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General Construction Updates

Cyric said:
The city has released its design for the 9th Ave SE bridge replacement. I couldn't find them up on the city website yet but there are a few pictures here:
https://twitter.com/CBCScott/status/993912939081031680
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Overall, it's fine if a bit boring. One thing TOTALLY bugs the hell out of me though. Why does it still have 2 eastbound lanes and 1 westbound lane?
 
The whole thing looks rather clunky. Considering it was designed by an architect (Sturgess), I'd expect it to be more refined.
 
Oddball said:
Overall, it's fine if a bit boring. One thing TOTALLY bugs the hell out of me though. Why does it still have 2 eastbound lanes and 1 westbound lane?
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I've heard the Inglewood community objected to having two lanes each direction.
 
jdixon said:
I've heard the Inglewood community objected to having two lanes each direction.
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/new-city-bridge-inglewood-9th-avenue-1.4653634
According to the article, the new bridge will have 4 lanes, but Councillor Carra states that 9th Ave will be redesigned to be 3 lanes only. I have heard something similar about 9th ave as well, through The City's Main Streets program. If so, this seems like a bad case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Especially when you consider the closure of 8th Street at the rail crossing.
 
Can't believe how much demolition is going on in Calgary in 2018. Nice to see a lot of old hotels getting demolished.
 
MichaelS said:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/new-city-bridge-inglewood-9th-avenue-1.4653634
According to the article, the new bridge will have 4 lanes, but Councillor Carra states that 9th Ave will be redesigned to be 3 lanes only. I have heard something similar about 9th ave as well, through The City's Main Streets program. If so, this seems like a bad case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Especially when you consider the closure of 8th Street at the rail crossing.
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This sounds like another chapter of the transportation department v. everyone else (including Main Streets program and the local Councillor). Current configuration is only 3 lanes and the future design of 9th Ave SE will likely be 3 lanes to allow for better pedestrian infrastructure, curb bump outs, plazas and patios as the area densifies. Transportation car-centric models don't like that kind of thing; all roads get bigger all the time according to their models because growth in people = growth in cars. Especially when you are looking at 100 year designs. The problem is they their actions are not happening in a vacuum. Building a bigger road doesn't prepare you for more vehicles, it encourages more vehicles. It's causal. So if you want the same or less vehicles, building a bigger bridge is in contradiction to the walkable, urban and dense neighbourhood of the future that the locals and Councillor are envisioning.

The result: a weird hybrid. The bridge is designed for 4 lanes of width at highway lane-width standards, crash barriers and shoulders (e.g. overbuilt for inner city needs but future-proofed in the sense that anything we can conceive of can drive on this road for the foreseeable future). To appease the decision-makers of today, it may only be built to 3 lanes to placate the push by local neighbourhoods and councillor and has extra-wide sidewalks.

Funny that there is no mention of an on-street bike lane/cycle-track given that their is currently one that ends at the bridge. This should be a no-brainer for inclusion, especially given the width being proposed where no one will lose any capacity and bicycles will gain a better direct connection between some of Calgary's most urban areas (which will only increasingly be true over the next 100 years). Also peculiar, as it would be contradictory to existing complete street policy to not include bicycle infrastructure.

If we are designing a bridge for 100 years to support any possible future semi-trucks travelling at high speeds on 9th Ave SE with wide lanes, shoulders and crash barriers, surely we can imagine one that a bicycle commuter might be using the bridge? Only one of these things happens currently (bicycles), and only one of these things happened 100 years ago (bicycles). IMO the omission of on-street bicycle infrastructure supports the argument from some that there is still a heavy car-centric bias underlying the planning of this bridge and that transportation decision-makers still don't take active transportation as seriously in this city as they could have.
 
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The bike lane will be on the north side of the bridge. That entire sidewalk zone is dedicated to bikes.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
The bike lane will be on the north side of the bridge. That entire sidewalk zone is dedicated to bikes.
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The entire sidewalk zone is not dedicated to bikes, it's a sidewalk.

There is no indication that any bike-lanes are added from any material or diagrams released so far. There is space for them though, hopefully they will be included in the future.
 
Yeah I really hope they have dedicated bikes lanes here, because bikes and pedestrians mix almost as bad as bikes and cars. All 3 are different because they all function at different speeds.
 
From the rendering it looks like there would be a dedicated bike lane on the north side, but I guess we won't know until more details come out. It makes sense to have though.
 
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