I didn’t reply to that post.
Must've been the wind...
Unfortunately, unless there is a conscious effort to make the stroad a main street the change from projects like this will be measured in decades not years. Because this changes one block on one side of the stroad, there's still the next block and the one across the stroad.
So now that we've got that cleared up that 'courtyard' isn't relevant to the topic let's review. Apartment A; consistent white noise hum of mechanical equipment outside. Apartment B; barking dogs and screaming children outside your window at regular but inconsistent intervals. I choose A. You choose B?
With all of these developments and proposals, I see 16th becoming better than it is now, but I'm not holding out much hope on it becoming a nice retail/residential corridor, unless we can come up with a better E-W artery that's fairly central.
. I was just looking at some of the Macleod Trail stuff as well. If these roads have to be traffic thoroughfares, they should at least be turned into boulevards with walking and cycling routes separated by trees and other landscaping from the busy road. Same thing applies to all of Edmonton's infamous stroads like 97th Street and Gateway/Calgary Trail.
Agreed. 16th is light years better than MacLeod which to me seems like a lost cause. 16th has a lot of good things going for it, just high traffic volumes which drag it down.
And with the traffic volume, it only feels overwhelming during rush hour on a pedestrian scale. With a urban canyon getting developed over time on the vacant/one story lots, it will mitigate the feeling one may have that they're not a main street. I also wonder if outside of rush hour, would it be better to make the curb lanes parking lanes, or keep it as is to improve the flow of buses that use 16th. It's a tough choice for me. Ideally John Laurie/McKnight has work done to it to make it the primary E-W throughway for the north central part of the city. With that, 16th traffic volume could be reduced, 4 through lanes are kept while the curb lanes become parking lane/bus stop bump outs for transit. Can get the best of both worlds.
Macleod isn't a lot cause, it's just a different situation from 16th. I don't forsee Macleod getting converted to a legit urban Boulevard any time soon because a) it's so beyond messed up and b) it will always be a very significant corridor for cars (except for maybe the area around and north of chinook), unlike 16th which absolutely has that potential. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed. Get rid of all the stupid driveway access points and fix the ridiculous intersections so the street is less dangerous and traffic flows better. Then use the streets that run parallel to Macleod to create pedestrian friendly main streets that building can front onto and then those same buildings can face away from Macleod. North-South pedestrian and bike flow can be focused on those parallel main streets and away from the Macleod car sewer, and then all you need to worry about is east west crossing which can be fixed by designing intersections that don't suck (and the occasional overpass). Eventually macleod can get so surrounded by an urban canyon that in a decade or two we can start talking about building a lid on top of or burying portions of it.
It’s not relevant because you’re choosing to pick at my comment and I’m telling you that the basis for my comment had no elements of a courtyard regarded in it. You’re now having a separate discussion with a courtyard consideration, which you’re free to have I guess, but it’s not the page I’m on.
