Courtyard 33 | 21.64m | 6s | RNDSQR | 5468796 Architecture

What's the consensus?

  • Great

    Votes: 9 16.7%

  • Good

    Votes: 21 38.9%

  • Okay

    Votes: 14 25.9%

  • Not Great

    Votes: 3 5.6%

  • Terrible

    Votes: 7 13.0%
  • Total voters
    54
Surrealplaces said:
33rd is brutal. I don't know if it's just me, but traffic seems to have gotten so much worse over the past 10-15 years....and it's nothing to do with local development at all. It's 99% cut through traffic. I'd like to see more pedestrian crossings, and even more traffic lights on 33rd. Anything to slow it down somewhat.
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It's gotten worse over time, at least from the 90's when my girlfriend was living there.
 
Surrealplaces said:
33rd is brutal. I don't know if it's just me, but traffic seems to have gotten so much worse over the past 10-15 years....and it's nothing to do with local development at all. It's 99% cut through traffic. I'd like to see more pedestrian crossings, and even more traffic lights on 33rd. Anything to slow it down somewhat.
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northbound traffic cant make a left turn onto 17th ave. doesnt leave many options to access crowchild from that part of the city.

also wrt to it becoming busier recently they have closed 26th ave and 37th street so thats funnelling more traffic to 33rd. 37th st sidewalks being completely redone on the east side of the street.
 
1875 said:
northbound traffic cant make a left turn onto 17th ave. doesnt leave many options to access crowchild from that part of the city.

also wrt to it becoming busier recently they have closed 26th ave and 37th street so thats funnelling more traffic to 33rd. 37th st sidewalks being completely redone on the east side of the street.
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Weird, you used to be able to exit off Crowchild and make a left at 17th. When did they change that?
 
1875 said:
you can turn left off 17th in both directions. you cant turn left onto 17th in both directions.

sorry, omitted from 14st.
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I'm just trying to picture 17th and Crowchild, but IIRC, you can exit Crowchild in either direction and turn onto 17th, and if on 17th either eastbound or westbound, you can exit to Crowchild in either direction. Unless of course they change something recently. I can see closing 26th and 37th adding some traffic. With the Elbow river valley where it is it cuts off a lot of east-west traffic, so it's not surprising 33rd would get busier. The city needs to look at controlling it better so traffic uses Glenmore or Bow Trail more often.
 
1875 said:
yes you can access 17th in both directions coming off crowchild. its just not being able to turn left onto 17th from 14th makes accessing crowchild less convenient from that direction.
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Yeah, but there are 11 other streets between 14 and Crowchild where you can turn left onto 17th Ave. That said, it is extremely annoying that Richmond Road (with the only lighted intersection on 17 ave) is not connected to 20 st (the main North/South corridor in Marda Loop). You have to do a weird little jog over one block to get from 20 st to Richmond. Almost as annoying as the fact that all of the streets are misaligned at 34 Ave.
 
Silence&Motion said:
Yeah, but there are 11 other streets between 14 and Crowchild where you can turn left onto 17th Ave. That said, it is extremely annoying that Richmond Road (with the only lighted intersection on 17 ave) is not connected to 20 st (the main North/South corridor in Marda Loop). You have to do a weird little jog over one block to get from 20 st to Richmond. Almost as annoying as the fact that all of the streets are misaligned at 34 Ave.
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Exactly.
 
Silence&Motion said:
Yeah, but there are 11 other streets between 14 and Crowchild where you can turn left onto 17th Ave. That said, it is extremely annoying that Richmond Road (with the only lighted intersection on 17 ave) is not connected to 20 st (the main North/South corridor in Marda Loop). You have to do a weird little jog over one block to get from 20 st to Richmond. Almost as annoying as the fact that all of the streets are misaligned at 34 Ave.
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In an alternative history the whole SW traffic patterns could have been different. I posted the 2020 and 1966 aerial photos below from the city's website.

It seems that Crowchild is the prime suspect in the search for blame for both Marda Loop's cut-through traffic problem and the weird Richmond Road / 17th Avenue issue. Richmond Road dumps into Crowchild and 33rd because we didn't want it to continue on the original diagonal path so we could fit Crowchild in and a grade separation. Between the two pictures, 100+ homes were lost to accommodate all sorts of car infrastructure so that houses further out could have better commutes (Crowchild, bridges, interchanges, turning lanes etc.) A rough count of just the houses lost between 17th Avenue and 33rd due to Crowchild expansion is greater than the number of new units being built for this CY33, for example.

The reason car traffic is frustrating in the whole area is precisely because we tried to accommodate more of it for decades. Sure, there's always small tweaks and improvements we can make to make traffic flow better, but the solution to all our problems isn't more sacrifices to the false idol of forever improving car throughput. If it was, 54 years and hundreds of millions in road investment between the two pictures would have fixed everything already.

1624557709961.png


1966 - Pre-Crowchild
1624557785720.png
 
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