AtlanticAvenue
Active Member
Spending the money now to not regret it later seems like a no brainer.
Green Line LRT | ?m | ?s | Calgary Transit
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Tunnelling only 16th means two awkward tunnel portals on Centre St, instead of one north of 16th and one tucked away heading into the escarpment. Penny wise and pound foolish.
darwink
Senior Member
Of interest, every intersection between 15th and Samis which has traffic movements which would potentially be restricted by the tracks, has a traffic count approximately equal to the single southbound centre st bridge crossing. According to City turning movement counts.
So in a cost constrained world I think Samis is more important than all the others (most that do all the others will be impacted by Samis as well).
In comparison, not grade separating on 16th Ave N would impact 40,680 movements.
That is one reason why I view not having a level crossing at Samis as a nice to have (over the nice to have underground entirely, but not high priority), not a must have. It is literally an order of magnitude.
darwink
Senior Member
If you want a 9th Ave Station it is a potential option. I'd be fine with dropping the station in exchange for a much better 16th Ave. You'd still need an emergency exit and ventilation building though due to the tunnel length, and those are cost drivers.
AJX
Active Member
Personally, I’d rather we spent the money now and did the tunnel under 9th ave, even if it meant, roughing in a station and finishing the station later. My concern is the same as the others, I can’t imagine the cost and hassle of trying to do it 20 years from now when we can spend the $100million today and get it done.
I know it’s not cheap, but it’s such a mishmash trying to do it the other way.
I know it’s not cheap, but it’s such a mishmash trying to do it the other way.
outoftheice
Active Member
If we have the same amount of traffic moving through the intersection of 16th Ave and Centre St 20 years from now as we do today, we will have failed at city building. With the right infrastructure investments, there should be far fewer cars moving through that intersection in the future than there is today. We should be planning and investing in our city so that in the future people will be asking 'why on earth did they think of spending hundreds of millions of dollars extra to grade separate that intersection when it's not even that busy'?
MichaelS
Senior Member
there will be more cars, simply because there will be more people. Even with our policy targets of 50% of all trips by active modes (non-car) by the 50/60 year horizon, it is still double or even greater the amount of people, so the absolute number of cars will actually increase over today. Just not as fast of a rate as population growth hopefully.
16 Ave, not busy? One of our few truly cross-town avenues, which connects to a ton of points of interest, and every north-south artery? I don't see it happening. Our population is increasing, not decreasing.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
20 years is far too short of a timeline for this kind of talk. 100 years, maybe. IMO it's a victory if traffic counts in 20 years are equal to today.
Beltline_B
Senior Member
It would be nice to see less cars at that intersection 20 years from now, but the most likely scenario is even more cars, especially as a city grows.
outoftheice
Active Member
From my understanding after chatting with various City of Calgary officials at community events, there is less traffic crossing the Centre St Bridge today than there was 20 years ago. There is also less traffic on the Macleod Trail couplet today than there was 20 years ago. This despite significant population growth in Calgary over the last 20 years and there being more cars in the city than before. Why is there less traffic in these locations than before? The City of Calgary invested in running a serious bus network along the Centre St corridor and invested a ton of cash in extending the Red Line LRT and expanding it to 4 car service. Without these investments Centre St would be far worse of a car sewer than it is today and we'd probably be talking about adding more lanes to Macleod Trail.
The City of Calgary will be investing billions of dollars in pushing Green Line north and the opportunity is there to turn the Max Orange into a fast, frequent service to hit the many points of interest along 16th Avenue. I don't think I am that far out to lunch in thinking that with the right investments in transit infrastructure we can see less vehicle traffic through the 16th Ave/Centre St intersection in 20 years than we see today. The proof is in the fact that that has already happened in significant road corridors in the city. Plus the easiest way to reduce the amount of traffic through that intersection is to keep the Green Line plan as is and eliminate 2 lanes of traffic along Centre St from the river to Beddington Trail so in a way, the problem is going to take care of itself.
Transit projects in North America are stupidly expensive when compared to other projects around the globe. A big reason for it is because people here will happily pump up the cost of transit projects by hundreds of millions of dollars to accommodate vehicles instead of recognizing that the entire point of the transit project is to replace those vehicles and investing those hundreds of millions of dollars across the entire transit network will have a much more dramatic impact on traffic congestion than saving 1 intersection. What was the cost of building the entire Max BRT network? $200 million? So what would have a bigger impact on traffic in Calgary? $200 million on tunneling Green Line under 1 inner city intersection or building out the Max network a second time to service a bunch of other areas in Calgary that currently have crappy transit connections? I'd rather see that money spent on expanding the transit network. Make that trade-off of transit investment versus protecting vehicle movements a couple of times over and guaranteed in 20 years we see less traffic in key areas of the city despite having a much larger population.
The City of Calgary will be investing billions of dollars in pushing Green Line north and the opportunity is there to turn the Max Orange into a fast, frequent service to hit the many points of interest along 16th Avenue. I don't think I am that far out to lunch in thinking that with the right investments in transit infrastructure we can see less vehicle traffic through the 16th Ave/Centre St intersection in 20 years than we see today. The proof is in the fact that that has already happened in significant road corridors in the city. Plus the easiest way to reduce the amount of traffic through that intersection is to keep the Green Line plan as is and eliminate 2 lanes of traffic along Centre St from the river to Beddington Trail so in a way, the problem is going to take care of itself.
Transit projects in North America are stupidly expensive when compared to other projects around the globe. A big reason for it is because people here will happily pump up the cost of transit projects by hundreds of millions of dollars to accommodate vehicles instead of recognizing that the entire point of the transit project is to replace those vehicles and investing those hundreds of millions of dollars across the entire transit network will have a much more dramatic impact on traffic congestion than saving 1 intersection. What was the cost of building the entire Max BRT network? $200 million? So what would have a bigger impact on traffic in Calgary? $200 million on tunneling Green Line under 1 inner city intersection or building out the Max network a second time to service a bunch of other areas in Calgary that currently have crappy transit connections? I'd rather see that money spent on expanding the transit network. Make that trade-off of transit investment versus protecting vehicle movements a couple of times over and guaranteed in 20 years we see less traffic in key areas of the city despite having a much larger population.
darwink
Senior Member
I’m not really worried about Centre St.
About 16th though? We’re spending a billion or so in the Beltline to avoid crossing Macleod at grade. We’re really going to cross 16th at grade in that context? Given me a break.
About 16th though? We’re spending a billion or so in the Beltline to avoid crossing Macleod at grade. We’re really going to cross 16th at grade in that context? Given me a break.
That sounds like the "build the core first" plan that was put forward when federal funding for this thing was announced way back in... dear lord... July 2015.
outoftheice
Active Member
The traffic lights at 16th Ave and Centre St are what cause the congestion around that area. The lights have to be timed to account for the fact that Centre St has buses that are meant to have signal priority travelling along that corridor every 90 seconds in rush hour. This means that Centre St needs to be given a high priority in the light sequencing. Green Line trains are planned to operate every 7 minutes at peak period and Centre St will have 2 fewer lanes. To me, this says that the traffic lights at that intersection can actually be re-timed to allow much better flow on 16th Ave once the trains start running than what exists today. What will grade separation achieve for vehicular traffic that the re-sequenced traffic lights won't? Even with grade separation you are still going to have an intersection with traffic lights and turning movements at that location.
Beltline_B
Senior Member
IMO it’s too busy an intersection not to have grade separation. I’m not someone who drives a vehicle down 16th Ave. during rush-hour but I can’t imagine how that’s going to go giving extra right of way time to Centre Street.
In my own humble opinion, I don’t think the green line should be at grade anywhere (other than the river crossing) until it gets past 16th.
It’s not just a traffic issue for me, it’s also a safety issue. Rail transit should be separated from crossing roads as busy as 16th Ave. They’ve already done it with the northwest line at 16th Ave., and 19th St. It should be the same at 16th and centre in my opinion.