CBBarnett
Senior Member
Has there ever been traffic forecasts or volume expectations released for either the West or SW ring road? I drove it a few weeks ago and wow - that's a wide and empty road SW of the reservoir.
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Roads, Highways & Infrastructure
- Thread starter Oddball
- Start date
Golfing guy
Active Member
It’s wide because they left a right away in the middle for a future highway. It’s empty because it abruptly ends at 146th ave. When the portion from there to Macleod is finished and opens it will a highly used road. Once complete to 16ave that portion of the ring road will be as busy as the other quadrants
googspecial
Active Member
A future highway that the province has even admitted likely won't ever get built. But they needed to purchase the land just in case, as the reserve had a clause in the sale to never selkl land for highways again. (Or something along those lines)
I would love to see some sort of investment made in the median though. The ring road is the "Transportation & Utiliity Corridor". Fill in that large median space with solar panels and wind turbines. Use the space for a pipeline, if needed. Maybe one day use it for a rail line. Some near-future or intermediate uses would be a great use of that land I think.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
^^ Did a project on the ring road this past semester, actually with fellow forumer @YYCALGARY, I don't remember if we mentioned it in the presentation, but at least during the writing and group meetings we talked about the potential for solar farms along the entire median of the ring road, but especially in regard to the SW utility corridor.
darwink
Senior Member
It is explicitly a transportation utility corridor. Pipelines, power lines, however unlikely rail lines. Solar would be a good use - a full lifecycle of panels could likely go on before we'd even consider building more roads there.
Here is the natural gas mains map for the ring road:
The red lines are some of the urban high pressure lines enabled to be removed from service by completing the ring road system.
DougB
Senior Member
The median of the SW ring road would make great ROW for a circumferential LRT line:
Seton (transfer with Green Line)->Somerset Station (connect with Red Line)->jog over to 162nd Ave ROW->future Providence area->re-join ring road ROW->Westhills->Glenmore Trail ROW->MRU->37th Street ROW->Westbrook Station (transfer with Blue Line)->Shaganappi Golf Course ROW and new bridge over river->29th Street ROW->Foothills Hospital->West Campus Blvd ROW->University District->New University Station->Brentwood Station (transfer with Red Line)
Seton (transfer with Green Line)->Somerset Station (connect with Red Line)->jog over to 162nd Ave ROW->future Providence area->re-join ring road ROW->Westhills->Glenmore Trail ROW->MRU->37th Street ROW->Westbrook Station (transfer with Blue Line)->Shaganappi Golf Course ROW and new bridge over river->29th Street ROW->Foothills Hospital->West Campus Blvd ROW->University District->New University Station->Brentwood Station (transfer with Red Line)
darwink
Senior Member
Who would ride a line that was that far out?
Urban Outdoorsman
Active Member
Why would they ever want to build a highway adjacent to the ring road? Couldn't they just expand highway 2 or 22? Seems a little redundant
darwink
Senior Member
Urban Outdoorsman
Active Member
Yikes. Let's hope the sprawl never gets that bad.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
How busy are the other quadrants? Did they publish a traffic volume forecast as well prior to opening? Most of these were built to 4 or 6 lanes at opening, not 8+ as is the case in the SWRR. Did the SWRR forecast suggest 2x the opening day traffic of the other segments and therefore it's twice as wide?
I get it's traffic will increase as it's better connected but I haven't heard a convincing argument in the past decade why it's so large on opening day and as far as I know, no traffic forecast data was ever published for the west or southwest corridors.
That is "future-proofing" to the point of absurdity. We acquired a right-of-way 3-5x wider than needed, to overbuild a road, so that we can accommodate a future we don't expect to happen anyways. It's a catch-22: if our forecasting was so great we wouldn't need all the expansion room because we could have right-sized it. But we didn't right-size it because we don't trust our own forecasts. But the whole project was justified based on those same forecasts which we accepted enough to spend billions on it.
Surely the lifecycle replacement of all those really long overpass bridges will occur before that extra right of way is ever needed ? Does replacing a 100m overpass bridge cost more than replacing a 30m bridge?
DougB
Senior Member
Highway 2 between Edmonton and Leduc was built with a similarly wide median based on agressive growth predictions from the 1960's.
The SW ring road is somewhat unique in that it traverses the bottlenecks created by Fish Creek Park, the Tsuutʼina lands and Glenmore Reservoir/Glenmore Park/Weaselhead. Without the ring road, the alternative of Macleod/14th St/Glenmore is incredibly circuitous and congested. I could see this segment becoming the busiest section of the ring road, especially as the Providence area grows.
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DougB
Senior Member
Looks about right. I could see the north section possibly moved north of Airdrie. Building a river crossing between Springbank and Bearspaw would be really expensive due to the depth of the river valley. The southern part of the city has already grown substantially since this image. Development south of Seton is already approaching the rim of the river valley. Warehouses are rapidly consuming land along the eastern strech of Stoney. How much growth is ahead for Calgary is anyone's guess.
DougB
Senior Member
DT Commuters from the massive Providence area (if it ever fully builds out), riders headed from the deep south to the MRU area, people trying to get from the west side of the city to Foothills/U of C without going through DT. Calgary can't even get the Green Line built, so this is a fantasy. Maintaining the ROW will likely prove valuable some day. Another crazy idea would be diverting the CPR line from somewhere around Cochrane into the SW ring road ROW and then heading east along highway 902.
Acey
Active Member
Absolutely no shot. Stoney at Beddington is about 80k.
The first full year with the SW and W legs open will not exceed 50k, guaranteed. "As busy as the other quadrants" is a comparison that needs to be further clarified given the massive discrepancy right now in volume between the NW, NE and SE.