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Roads, Highways & Infrastructure

For the very first time in my 20+ years living in the greater Calgary area, I today accessed eastbound McKnight Blvd from 48 Ave NW. Wow! Dangerous! And difficult! Something needs to be done with that intersection! Maybe a traffic circle?
I've always wondered how that works, I see people sitting there every time I drive by and it looks like a long and frustrating wait. The volume on JL turning onto McKnight is just too heavy for any useful connection to 48th, probably best to just go the long way around lol.
 
I've always wondered how that works, I see people sitting there every time I drive by and it looks like a long and frustrating wait. The volume on JL turning onto McKnight is just too heavy for any useful connection to 48th, probably best to just go the long way around lol.
I’d considered it, but I was following my brother in his vehicle ahead.
 
Quick and dirty screenshot from the video.
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Looks like quite a few property impacts. Hopefully those property owners will understand the ultimate goal and not put up too much of a fuss.
 
I count 9 properties.
I wonder if the City is buying them if/when they come up for sale ?
 
Looks like quite a few property impacts. Hopefully those property owners will understand the ultimate goal and not put up too much of a fuss.
Highways clear-cutting through residential neighbourhoods have famously always been met with very accommodating impacted homeowners :)

Of all the east-west cross-town dreams that transportation engineers have had for decades in this city, McKnight/John Laurie is one of the weirder ones for me. It's strange that they were actually successful and got it connected but di so super weirdly, to this whole discussion. Strikes me as a super-bizarre design they ended up with - in keeping with Calgary road standards, it seems simultaneously both over and under-built.

Before moving to the expensive ultimate design with a bunch of expropriations, a large traffic circle or signal would work fine here, but even shrinking 48th Ave to be a right-in-right out design and just having slow curve in the existing footprint would be an upgrade.

Would be interested to know the back story of how they ended up with the design they did and why they didn't plan for a more normal connection in the first place.
 
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Looks like quite a few property impacts. Hopefully those property owners will understand the ultimate goal and not put up too much of a fuss.
The plan was supposedly very popular, with 90% support from the North Haven community in 2005. But the City isn't willing to fund it yet.

“This has been a dangerous intersection for quite some time, and it’s only getting worse,” said Bob Porteous, who is organizing the open house along with the development and review committee at North Haven.

“We had a solution, back in 2005, when 90 per cent of the community agreed to it. But nothing has happened since.

“The project appears to have fallen through the cracks and we want to move it toward the front burner.”

 
There are lights at 4 St already...another light that is 85% green time really shouldn't be a problem.

Right in right out would be even better, but it looks like it isn't currently possible to do a U-Turn at the 14 St lights; it's probably too tight to achieve that without eliminating the pedestrian island, but if they did they could make an entire island surrounded/protected by dicks! https://maps.app.goo.gl/obetK725GU6cA97p7

But really that ped island adds very little value since it doesn't have a signal in the middle - it's actually more of an annoyance for most users, especially in the winter, so they should nuke it! But keep the dicks, they're great.
 

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