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Roads, Highways & Infrastructure

Wow! I didn’t even notice that happened over the weekend! Nice. Still lots of work to do but it’s great to see it open to traffic finally
 
Some night shots of the Stony Trail bridge construction:

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I was going through the city plans for Crowchild when I stumbled upon this graphic, which I think is utterly baffling:
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The main justifications for the multi-billion dollar Crowchild expansion/widenings are... transit-oriented developments?
Literally every location they mention as generating new car trips that necessitate Crowchild upgrades is right next to an LRT station or a Max Stop. Isn't the entire point of building TOD to encourage transit usage so that we don't need to build wasteful infrastructure projects?
 
Crowchild is so much better than it was, that to go to the next phase I’d hope there was a real look at marginal costs versus marginal benefits. And even then ‘quick wins’ instead of the full project might yield much more efficient results, like focusing only on the Crowchild/University Drive/16th squeeze.
 
darwink said:
Crowchild is so much better than it was, that to go to the next phase I’d hope there was a real look at marginal costs versus marginal benefits. And even then ‘quick wins’ instead of the full project might yield much more efficient results, like focusing only on the Crowchild/University Drive/16th squeeze.
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Agreed, most of Crowchild is more than adequate as is. But the section between 5th Avenue and 16th is pretty terrible, so if they could even make some minor adjustments to the interchange it would make a world of difference.
 

What do we think of this? "Starting January 2023, people living in large, multi-residential buildings — four stories or taller or with more than 20 units — will be ineligible for street parking permits."

More and more it seems like the chicken came before the egg when it comes to parking. I'm not against trying to change the current setup at all, but I don't know that changing it for residence is the answer. Maybe not in this case but overall isn't the goal to get people to consider alternative ways of going into the inner-city and not driving? Like taking transit or car-sharing? This does the opposite and reserves more space for people driving in.
 
I get what they're trying to do with the new rules but I think it should depend on the demand for parking in the building as well. I don't think the number of units reflects the demand at all. Due to our proximity to 17th Ave a lot of our parking gets used by people going there. However, it would be nice to have the option versus parking in the parkade for $75/month, although we learned this the hard way when our ban was smashed in the alley. Hopefully the new rules will discourage driving but I doubt it as there needs to be more policy in place.
 
It doesn't make any sense to me that residents of certain types of buildings (those lived in primarily by wealthier citizens) will get subsidized access to City space that is unavailable to those lived in primarily by the working class. If the demand for street parking exceeds the supply, increase the price. It's not rocket science. Yes multifamily buildings have onsite parking -- so do single family houses. The whiner in the news article lives in Mission; there are few SFD houses in Mission, but all the ones I can think of have a garage, a car port, a side-of-house parking lane, some sort of car storage on their land. They have no more need for on-street public car storage than the people in the multifamily buildings.

The only positive rationale I have for excluding multifamily from parking permits is it disables the NIMBY complaint about infill residents taking the (publicly owned) on-street parking. But were it me, I'd make it so that any CA opposition letter that mentioned parking went into the garbage automatically. Grow up; stop leaning on the public purse to provide private storage for your belongings.
 
Simple solution is to charge adequate permit fees for on-street parking. If permits cost $500-$1000 per vehicle per year, let’s see how fast people clean out their garages and street parking becomes available. It’s ridiculous that permits are free for the first two vehicles per residence in permitted areas, and for additional vehicles it’s quite cheap.
 
ByeByeBaby said:
It doesn't make any sense to me that residents of certain types of buildings (those lived in primarily by wealthier citizens) will get subsidized access to City space that is unavailable to those lived in primarily by the working class. If the demand for street parking exceeds the supply, increase the price. It's not rocket science. Yes multifamily buildings have onsite parking -- so do single family houses. The whiner in the news article lives in Mission; there are few SFD houses in Mission, but all the ones I can think of have a garage, a car port, a side-of-house parking lane, some sort of car storage on their land. They have no more need for on-street public car storage than the people in the multifamily buildings.

The only positive rationale I have for excluding multifamily from parking permits is it disables the NIMBY complaint about infill residents taking the (publicly owned) on-street parking. But were it me, I'd make it so that any CA opposition letter that mentioned parking went into the garbage automatically. Grow up; stop leaning on the public purse to provide private storage for your belongings.
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I agree, this is completely backwards from what they should be doing. If the only benefit is discouraging NIMBY complaints you're not doing your job.
 
CalgaryTiger said:

What do we think of this? "Starting January 2023, people living in large, multi-residential buildings — four stories or taller or with more than 20 units — will be ineligible for street parking permits."

More and more it seems like the chicken came before the egg when it comes to parking. I'm not against trying to change the current setup at all, but I don't know that changing it for residence is the answer. Maybe not in this case but overall isn't the goal to get people to consider alternative ways of going into the inner-city and not driving? Like taking transit or car-sharing? This does the opposite and reserves more space for people driving in.
Click to expand...
I'm okay with it either way. My only suggestion would be to grandfather in the change for existing residents. I like @adamyyc 's idea of a yearly parking permit, those who really need an extra parking spot can pay the 500 bucks or whatever it is, those who don't need it badly won't go through with it.
 
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