News   Apr 03, 2020
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General Construction Updates

I often commute through the bowtrail/sarcee intersection. Wow is it ever aweful. Sometimes it will take me 4 lights to turn south onto sacree going east of bow trail. An interchange here would be great.

But then again, I imagine once the ring road is finished there will be a significant shift in trafic parterns in the SW seeing as sarcee is really the only connection between the sw and nw
 
You have former city councillor Craig Burrows to thank for the lack of an interchange at Sarcee & Bow Tr.
The City wanted to build one when they did the interchange at 17th Ave. & Sarcee for the LRT west line. Burrows (councillor for the area) thought both interchanges under construction at the same time was too much . . . Idiot.
 
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Interesting, I always assumed Bow was much busier than that. I take Bowness / Memorial when I drive and it's slow and frustrating at times, but not really bad at all.
I think it's because it's so peak-oriented, wider, high speed and (anecdotally) fully of big/bulky/expensive cars heading up the hill (one of the most wealthy areas in Canada) that it gives off the impression it's busier than it actually is.

Bow Trail is a classic death-by-1000-cuts scenario. As the road speeds creep up, the quality next to the road gets worse, demanding intervention (e.g. sound walls), making the road faster feeling, speeds go up, triggering another set of interventions (green wave timing, turning lanes, extra lanes etc.) pushing the speeds faster and faster. Because it's faster and busier we need big expensive and circuitous pedestrian bridges because at grade crossings are removed. Each intervention made some sense given the conditions at the time and in isolation, but together over time these choices add up to community decline around the route and louder and louder comments to "just freeway the whole thing because it's practically one anyway."

I want the process to push us in the reverse direction. Safety and speed concerns are met with reduced speeds/lane widths, more controls, better pedestrian infrastructure and ultimately road reductions when lifecycle rebuilds occur. Stop making everything bigger and faster forever so we can add value to a property in Springbank by improving peripheral accessibility, start adding the value back into the properties nearby the road. We are getting much better at this type of thinking overall, however our suburban arterials have yet to be challenged and that's where the real fight will be.

Perhaps Bow Trail isn't the best example of this - but Marda Loop's 33 Avenue could have easily gone the same route of continual expansion and highway-ification. You can see a few sections where 33rd / Richmond was starting to transition like this with split boulevards, higher speeds, sound walls etc. Fortunately it didn't get too disruptive and now the areas is evolving into one of the better urban nodes outside the immediate core with hundreds of million of property investment in the past decades.
 
Isn't Shaganappi supposed to be converted to a freeway too? there's going to be a huge gap in the NW between Crow and Deerfoot if the city keeps expanding that way.
 
I hope Shag doesn't become a freeway, don't think there is enough traffic on it to warrant it anyway.
It's supposed to remain largely as it is according to the 2018 corridor plan, with a bunch of improvements to add BRT lanes, improve intersections and add pathway infrastructure. If ever implemented it would be a great improvement - while remaining firmly in Calgary-style high-speed suburban arterial category. Also important - the cross-section is planned to get even wider to fit all the extra turns, pathways and bus lanes - wider roads, higher speeds cycle continues....

Currently, Shaganappi has 25 - 35K vehicles a day south of Crowchild (2019), putting it in the same volume league as 14 Street SW/NW, the busier parts of Elbow Drive, or this stretch of Eglinton Ave in Toronto (see below for picture) for comparison.

If we flipped our processes around and made the goal to add as much value as possible to the land adjacent to the arterial rather than to the greenfield land at the end of them, we would end up with very different outcomes.

For example, the first picture is Shaganappi @ 32 Ave N, near Market Mall. The second picture is 15km north, at ~140 Avenue N. The reason we feel we need to add capacity and speed in the first picture is to support the development in the second. Apparently we are totally fine with adding higher density along arterials (as the second picture demonstrates), but only if it's in the middle of nowhere!

If we flipped our processes around, you could fit that entire multi-family development (and then some) directly adjacent to the corridor at 32 Ave - as long as you urbanize it (to some degree) and made the land actually productive. Reduce the speed, width and cross section, add sidewalks and apartment blocks. Instead of sitting on the Shaganappi right-of-way for eventually expansion (for 50 years so far, another 50 years before expansion is complete), of zero tax revenue and all this time paying for the operating cost to cut the grass you could convert it to productive land. Not to mention, we also just gave options to reduce some Shaganappi commutes, GHG, energy usage for commuting by 15km each way, each day forever.

Would it be easy? Of course not - I would guess near-impossible is more likely. But the long term value is there if we could figure out how to break all the rules, processes, and politics that make Shaganappi an acceptable answer for our suburban arterials but Eglinton not acceptable.

Shaganappi @ 32 Ave NW - 27,000 vehicles / day.
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Shaganappi @ ~140 Ave NW
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Eglinton (Toronto) - 29,000 vehicles/day
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CBBarnett, I'm not sure what career position you're in, but I'd like to see you in a high level position in Calgary's planning department if you're not already.
You're kind, perhaps one day. Bad news though: unfortunately I think you'd actually need 11 of me to make this scheme work smoothly (1 leading planning, 1 leading transportation, 1 leading land/real estate, 8 members of Council).

Of course the problem there is to get that senior in any of those fields you risk field-specific biases and incentives being baked in - Transportation CBBarnett only gets rewarded from preserving right-of-way, Real Estate CBBarnett gets rewarded for selling more land, 8 Councillor CBBarnetts want to get re-elected and get suspicious when our constituent's roads are impacted. Hell, by that point I'm sure a few of us will have been corrupted by the sprawl development argument that it creates tons of jobs, is somehow cheaper for taxpayers despite the evidence, and we'd be stupid to undertake any plan that improves our land productivity rate!

But I'll do what I can. Proposing ideas on this site to the smart people that hang out here is part of the multi-faceted strategy to help get this city sorted out 👍
 
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TFW Toronto's shitty 5-lane car sewer looks more inviting than Calgary's most vibrant street (17th ave).

Although it's kind of amazing they spent billions burying an LRT line under this street and they didn't bother to bury the power lines while they were at it.
I was curious about that, my guess utility and transportation systems aren't talking.

Despite the wires,Toronto's sidewalk game is vastly superior with far less clutter. They use the street light poles for all things, including the overhead power supply for their streetcars preventing multiple poles all the time. Smart (even if it's messy).

For a counterpoint, I'll bring back my go-to favourite at MacLeod & 11th Ave SE. Look we buried the power lines, we nailed it!

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