I was kind of expecting to see a large amount of concrete construction here.
 
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